Or perhaps you prefer chaos, in which case, this article is not for you! 😵‍💫

Sometimes it may seem like there is no sorting logic at all with the maps. Thankfully there is some and once you understand what's going on, it's reasonably easy to ensure your trips appear in a logical order.

There are two specific ways that the trips are sorted.

Sorting Methods

1. By the dates of the stops.
2. If no dates specified, then by the time the trip was created.

The most recent trip should always show first in the list - aka reverse chronological order.

This sorting all happens automatically based on what data you have entered.

Important to note here that changing the title of the trip does not affect sorting in any way.

Since the primary sorting method is the dates of the stops, let me explain that a little further.

In particular, the sorting algorithm looks for any stops with dates, then find the stop with the most recent date. Then the trip will be sorted on that date.

Consequently, you don't need to add dates to ALL your stops. If you can't be bothered adding dates, but do want your trips neatly sorted, you could just add a departure date to the first stop of each trip and the sorting will all happen based on that.

If you're unsure how to change dates for existing stops, here's a quick recap.

1. Click into the trip you need to change.
2. Click into a stop.
3. Click on the menu icon in the top right, then on the Edit Stop link

4. Change the date as appropriate.

Any trips with no dates will automatically be placed below the trips that did have stop dates. From there, they will be sorted by the time they were created.

Common sorting problems

Sometimes people find their trips aren't sorted correctly. There are a couple of reasons.

1. The most common one is that no dates were added. Or maybe they were added to the title of the trip. See above for how to fix that.
2. Sometimes dates were added, but one or more trips have inaccurate dates. Usually this is a case of one stop having the correct day and month, but an incorrect year. Check through any stops that look out of place and you'll probably find the culprit quickly enough.

And that just about sums up how the trip sorting takes place and what you can do about it.

If you have any further questions, feel free to ask in the forums and we'll be able to help resolve the sorting issue.

More tips for your mapping

We have a few different help articles so you can make your travel map work for you. Feel free to browse around and get your maps looking just the way you want them!

Creating custom routes for your trip
Adding custom locations to your map
Styling your map

How to sort the trips in your travel map remains copyright of the author Peter, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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Travellerspoint's maps offer some great customisation options that can achieve just that. In this article, I'll run through some of the specific options you have access to with some brief explanation on how to achieve them.

A short backstory

Travellerspoint's mapping tool has evolved over 21 years to its current state.

• 2002 (site launch): it was nothing but a simple list of countries with dates attached to them.
• 2007: Our first actual mapping tool was a custom built map that used Flash. It allowed users to enter various locations and dates and drew curved or straight lines on the map depending on whether it was land based or air travel. Click the thumbnail to see what that looked like!

• 2011: As cool as it was to have our own mapping system, we wanted more and the Google Maps platform offered a great solution. In 2011 we launched a new Google Maps based solution adding more detailed locations and much more detailed maps.
• 2018: Google made a big change to its pricing model. There was little choice but to switch to something else so the move was made to use Mapbox as the mapping provider. This also brought a big increase in features with the introduction of custom map styles! It also moved the map licensing to an open source model which is far less restrictive
• 2023: we made a switch to the open source fork of the project - Maplibre.
• 2024: more map styles were added from the tile hosting service - Stadia Maps. The default map style is also served through their platform now. Depending on which map style you choose, it may come from Stadia maps, Maptiler or Mapbox at this point.

So, about those styles

There are now 10 different map styles available for the travel maps. On top of that there are options to customise the line widths and which lines are shown.

A note on these features
These are premium mapping features that are only available to supporting members. If you aren't already a supporting member, please consider becoming one; both to get access to these cool mapping options, but also to help keep this site running!

The map styles available are

• Default (a muted colour option that serves a wide variety of purposes)
• Light (a monochrome grey style, allowing the lines to stand out)
• Dark (colours can really pop in this one)
• Streets (a very familiar looking style - very close to what you might be used to from Google Maps)
• Outdoors (similar to Streets, but with more outdoorsy information on the map, eg.. the altitude etc)
• Bright (this has a cute wave illustration to mark the waters)
• Voyager (a vaguely historic vibe with teal waters)
• Toner (a very high contrast map with a distinct graphic style)
• Watercolour (the name says it all - your maps will look like a watercolour painting!)
• Satellite (shows satellite imagery, as the name implies)

Changing your base map style is made very straightforward.

