India

Most coverage = "shitcam" - low quality, brownish colours, often a large circular blur over the car

Nepal: Himalayan terrain everywhere + Nepali script details and plates - and no Indian state scripts.

Cambodia: Khmer script (tall loopy letters) → Cambodia.

Sri Lanka: Sinhala round script + lush island vegetation → Sri Lanka.

Bangladesh: Bengali-only signage, flat delta landscape → Bangladesh.

All Gen4 = smallcam: mounted lower, big circular blur with a small front protrusion (blur can be fully transparent)

Significant number of Gen3 trekkers throughout the country

Drives on the left

Wide variety of scripts - most narrow down the region (see the state section)

Plates fairly long; standard white, commercial yellow, electric green

Black-and-white striped signposts

Bangladesh: Bengali-only signs + flat waterlogged land → Bangladesh.

Nepal: All-shitcam + Himalaya everywhere → Nepal.

Sri Lanka: Sinhala script → Sri Lanka.

Most common pole: square concrete with a trident poletop; poles almost always concrete/metal - wooden extremely rare

Hindi (Devanagari: top line through each word, straight verticals) → central & northern regions

Yellow tuk-tuks with black roofs → south (Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu); rare elsewhere

Thin grey metal poles (often two close together) → all of the northeast + Himalayan Uttarakhand & Himachal Pradesh

Northeast pole metas: even + uneven poletop combos; '<'-shaped double diagonal bars (Meghalaya & Arunachal, occasionally Assam); two crossbars w/ 2 insulators each (Assam/Meghalaya/Mizoram - >2 bars → Meghalaya or Mizoram)

Roof metas: central = rounded, disorganised tiles; south = organised flat bright-orange tiles w/ middle ridge (esp. Tamil Nadu; darker brown further north); West Bengal = flat tiles w/ diamond protrusion + large corrugated hip roofs (also nearby Bihar/Odisha); northeast = metal roofs w/ small top triangle + houses of square panels

Thatched huts → east coast + northern plains (big hay mounds too)

Pine metas: chir pines (smooth conical crowns, long needles) → Uttarakhand/Himachal/J&K/W-Arunachal; khasi pines (jagged, disorganised crowns) → Meghalaya & Manipur

Cacti fences (Euphorbia) → Gujarat, W-Maharashtra, S-Rajasthan

Palm metas: palmyra (lollipop shape) in numbers → south/east; areca (very thin trunk, small crown) → SW coast, northeast, Andaman & Nicobar; date palms → dry central regions; oil-palm plantations → Andhra panhandle (near Telangana border)

Crop metas: tea → northeast + far south (flat tea = Assam / NE-West-Bengal); sugarcane → around Uttar Pradesh + southwest; cotton → Gujarat & Maharashtra; canola → around Rajasthan

Himalaya = by far the tallest mountains; Ladakh/N-Himachal = extremely dry high-altitude desert; northern plains (Ganges valley) = fertile, extremely flat open fields

Soil metas: distinctly dark soil → Maharashtra + adjacent; red soil → SW coast + around Chhattisgarh/W-Odisha; sandy dry → W-Rajasthan

Boxy square cars visible in mapped areas (Odisha variant shows a hood); northeast: fences of thin wooden sticks in a square pattern

Marathi - Devanagari like Hindi, but sometimes uses ळ (not in Hindi)

Punjabi - softer letter shapes, top bar broken over some letters; distinct ਨ ਲ ਅ + soft-curve diacritic below letters

Gujarati - like Hindi but no top line over the words

Bengali - Devanagari-like but many letters with left-facing triangles

Assamese - Bengali script plus extra characters, notably ৰ ৱ

Kannada - smooth curves + small circles; often a squiggly tail top-right (rarer in Telugu)

Telugu - very similar to Kannada, but often checkmark-like diacritics on top of letters

Tamil - mix of curves, straight lines and 90° angles; dot-shaped diacritics (also common in Sri Lanka)

Oriya - curvy; wide semi-circles covering letter tops (mnemonic: looks like the skull emoji 💀)

Malayalam - simple curvy letters, many upside-down U shapes

Manipuri (Meitei) - many vertical lines and right angles; metal trident poles, sometimes small bars on the trident

Mizo - Latin script (most common non-English Latin language in Indian coverage); lush green valleys, eroded hillsides with many scattered small peaks (Meghalaya's ridge tops are smoother)

Almost exclusively English signage - the only region like this

Concrete holey poles - Gujarat + Daman & Diu / Dadra & Nagar Haveli

Called 'unique to Gujarat (+Daman & Diu, DNH)' by Plonk It - but they can rarely be found in Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, so confirm with script/soil.

