For the next summer I'm planning to drive to some countries that aren't covered by the route planning tool of Google Maps. What other possibilities do I have to calculate the route approximately in advance?
Especially, Russia, Eastern Europe and Northern Africa.
Well, you can go old-shool: buy a decent road atlas. Usually there is a table with distances between larger cities (either at the beginning or at the end) - so using it you can have an idea about the scale. Moreover, on every decent road map you will have distances on the actual map - however these are usually between junctions etc., so you will have to sum up quite a few of them to get the distance for a longer route.
You could try locally made maps, such as OpenStreetMap, it might cover the area you want to go on.
On my question about a particular route in Albania that Google Maps gave weird results for, I was recommended that a site that had better route information in East Europe is "Tomtom".
Then again I just tried it with the Albanian city I'm now in, Sarandë, and it's not so great after all, so maybe trying multiple sites and comparing is your best bet when you think your destinations might not have full coverage.
For my recent trip through the 'stans, Tom Tom's Route Planner worked fantastically.
In addition, I used NavDroyd, an app for my Android phone. It uses OpenStreetMaps, which you can choose within the app to download maps for the regions and subregions of your choice beforehand. That way you have the maps with you all the time, and yes, it supports routing. Really fantastic little app - it cost me a few Euros, but was totally worth it.
to calculate the road you will go with google map is very difficult, but not not do it, I think you should ask friends about the distance you will pass, because google only the distance between locations, and the problem problem you will encounter when involved in traffic on the road, then no. Wish you a good journey!