1. While viewing the map, click on the painter's palette icon

2. Select the style you want. I'll click Toner

3. Click the Save These Settings button and you're done!

Here's a trip we did to Japan a while back shown in the Toner style. This one really looks best with really bright trip lines - yellow or red.

Other style controls

You can change a couple of other things on your map as well.

You can change the thickness of the lines.

Select your thickness.

You can change which trip lines show.

1. Untick the box to show all lines

2. Then select the ones you want

Change individual trip colours
Sometimes the default, somewhat randomly generated trip colours just don't match the basemap you have selected. You can adjust the colours of your trip lines on a trip by trip basis. This is done by editing the trip.

1. When viewing an individual trip you will see an ellipsis in the top right corner of the trip details panel. Clicking on that reveals a small menu with the option to edit the trip details.

2. On this form, there is an option to change the colour of the trip lines.

Choose your appropriate colour and save to update your trip!

That just about sums up the styling options currently (2024) available. I hope it makes it a bit easier to do. If you have any ideas on new options we could add, feel free to start a thread in the forums about it or drop us a message through the contact form.

Further reading

• How to add custom routes to your travel map
• How to add custom locations
• An overview of the travel mapping tool.

How to style your travel map remains copyright of the author Peter, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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But what if you want to add a location that isn't in our database? Maybe it's a very small town. Maybe it's a bakery. Perhaps it's just a stop on a hiking route that is not findable via the suggested locations.

We have a solution to that and while it probably is not as obvious as it should be, it is available and I'll run through how to do in this article.

The problem

Last year my son and I went on a trip around Melbourne's bay by bike. We stayed at some caravan parks and the likes along the way. Now I could just do a rough sketch of the trip Hurstbridge -> Geelong -> Mornington -> St Kilda -> Hurstbridge. Or, I could get stuck into the detail and try to map it out precisely. Let's say I wanted to map our first night's stay at the Riverglen Holiday Park in Geelong. So I try to type it into the autocomplete

Unfortunately, it does not come up. While there are certainly many points of interest that do come up in our autocomplete, it is actually a near impossible thing to solve entirely and in this case it fails to return a result for Riverglen Holiday Park. What to do?

Add the custom location

There are actually two ways to add a custom location. The easiest for most people will be the first option which is to select a nearby location (the name of the town, some other major point of interest, etc) and then adjust it to your liking. Let me show you how to do that first.

1. Type in the name of a major location. I'm going for Geelong. As you can see, it's picked whatever the chosen centre point is for Geelong. Not where I want it, but it's close.

2. This is the important part - at this point of the process, you can edit the location. You do this by dragging the blue marker on the map to where you actually want it placed. I dragged it over to Riverglen Holiday Park and dropped it exactly where I wanted it.

3. Only one problem, the name of the location is still Geelong. I want it more specific. This can also be edited. No autocomplete will come up when typing into the location field and I can change it to whatever I want

Easy peasy. Just a note of warning though - this can only be done when you first add the stop. If you try to edit a stop later and change the location you won't be able to adjust the location (for now at least).

Now for the second option -

Adding locations by their coordinates

This is something of a power move to be fair, but if you do happen to know the latitude and longitude of the place you visited, you can in fact add that location directly. Here's how I would go about it for the same location

1. Type in the latitude and longitude separated by a comma. It must be in that order and it must be separated by a comma for this to work. The autocomplete will suggest you add it as a custom location

2. Immediately the marker goes to the correct location.

3. The only thing that needs adjusting is the name of the location, which I will adjust in the same way I did for the previous approach

And that's all there is to it. At this point, I'd probably want to create a custom route going to the location because the one it defaulted to was not correct.

I hope this helps anyone wondering how to add custom locations to your travel map.

Just to cap it off, here's a photo of where we enjoyed our coffee the next morning before we headed back out on the road

If you are stuck on anything related to mapping your travels, feel free to reach out via the contact form or in our forums. We're always happy to help.

How to add custom locations to your trips remains copyright of the author Peter, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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But sometimes even those options aren't enough and you really want to create a custom route. It's a particular problem when you are travelling by boat and there just is no way for us to know what that route might look like. But it can also be a problem when you're hiking in the wilderness or on a camel ride across the desert or travelling in an area less mapped. We have a solution for that. This article will step through how to create your custom route and adjust it to suit your needs.