Poles divided in two sections (Brazil-style)

Metal poles with a mesh pattern; taxis often have a yellow hood or small yellow circle; Buddhist prayer flags (also Arunachal)

Metal holey poles; small yellow pole stickers (similar stickers rarely elsewhere); with Goa the most developed states - wealthy modern homes

Electricity counters mint green with window-like squares (rarely Haryana); small window-shaped metal poletops (Punjab & Haryana); gurdwaras (white domes, Khanda symbol) most common here

Trident poletop with centre insulator directly on the pole top, outer two on a crossbar below (sometimes Haryana; multi-bar variant exists)

Upside-down triangle poletops below the pole top (less common in Madhya Pradesh)

Metal bar shaped like an upside-down A slightly below the pole top

Upside-down trapezoid connector on poles (also Meghalaya, Tripura, Maharashtra; rare elsewhere) - only use when no other pole meta is present

Poletops attached with two vertical bars forming a tall narrow rectangle; variant with two crossbars + diagonal supports to the pole

Trident poletop with the middle bar tip bent 90°

Poletop with a short crossbar above a longer crossbar

Pole/tree markings: one black stripe between two white stripes

Pole paint: 5+ thin black-and-yellow stripes; orange & bright-green buses

Pole paint: exactly 4 thicker black-and-yellow stripes; trees with 4 red-white stripes (also Jharkhand, less often)

Western Ghats: tabletop ridgelines (plateaus, not peaks); N drier, S greener - rainy season turns everything green

Black pole stickers with digits + a middle arrow

Planned city: blue sector signs, round yellow marks on street lights, street signs with numbers instead of names (nearby SAS Nagar & Panchkula similar)

Separated middle bus lanes on large roads (people still drive in them)

Black taxis with yellow roofs

Elevated railways → Bengaluru, Chennai, Delhi, Hyderabad, Jaipur, Kochi, Kolkata, Mumbai

Roofs of thin grey bricks; same bricks/rocks in walls & stockyards

NW-Bihar/NE-UP: white-painted clay huts; central Bihar: wooden huts with a cross pattern

Tree spotlights: Japanese cedar (tall, narrow fluffy crowns) → Sikkim/WB border + Meghalaya; Himalayan cedar → NH34 Harsil-Gangotri + Shimla; Bhutan white pine (hanging needles) → Mechuka valley + Bhutan border (Arunachal)

Doum palms (palmyra-like but multi-branched)

'Almost exclusive' to Diu - a stray doum palm elsewhere is possible, so confirm with the coastal Portuguese-influenced townscape.

Endangered Indian pitcher plant - exclusive to the Khasi Hills (roadside esp. NH206 north of Umlārem)

Western half far more barren (logging/erosion); NW of Dehradun: barren brown-grass hills, small cliff-side roads; Chaukhamba massif near Ukhimath: snow, three peaks, centre tallest

The only NE-India spot with visible snowy mountains; brownish grass + Bhutan white pines; north of Mechuka increasingly overcast/dark

South of Shillong: V-shaped green eroded valleys with flat smooth ridgetops (Mizoram = less smooth, more rises/falls); NH6/NH206 SE of Shillong: khasi pines + yellow outer road lines + fresh dark pavement (only Meghalaya road with yellow outer lines)

Salt flats & coastal marshes, near-zero vegetation, shallow water pools (W-Rajasthan is sandier with desert shrubs)

Southern tip: huge monolithic rock mountains (Magenthiragiri hills visible from afar); flat bushy landscape with very red soil in the south

Abundant coconut trees, often painted red-and-white (like the Polish flag)

NH326 west of Brahmapur: thin grey antenna + unusually high-quality shitcam (best near Harabhangi Reservoir)