Offline

As a person who loves hiking, I've witnessed big changes in our navigation: long before the availability of sat nav and all the way to the current offline map apps.

I don't know about you, but I have navigation skill no better than that of Hansel and Gretel - which means it's often a must for me to have a map if there aren't bread crumbs. But if, like many of us, you have been using Google Maps, you don't need to bring a physical map. My antique collections of 1:10,000 country side maps are now hidden in the corner of my bookshelf.

That may sound too good to be true for most road trips, but a number of hiking trails are remote and without mobile phone coverage. My family have just bushwhacked a trail without signposts in the northeastern New Territories today. Most of the time, we were hidden in the bushes. We didn't (okay, nearly) get lost because of the offline map apps. Such apps have made off-the-beaten-track travel a lot easier. The offline map apps allow us to download maps ahead of the adventure, and will work even without a data connection during the actual hike.

Offline map apps, it seems, is a must-have tool for travel nowadays - even if we might prefer occasional bread crumbs (or red ribbon marking, for that matter) along the path.