An important note up front though - you need to be a Supporting Member to use this feature. If you aren't already a Supporting Member please consider it. Not only does it unlock some nice features like this, but it also helps keep this site running!

With that out of the way, here are the steps you'll need to take to create a custom route on your travel map. To show you how it's done, I'll use a real example of a trip I did back in 1997 out to Kapingamarangi Atoll in Micronesia. The map looks sort of fine from a distance, but when you zoom in, it's clear the boat lines are just going directly over land. This can be fixed!

Ugly lines crossing directly over land!

Custom routes to the rescue! Here's how I fixed it:

1. Clicked on the transport icon in between the stops

2. Clicked on the route to open the route editor

3. Clicked on the "Add" button to add the Custom Route

4. Now I can see a new dotted line appear on the map with one handle along the line.

5. That handle is draggable and as soon as it is dragged to its desired position or just clicked on, two new handles will appear to the side of it.

6. I drag a few of these handles to create something other than just a boring straight line

7. Then I zoom into Pohnpei harbour and adjust that line so it actually goes to the ship dock

8. When I'm happy with the new route I've drawn, I click the Save button for my custom route

9. I adjusted a couple of other boat routes on the trip as well and then finally I have this much neater result.

Especially when viewed close up:

You can see my final Micronesia trip map here if you like.

I'll add just one note of caution - for now at least, when you create a custom route, it is not editable after hitting that Save button. So be certain that you are happy with the route before saving.

Happy mapping. And if you have any questions, feel free to start a thread in our forums

Creating custom routes on your trip map remains copyright of the author Peter, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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These tips will show up on your followers feeds and will slowly be used in more and more places on the site.

One of the places where you can now use those tips is your travel blog.

Here's how you go about adding a tip

First, visit the Travellerspoint home page.

Look for the + Tips Button and click on it

Search for the point of interest you want to add a tip about. In this case I searched for Luna Park which is a famous attraction here in Melbourne.

Write up your tip

Add some photos

And submit!

Now you've created your tip, it will already show up on the feeds of people who are following you.

The next step is to add it into a blog entry. You could include more than one tip in your blog entry if there's a few things that you mentioned that you want to highlight. Here's how you do that.

1. Write your entry as normal.
2. In the Optional Details section, you now have an option to "Attach Tips". Click on that

3. Select the tips you want to include.

4. You should see any tips you included listed next to the Attach Tips button now

5. And publish.
6. Head over to your blog entry and you should see the tip nicely included

7. Anyone who clicks on that will get an expanded view of the tip.

And that's all there is to it. As things progress, these tips will be used in a lot more places on Travellerspoint and you'll always be able to go back into your tip library to edit those tips or delete them.

Feedback on this feature is welcome in this forum thread

How to add tips to your travel blog remains copyright of the author Peter, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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But sometimes people want more. And that's where the Travellerspoint Supporting Membership comes in.

It's called a Supporting Membership because it's largely designed as a way for regular members to help support the daily operations of the site and provide a stable source of income that covers the costs of running this service. It also allows us to offer some features that would be too hard to offer to everyone for free. If you are considering signing up for this level of membership, this post will help you get an idea of what it offers.

1. Removal of Ads. This includes ads that you see on Travellerspoint when logged in, but also ads that are shown on your blog to your blog's readers. So if you don't want to burden your readers with ads, signing up as a Supporting Member is the way to do that.

2.Private Blogging If you would like to start a blog but only want certain people to see that blog, then private blogging allows that. You can set an access password for your blog and share that password with only those people who you want to be given access.

3. Custom Embedded Map Styles If you are embedding your Travellerspoint map on an external website, or if you are using the map on your Travellerspoint blog, you will be given the option to show your map using different styles. There are currently 7 additional styles to choose from. If you would like to see what those styles look like, you can do so via the following links - they all show the same map, just with the different style applied

• Light
• Dark
• Streets - (this is the most similar to google/apple maps style)
• Outdoors - (similar to streets, except when zoomed in you’ll notice more topographic detail)
• Bright
• Voyager
• Satellite

A map with the custom style "Bright"

In addition to being able to style the look of the maps, you will also be able to toggle on some content that others can't. For example, on most stops to reasonably well known places, you'll generally see a snippet from the Travellerspoint guide with information about that place. As a Supporting Member you can turn off this snippet. This mostly is for people embedding their map on other sites where they would prefer to link to their own content.

