NCERT Solutions Exploring Society: India and Beyond Chapter 1 Let us play a game — In-text Questions
Book page 8 Updated on2026-09-05
Q1.
Imagine that you just got off a train at the railway station, and you want to visit the bank marked on the map. Which way would you go?
Answer
First find the two places on Fig. 1.1. The railway station is at the far west of the map; the bank is towards the east, just east of the Nagar Panchayat building.
The shortest way:
Come out of the railway station and turn east on the road that runs in front of it.
Follow it past the lake on your left and the hospital on your right.
Keep going east; the road passes below the apartment blocks and reaches the Nagar Panchayat.
The bank is the next building on that road, a little to the east.
How the map helped: you used two of the three components without noticing — direction (the N arrow at the top right told you which way is east) and distance (you could see that this route is shorter than going round the south). The third component, symbols, let you recognise each building at a glance.
Q2.
Are there other possible ways?
Answer
Yes. The roads in the small city form a loop, so more than one route reaches the bank.
The southern route: from the station take the road going south-east, past the school, along the market, then east past the museum, and finally north up to the bank.
The northern route: take the road that runs north of the lake, past the apartment blocks and towards the public garden, then turn south to the bank.
All three routes end at the same place. They differ in length and in what you pass on the way — the southern route is longer but takes you through the market.
Try this: lay a thread along each route on the map, then straighten it against a ruler. Using the map's scale, you can say in metres how much longer the market route is. That is exactly how map apps compare “fastest” and “shortest”.
Q3.
Can you locate the public garden, the school and the museum?
Answer
Yes — each is easy to find once you use the direction arrows.
Place
Where it is on the map
What is next to it
Public garden
Far north-east (top right corner), the fenced green plot
East of the apartment blocks, north of the bank
School
South-west (bottom left), the long yellow building with trees
South of the railway station, west of the market
Museum
South-east (bottom right), the white building with pillars
South of the bank, east of the market
Why symbols make this quick: you did not have to read every label. The fence and rows of plants say “garden”, the pillared front says “museum”, the umbrellas and carts say “market”. A well-drawn map can be read even by someone who does not know the language of its labels.
Q4.
If you want to proceed from the bank to the market, which way will you go?
Answer
The market is to the south-west of the bank, in the lower middle part of the map.
From the bank take the road going south (it runs down past the museum side of the town).
At the junction turn west on the wide road that runs along the bottom of the map.
The market — the row of stalls with red and blue umbrellas — is on the right, just south of the hospital.
Another way: go back west from the bank towards the hospital, then take the road turning south just after it; that road comes down to the market from the north.
The lesson of the whole game: a map lets you plan a journey through a city you have never visited, and compare two routes before you take a single step. As the book puts it, a map is like a treasure guide.