Six simple tips to travel from home 

19^th February 2021

The editorial unit

The editorial unit

19 February 2021

Things have changed a lot in our society during the past few years. There’s been a constant shift from activities in-person to online ones. More often than not, people replace real entertainment with online alternatives. For example, they play games – from chess to football or even scrabble – without actually meeting. Now, there’s also online travelling. Virtual experiences will never replace real ones but this new activity provides the opportunity to see the world for free at any time, without being tied to a vacation.   

Find out where to watch pandas in the zoo and how to visit the Venetian Doge’s Palace, walk the streets of Kathmandu, look at Paris from the Eiffel Tower or even dive in the Galapagos Islands or see the earth from space.

Google photo tours

Street view mode on Google Maps has long been a surprise to anyone. But the participants of this project, besides purely functional shootings, have a hobby of sorts: they create photo tours and entire virtual journeys.

Photo tours give an opportunity to walk by the Taj Mahal, look at Dubai from the 800-meter-high Burj Khalifa skyscraper or at Paris from any of the three observation decks of the Eiffel Tower. There are also unconventional trips, such as descending into the palace-like underground salt mine in Wieliczka or diving in a dozen different locations, such as the Galapagos Islands.

Virtual museums

Another sprawling Google project is devoted to art. It’s called the Art Project. The modest name hides an incredible exhibition of tens of thousands of paintings from the best museums in the world. And each picture is filmed in such high resolution that it’s possible to consider in detail every stroke of Starry Night by Van Gogh.

Some museums have kindly allowed us to film not only their exhibits but also their rooms. And now you can stroll through the halls of the Doge’s Palace in Venice or visit the Acropolis Museum in Athens without getting up from your chair.

Webcam on the ISS

The Curiosity’s Martian Chronicles still arrive on Earth with great delays, but the webcam on the International Space Station streams live as if it were somewhere very close instead of 400 km from the surface of the planet.

Webcams around the world

If looking out of the ISS porthole is high and scary, why not look at something more “down-to-earth”. For example, visit the legendary Abbey Road crossing in London or enjoy a couple of hours with pandas in the zoo in Atlanta. 

For example, earthcam.com has a huge collection of webcams around the world, from New York to Bangkok. A great way to track the changing time zones on the planet.

YouTube walks

Take a walk in the pouring rain in Tokyo, swim by the ocean or relax to the sounds of an Icelandic waterfall on YouTube channel Nomadic Ambience and many others. Just type something like walking around [any place] 4K into the search box.

Traveling around the Serengeti

Photographers are hindered by the smell of wild animals in the wild. Briton Will Burrard-Lucas has found a simple and very elegant solution to this problem: he installs cameras on drones, quadcopters and radio-controlled cars.

The results are stunning. Like this clip from the Serengeti. In HD, it looks as if you are paragliding over the endless savannah, flying over herds of buffalo, hippos and elephants or literally looking into the mouth of a lioness hunting.

The editorial unit