4. Moblogging This feature will give you a custom email address that allows you to email in your blog entries rather than log on to the site. It can be good if it takes you a little while to compose your entry and you like having a copy stored in draft on your own computer.

Those are really the main benefits provided to Supporting Members.

It's also important to note that the membership is a subscription service. It costs either US$3 / month or US$30 / year and will be automatically renewed until you unsubscribe.

I hope that helps give you a better idea of what the Supporting Membership offers. If you have any questions, feel free to get in touch via one of the following means

• Contact us directly
• Add to the Supporting Membership topic
• Start a New Thread in the System Talk forum

Travellerspoint Supporting Membership|Click here to sign up as a Supporting Member]] (you will need to be logged in to Travellerspoint first)

4 Reasons to Become a Travellerspoint Supporting Member remains copyright of the author Peter, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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Recently, as part of a complete overhaul of the travel mapping system, I added a new ability to have more control over what the map looks like when you embed it.

My map using the voyager style

The default map style uses a grey base map. The grey style works well for general purposes because it allows the coloured lines and stop markers to stand out nicely. Sometimes however, people prefer something a bit different and it made sense to open up the possibility to use other tiles when you are embedding your map on your own site.

Let me walk you through how to go about using these new map styles in your blog. Do note though that you need to be a Travellerspoint Supporting Member to take advantage of these extra customisation options. There is extra cost involved in loading these different base maps and this helps cover that.

How to use custom map styles your blog

1. Click on the embed link when viewing your trips to get started.

If your blog is not on Travellerspoint, skip to step 5

2. If your blog is on Travellerspoint, look through the styles provided to decide which one you like best. At the time of writing there are 8 options to choose from. Click on the one you like to select it.

3. Save your choice. This will apply to all maps in your Travellerspoint blogs (including ones that you already embedded previously)

4. Now you can embed maps as normal from inside your blog using the globe icon in your blog entry toolbar.

Below only applies if your blog is not on Travellerspoint

5. If your blog isn't on Travellerspoint, click on the External Website tab

6. Look through the styles provided (8 at the time of writing) and pick the one you like. You can also set the size of your embed and choose which trip to show if you only want to show a single trip. You can also exclude the Travellerspoint guide content from showing in your embedded map if you like.

7. Click the Generate Embed Code button

8. Copy the generated code. You can paste this into your website or blog. Do note that some blog platforms (notably Wordpress.com) do not allow embed codes like this and unfortunately it won't work there. If you have a self-hosted version of Wordpress though this will work just fine.

And that's how to go about embedding your travel map with its own custom styles!

If you have any further questions about the mapping, feel free to ask away in our System Talk forum

Custom styles for your embedded travel map remains copyright of the author Peter, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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Masai kids at play

Playing wheelie

Carnival Procession

2017.02.01_0038

Pszczyna_children_festival3

Washing clothes in Kathmandu

Massai men

Gentoo penguins

---

Thanks to everyone who participated in the Communities photo competition! Congrats to Shooter632 for winning this one and coming in runners' up position. Clearly some great shots that really captured the theme well.

p.s. if you enjoy travel photography, be sure to join our Photographers group to connect with other photography enthusiasts on Travellerspoint

8 Fabulous Travel Photos of Communities remains copyright of the author Peter, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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First things first, here is a screengrab of what the form looks like when you are about to start writing an entry. Ignore the boring text. I wasn't feeling inspired ok?

the blog editing form

The main thing you need to note in that screengrab is the row of icons directly above the main text area. A large A followed by a smaller A, then a B, I and so on. I'm going to step through those icons and explain what you can do with them.

There are two ways to use them. Either:

1. Highlight a block of text, then click the icon
2. Place your cursor somewhere in your entry, then click the icon

The Heading Icons

- A large heading, like the one just above this
- A not-quite-as-large heading like the one just below this

The Other Icons

- Bold text

- Italic text

- A link to the guide or as a way to ensure a plain http link is made clickable. This is a special one. You can highlight the name of a place and then click on this icon and it will automatically create a link to our travel guide article about the location. For example, the highlight the text "Amsterdam", then click on the icon and you end up with something in your entry that looks like this: [[Amsterdam]]. When you then preview this, you will notice it turns it into a link like this: Amsterdam. A major caveat here - the guide article needs to exist or you'll just create a broken link. You can check if it exists by creating the link, previewing the entry, then clicking the generated link. Major locations usually exist, so you can enter them pretty confidently.

