I once got lost looking for Ojaveda, and it took me forever before ending up in the Bronze Doors. (Since I'd never been there before I decided to talk to a handful of NPCs cause hey, why not.) Anyway...
I returned about two-thirds of the way to Hydlaa and found an enkidukai, asking her in the hopes she'd know where her hometown was. She agreed to help me, took me back the path I came, and subsequently also got lost because it was the Bronze Doors road and if you're there, I found out later, there is in fact no possible way to reach Ojaveda from that place unless you go back to Hydlaa. Said person eventually ignored me and attacked a tefusang, dying in about two hits (I'm assuming so she could return to Ojaveda, leaving me hanging out to dry.)
Asking someone for directions on a road is really tough because just about everyone runs and never stops to talk to someone trying to wave them down (if you're ever lucky enough to see someone on the road because roads are so sparsely populated and if you're in the wrong general area chances are anyone you come across is just as lost as you.)
It would appear that the only way to reach anywhere is to ask someone else while inside a city before you go, or indeed find an OOC map, "no spoiler" attitude or not. When people are committing suicide because they can't find the way back to Hydlaa, nobody's around to help them, and you forbid maps, that's a problem!
Are there helpful PCs? Yes. Are they always around when you need them? No. Saying that "things of this nature are best left to a fellow explorer" is a copout.