If you had to travel only by land or on water, what are the hardest places on Earth to reach? By correlating ground travel times with population density, the map above highlights the planet's most logistically remote locations. (Darker = More remote.)
The map was created by the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre and the World Bank:
The maps are based on a model which calculated how long it would take to travel to the nearest 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 such as altitude, steepness of terrain and hold-ups like border crossings slow travel.
Globally, less than 10 percent of the world's land is more than 48 hours overland from the nearest city. Then what's the most remote place on Earth? That honor belongs to the Tibetan plateau, where it's a three-week journey to reach the cities of Lhasa or Korla (and most of the traveling must be done on foot). Here's a fiery and fabulous closeup:
(New Scientist via our maritime mates at gCaptain.)
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