Are You Looking For Gap Year Expeditions?

Imagine the scenario – the rain is coming down, the stress of finishing exams is taking it’s toll (or you have a job and need a year out), you are sitting there at home knowing you have time off and a little cash so you start looking for gap year expeditions.

You turn on the computer and head to your favourite search engine and type in ‘gap year expeditions’ – then all of a sudden (according to Google’s latest figures) you are presented with 1,160,000 results.  That is a HUGE amount of choice. So we here at S2Si have decided to help you decide where to go on your gap year. Expeditions can be run all over the world so you need to ’see’ the entire world….. and here is my top tool, my very first gadget I use for my expedition planning……..  Google Earth.

This is arguably, without a doubt, the world’s finest free piece of internet software!

So, you are now sitting there zooming in and out of the world, images come and go – some even seem to spin upside down – and you think “Yes, this is cool, but I haven’t found any ideal gap year expeditions by doing this!”.

Let’s start now with a plan -

• Do you want jungle, desert, mountains, a certain country, a language or shall we just see how it goes?
• Have you heard of other ideas that sound vaguely cool?
• Are you into any hobbies, sports, outdoor adventures that might help narrow things down?

You now have some basic information down on paper and still wonder where this is going.  To take this further let’s get Google  Earth set up to find gap year expeditions!

Now you are all set for some serious virtual exploring – Google Earth has many other features but we will go into them another day.

After reading our site, looking through your list of interests, and watching the Discovery Channel you have decided to look for gap year expeditions in Papua New Guinea but would now like to check it out on our new cyber-travel buddy.

With all the right boxes ticked you zoom into Papua New Guinea.  As you get closer, little blue squares pop up.  When you click on these pictures you’ll see photos.  These are photos people have uploaded to Panoramio and linked to Google Earth.  Important!!!!!  Some people are not geographically 100% correct with the position of their photos, so always re-check from more reliable professional sources before you travel.

Another point to note whilst using Google Earth for planning gap year expeditions or any form of remote adventure travel, is that it would help you immensely if you knew what you were looking at.  The photo below obviously shows a river, some ox-bow lakes and forest.  To the top right are small white clouds and the orange/beige colours are swamp/grassland areas.

Ok guys, that’s it for now! We will have another feature on planning your gap year expeditions more in-depth and some more information on how to get the most out of google Earth.

Have fun!

Tags: What are the best gap year travel ideas, What can I do on my gap year, Where can I go on my gap year