Blue-lakes, rivers, streams, oceans, reservoirs, etc.
Red-major highways, roads, urban areas, airports, special interest sites, military sites, place names, buildings, borders.
Yellow-built-up or urban areas.
Green-parks, golf courses, forest, orchards, highways.
Brown-deserts, historical sites, national park", military reservations or bases, contour (elevation) lines.
Black-railways, highways, bridges, place names, buildings, borders.

We need to understand maps because of the following reason :
(i) To find our way around a city.
(ii) To find the location of specific places in a new city.
(iii) To find the shortest route to a specific spot.
(iv) To find out locations of petrol pumps, police station and rest houses on highways.
(v) In case of emergency, it helps to find the nearest hospital or medical aid.

The components of maps are:
(i) Symbols: Symbols are used on maps because it is not possible to show all details of an area as they actually are. These symbols make it easier to draw maps and also, to understand them.
(ii) Direction: There are four main directions i.e. East, West, South and North, known as the cardinal directions. Maps easily help us to locate direction on the given surface, because northern direction of a map is always marked as 'N'.
(iii) Distance: With the help of scale, large areas can be shown on a small scale map.

x

(i) The river is flowing in the South-East direction.
(ii) Metalled road is passing by the side of village Dumri.
(iii) Sunderpur is situated on broad gauge railway line.
(iv) Police station is situated on the South side of the railway bridge.
(v) (a) South
(b) South
(c) North
(d) North
(e) South
(f) South
(g) South

The differences between sketch and plan are as follows:
Sketch It is a drawing based on memory and spot observation and not to scale. Sometimes, a rough sketch is required for an area to tell, where a particular area is located with respect to other places. Suppose you want to go to your friend's house and you don't know the way, then your friend may make a rough sketch to show the way to his house. Such a rough drawing is called a sketch map.
Plan: Plan of an area consists of details about length and breadth of a particular location. A plan is a drawing of small area on a large scale or in other words, a drawing drawn to scale is called plan.

There are three components of maps:
(i) Distance A small distance on paper represents a large distance on the ground through a scale.
(ii) Direction Most maps contain an arrow marked with the letter 'N' at the upper right hand corner. This shows the North direction. By knowing one direction, other directions can be found out.
(iii) Symbol: Symbol is the third important component of a map. It is impossible to draw exact size of different features such as buildings, roads, bridges, trees, railway lines or a well on a map, so they are shown by using certain letters, shades, colours, pictures and lines.

A map is a representation or drawing of the earth's surface or a part of its area drawn on a flat surface according to a scale. There are different types of maps.
Some of them are as follows:
(i) Physical maps Maps showing natural features of the earth such as mountains, plateaus, plains, rivers, oceans etc are called physical or relief maps.
(ii) Political maps Maps showing cities, towns, villages and different countries and states of the world with their boundaries are called political maps.
(iii) Thematic maps Maps with specific information like road maps, rainfall maps, maps showing distribution of forests, industries etc are known as thematic maps.

(i) Maps can be easily drawn with the help of symbols like colours, letters, shades, pictures, etc. Symbols represent different features like buildings, roads, bridges, trees, railway lines, temples, etc. and also, make it easier to read the maps.
(ii) The three components of map are-distance, direction and symbol.

Physical maps commonly use colours most dramatically to show changes in elevations. A palette of green is often used to display common elevations. Dark green usually represents low-lying land white lighter green used for higher elevations. For higher elevations, physical maps will often use light brown to dark brown.

The compass is very stable in areas close to the Equator, which is far from "Magnetic North". At some point close to the Magnetic Pole, the compass will not indicate any particular direction, but will begin to drift in a non-direction indicating manner. Also, the needle starts to point up or down when getting closer to the poles, due to the so called magnetic inclination. Cheap compass with bad bearings may get stuck due to this, thereby indicating a wrong direction.

Let the distance from E to C = 5 cm.
C to M = 3 cm.
M to B = 2 cm.
B to A = 2 cm.
The total walking distance between Karim's house and post office is the sum of all distances, i.e.
(E to C) + (C to M) + (M to B) + (B to A)
5 + 3 + 2 + 2 = 12 cm.
Therefore according to the scale
1 cm = 10 m. 12 cm = 120 m.