The Best Travel App Out There: 

When traveling, you’ll occasionally find yourself in precarious moments, where you’re not exactly sure how to approach a situation. Let’s say you’re in a place where you’ve never been, haven’t done enough research on, and didn’t bother buying a SIM card or it doesn’t work, and you want to find the basic human needs of hydration and shelter. There’s one app that can do it for you – it’s called Maps.Me.

Maps.Me, first known as “MapsWithMe,” was developed by three Belarusian programmers, and is now at the forefront of offline map applications. It launched on iOS in 2011, and by 2016 had 10 million downloads, and it’s still not getting enough attention from travelers! The app is built on OpenStreetMap data, a crowd-sourced map service, allowing users to upload information for improvements within the app.

If you’re a person who loves traveling, head to the App Store or Play Store, and download it immediately! All you have to do is find the place you’re traveling to, and download the map before you leave wifi – a mistake I made earlier that won’t happen again. Notable features include 3D Buildings, all hotels listed on Booking.com, route planning, bookmarking. Remember, this is all offline.

Maps.Me has saved me on a number of occasions. I’ve been in a tiny city in the middle of nowhere Myanmar with no online access and no reservations. My bus arrived at 3 am, and it’s freezing cold outside. What did I do? I brought up Maps.Me and saw recommendations and price of the nearest place for shelter. Found the place within five minutes, and got a comfortable stay, albeit for only 4 hours before I had to wake up to start the trek to Inle Lake.

If you’re in the last frontier of the Philippines – Palawan – and want food recommendations, pull out Maps.Me. If you want to calculate the distance to your destination on your motorbike journey…easy. Sometimes I even use Maps.Me when I have online access because the design, intuitiveness, and features are amazing – I got the whole world available offline and online.

Even if you’re in a life-threatening situation like being face to face with an ox or something, pull up Ma – just kidding – you need to hope for the best there. Nonetheless, Maps.Me is one of the best travel apps out there, just remember to download the maps you need before you head out on the adventure!

Do you love Maps.Me or another offline map app? When has it saved you and what are some of your favorite features? Let me know in the comments!