This will be an easy post since it’s Thanksgiving and I know everybody is busy with families! But I wanted to share a cool travel tip/idea that I know a lot of y’all may be curious about.
Have you ever pondered, what is the furthest point from wherever I am? What piece of land is the furthest I could travel to. When I was younger I thought about this but more from an airplane perspective because I played Flight Simulator heavily at the time (If you’re a flight enthusiast, I highly recommend this game).
Okay I’m from Dallas and I wanted to know, what is the furthest point from Dallas? You could go on Google Earth and Maps try to approximate with tools but it’s hard to know what exactly is halfway around the world unless you do the math. There is still a way to use the “ruler” to find the absolute opposite posted here.
However there is an easier and even better way to find the furthest point from wherever. Antipodr is an easy website where all you have to do is enter a city or address and a map will be displayed showing the furthest point. This is essentially a faster and easier method than using Google Earth and they even have an app for your iPhone. Free Map Tools also basically does the same thing.
But if you’re looking to actually travel to the furthest point in the world from your home, these tools may not work for you because most of the time the furthest point will take you to the middle of an ocean! Well you could take a boat to this point but what if you want to find the furthest country or piece of land?
That’s why I rely on Great Circle Mapper, a website that maps a “great circle,” from one point to another point. This website is mostly used for airline enthusiast but it can be used to find the furthest point from your home.
- Open Great Circle Mapper
- Type in the city you’re from or live in. For me I’ll type in Dallas.
- A list of airports will come up. Click the nearest airport to you. For me it’s KDFW.
- Scroll down and under Code Dictionary there is “Code, Source and Location”.
- Under “Location” click on the link.
- Scroll down to “Related Locations.”
- You should see a “Farthest” text. Click on the first link from the right of the “Farthest” text.
- It will bring you to a page with a map showing you all the information about the furthest point from where you live. It’s going to be a piece of land with an airport.
- For Dallas, Texas it happens to be an island called Rodrigues Island in the country of Mauritius
The only downfall of using this website is that because it only connects with airports, it doesn’t always show the point of land that is truly the furthest from wherever you live. This means you’ll have to go on Google Maps and perhaps make your own judgment about what point of land is truly the furthest away! This may be difficult and you may not be able to even travel there.
What’s the point? Well haven’t we ever been inspired to truly pack our bags and travel to the other side of the world. Using these websites, now you can actually plan to do that. Apparently the furthest point from Texas is around Mauritius and it would be just another cool tidbit to know. One of these days I’m visiting Mauritius and perhaps that island.
I also did a little more research and it turns out there are islands that are closer to the true opposite furthest point from Dallas like Île Amsterdam and Île Saint-Paul. However these islands are a French base, have no airport and unless I had some really good connections, probably not very easy to get to.
You can also look up the Worlds Furthest City Pairs on furthestcity.com which essentially does the same thing like the above links.
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http://www.peakbagger.com/pbgeog/worldrev.aspx
http://www.freemaptools.com/tunnel-to-other-side-of-the-earth.htm
https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20081125004426AAUiO6k
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images by: antipodr, great circle mapper, peakbagger
