Getting away from it all?

Sometimes as the saying goes, a picture is worth a 1000 words. The image above is part of a series available on NewScientist.com that depicts the accessibility of places around world. The brighter the color, the faster that spot can reach a city of 50,000 or more people by land or water. The model combines information on terrain and access to road, rail and river networks. It also considers how factors like altitude, steepness of terrain and hold-ups like border crossings slow travel. The world's most remote place is the Tibetan plateau - it is a three-week trip to the cities of Lhasa or Korla - one day by car and the remaining 20 on foot.

The rest of the world now is very connected with less than 10% of the land surface MORE than 48 hours from the nearest city. Most of the map depict hours of travel: white-yellow is 0-4 hours, orange is 4-8 hours, red is 9-24 hours, with black over 1 day. Naturally this is the best possible time assuming you're not lost and head for the closest city.

One reason the world is so connected in an amazing system of roads, pictured here:

The map of global river travel is nearly as dense as the road map.

Bottom Line

One thing the human race excels at is travel. Be it by plane, train, car, boat, horse, bike or on foot. Yet travel speed is quite variable as the chart here shows. A car can travel one kilometer in just 30 seconds. But the same distance on foot in a deciduous forest can take an hour. 48 minutes if trekking through snow or ice on foot. 24 minutes under favorable hiking conditions.

It pays to know the terrain when traveling. For example, a car trip can be delayed by dirt roads. Last summer our GPS put us several dirt roads as we crossed the country. Fortunately we have a new GPS for Christmas which gives us the option of excluding dirt roads from route planning.

Update

A GPS leads a couple over a remote forest road where they get stuck in a snow bank. Three days later a signal from the GPS allows rescuers to find them.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_stranded_motorists