The BBC Travel’s new Geoguessr game is more than just good fun. Geoguessr tests travelers’ geography skills by plopping the screen in a random location in the world. Guessers look around, follow roads, read signs or swim around, then place a marker where on the map they think they are. Points are awarded based on accuracy.
While the game is very entertaining, it is also a way to discover our world. You may find yourself in a crowded third-world city, a coral reef, a dirt road between majestic mountains, a desert or a swamp on any continent on earth. This can be a great way to pick your next vacation – do you find yourself particularly enjoying forests, plains or mountains? The city or solitude?
The game also enables you to pack a mini vacation across several countries in the span of only minutes. Travelling outside of our area and all its stressors allows our mind to distance itself from our emotional issues. That emotional distance not only gives us new perspectives on our problems, but many times diminishes them. When we travel in person, we are given the time and distance needed to reframe our issues and our lives. Travel gives us exciting new adventures that lift our mood and encourages positive shifts in thinking. It can be a potent way to ward off depression and anxiety.
At our desks, being late or having had a mess to clean up no longer seems like a serious issue when we just “visited” the fjords of Norway, the desert of Australia and the coral reefs of South America!
Try Geoguessr here: http://www.bbc.com/travel/feature/20131206-how-well-do-you-know-the-world-play-geoguessr-to-find-out
