Top 5 Virtual Tours of the Most Breathtaking Places On Earth (and Beyond)

From urban metropolises such as New York, Sydney or Edinburgh to natural or human-made wonders such the Egyptian pyramids, the Nepalese Himalayas or the Bolivian Amazon a virtual tour can bring a world of information and inspiration to your screen. While travel and economic restrictions make real-life adventures difficult, thanks to VR and 360-degree video technology you can immerse yourself in virtual environments that give you a real sense of what a place is like, without actually being there. An interactive virtual tour gives you time to read up on history, learn about the environment, and perhaps plan for a real trip in the future. Some can also take you places that are difficult or even impossible to access. Here are five inspiring virtual tours to help you think big on no budget.

Top 5 Virtual Tours

1. The Great Wall of China

Stretching three thousand miles across several provinces of northern China, the Great Wall of China is the longest structure ever built by humans. Built on mountain ranges, parts of this amazing feat of defensive architecture are over two thousand years old. As a result sections of the Great Wall are difficult to hike, while the most accessible can be very crowded. The China Guide’s virtual tour of the Great Wall features insider facts with links to discover more about key places on its route, including Beijing. It guides you to the most impressive and less visited sections of the Great Wall, such as Jinshanling, a section of the wall dating to the Ming dynasty (1368–1644) that winds through green mountainous landscape.

www.thechinaguide.com

2. MS Mikhail Lermontov Shipwreck, New Zealand

Some of the most popular interactive tours take you to the depths of the world’s seas and oceans, places that in real life require a diving qualification to access. There are a number of intensely atmospheric 360-degree videos of shipwrecks located around New Zealand posted on YouTube. The MS Mikhail Lermontov was a Soviet ocean liner that crashed into rocks and sank in the 1980s. Named after a 19th century Russian writer, poet and painter, the ship lies in Marlborough Sounds, a collection of ancient sunken river valleys off the coast of New Zealand. The interactive video was made in February 2016, just months before the central staircase and one entrance to the ship collapsed in an earthquake, so this video is now the only way to see them preserved. 

3. Glacier National Park, Montana, United States

There are many virtual tours of North America’s national parks and heritage sites to explore. One spectacular interactive tour guides visitors through Glacier National Park in the northwestern state of Montana. Google Earth and Smithsonian Magazine and an extensive network of webcams placed in the park by US National Park Service give virtual visitors an overview of the one million acres of Glacier National Park, taking in views of the Rocky Mountains, natural landmarks along the Trail of the Cedars, and stopping by some of the park’s hundred lakes, including its largest Lake McDonald, which was carved out by massive glaciers thousands of years ago. For more inspiration, check out the Google Arts & Culture interactive documentary The HiddenWorld of the National Parks, available online and via the Google Arts & Culture App which pays special attention to some of the most remote and beautiful US National Parks. 

www.nps.gov/glac

4. Masaya Volcano, Nicaragua

The active Masaya volcano, located around twenty kilometers from the Nicaraguan capital of Managua, is about 610 meters high. In 2016, a team of volcano experts planted eighty sensors at different depths in the volcano’s crater, descending a zip line 365 meters to terminate above a lava lake, where temperatures reach one thousand degrees Celsius. There they placed sensing and recording technology to collect data that included temperature, gas emissions and atmospheric pressure, while video cameras caught some of the closest views of a lava lake ever captured. This immersive website offers stunning views of the volcano, its surroundings and the lava lake within. Interactive elements offer footage of the team’s site exploration and preparation, display 3D views of equipment, and tell the story of how the scientists constructed and operated the apparatus. The project also offers valuable insights on data collection in extreme environments, providing the data as open access. 

www.ge.com/digitalvolcano

5. Access Mars

Actual travel to Mars is not yet possible, but NASA has partnered with Google for Access Mars, an interactive 3D tour of the Martian surface based on real data and images recorded by the Curiosity rover. Curiosity launched on a one-way trip to the red planet in 2011, with the aim of investigating the Martian climate and geology, and finding out whether the planet can or ever could sustain life. Eight months and 352 million miles later, it landed, and in true millennial style began to take photographs, including a number of selfies. Access Mars introduces Curiosity’s mission, then the rover becomes our vehicle on Mars. We can visit points of interest, such as the Pahrump Hills or spectacular rock formations known as the Murray Buttes, accessing information about them and their impact on Curiosity’s work. 

www.accessmars.withgoogle.com