Atlas Trail
Where Maps Disagree: A Tour of the World's In-Between Regions
Seven regions this atlas holds not as countries but as the supra-national spaces where conventions do the work borders elsewhere do on their own: a mountain range that is Europe by one line and Asia by another, a peninsula whose own name was chosen to dodge politics, a rainforest basin, a frozen immensity, and a Pacific subregion anthropologists still cannot agree how to draw.
Stop 1 of 7.
Regions
Where Europe ends and Asia begins depends entirely on which line you trust; even Europe's own highest peak is a matter of convention here.
Stop 2 of 7.
Regions
A name scholars chose deliberately to avoid the politics of "Syria-Palestine," naming the land bridge between Africa and Eurasia instead.
Stop 3 of 7.
Regions
The world's largest peninsula, almost entirely desert, where the Rub al Khali alone buries sand hundreds of feet deep.
Stop 4 of 7.
Regions
A peninsula shaped by the same Great Rift Valley system that runs the length of East Africa, with a narrow definition and a broader one that genuinely disagree.
Stop 5 of 7.
Regions
The Congo River basin at the continent's heart, called Middle Africa by the UN and Central Africa by nearly everyone else.
Stop 6 of 7.
Regions
Three-quarters of Russia's territory and a quarter of its population, cold enough that two of its towns compete for coldest inhabited place on Earth.
Stop 7 of 7.
Regions
Coined in 1832 alongside Micronesia and Polynesia; anthropologists still cannot agree where it ends, or whether Fiji belongs here at all.
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