Now the other use of that icon is to make ordinary links clickable. When you enter a regular url like https://www.travellerspoint.com , it just shows up as an unclickable piece of text. But if you click on the chain icon it will wrap it in those square brackets and hey presto, now it's clickable: https://www.travellerspoint.com, which brings me to the next icon

- This is really the main one you want to use for regular links. Either highlight a piece of text that you want to make clickable, or place your cursor where you want to insert a link. Then click the icon. It will ask you for the URL (the link) that you want to insert. If you didn't highlight any text before clicking on it, the result will be something like this: [[https://www.travellerspoint.com|Your text to link here...]]. What you need to do is edit the "Your text to link here..." text and replace it with something useful, ie: [[https://www.travellerspoint.com|Awesome travel website]] which when published looks like this: Awesome travel website

- This icon allows you to insert photos into your entry. Once you click on it, you should see a popup appear with your photos in it. It looks a lot like your photo management page, but with links to insert the photos. Next to each photo there are typically three links: "Thumbnail", "Regular", "Large". Click on whatever size you want to insert in your entry. It will result in a string like this inserted into your entry: [img=https://photos.travellerspoint.com/4/sam8.jpg] Pretty boring looking, but when published that's a cool photo of Sam and I with our feet in a bowl.

- This icon allows you to insert a video. You can insert photos from a few different places where you can upload them (Youtube, Vimeo, Flickr) and they should play OK in your entry.

- This icon allows you to embed one of your trip maps in the entry. You can even zoom in to the exact area that you want to show and insert that. Like this map of a road trip we did in Queensland

- This allows you to insert a "quote" in your text. Some of the templates show this nicely. Others not so much. Try it out if you like. It can be a nice way to highlight a bit of text.

- Use this to create a list. Each time you click it a new list item is created. In your entry when you're editing, the list should look like this:

* Item 1
* Item 2

- Similar, but a numbered list

- Align the text to the left. Kind of the default anyway, so the use of this is probably quite limited unless your blog design is set up differently to most

- Center align a block of text

- Right align a block of text

- Float some content to the left. Typically a photo or video. The text that comes right afterwards should then wrap down to the right of the photo.

- Float some content to the right. Again, usually a photo or video. The text that comes right afterwards should then wrap down to the left of the photo.

- Underline some text
- Strike through some words, I mean one word.
- Superscript, for example ^this
- Subscript, for example _this
- Code, used to style a bit of text to look like code. Probably not relevant to most anyone on here, but I use it sometimes.

And that about wraps it up!

Hopefully that helps you get the hang of the blog entry formatting features available on Travellerspoint.

If you have any follow up questions, or have spotted some mistakes in this article, please join this discussion in our forum

_{On a total side note, you can also use all the emoticons that exist in the forum editor as well. There just isn't a handy way to insert them, so you pretty much need to memorise those if you want them. I'll sign off with a pirate.}

The Blogging Icons Explained remains copyright of the author Peter, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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Chefchaouen, Morocco

The blue washed buildings of Chefchaouen's old town are a stunning example of how everyone sticking to one colour scheme can really make a striking impression.

Photographer: Budgetguy

Photographer: Hawkson

Photographer: mpereda

Photographer: JaymeBarrett

Bonaire

The residents of the beautiful southern Caribbean island of Bonaire are not afraid of colour. Gloriously painted in all the colours of the rainbow, this is the kind of place to go if you're sick of beige.

Previous 4 photos by marlis

Mexico

Mexico is full of colourful towns, buildings, artefacts and of course beautiful colour food to keep your spirits up.

Guanajuato by Liamps

Photographer: margaretm

Photographer: margaretm

San Cristóbal de Las Casas, emjane

Photographer: jhongne

San Luis Potosi, Kim khamdi

India

Indians love a bit of colour in their life. They even have a festival dedicated to it.

Holi Festival, Vrindavan by koscusko

Open air Holi Festival by drkr

Colours ready to be used - adamandrina

Photographer: hansaphoto

Photographer: prabir.b.sen

Read more about the Holi Festival in our Famous Festivals guide

Netherlands

The Netherlands can be fairly dreary in winter, but head to the tulip fields in spring and you can treat yourself to vast fields of colour.

Photographer: anak

Photographer: Gemi9bear

Photographer: RachMulder

Photographer: ashleym66

To reach the tulip fields, the most convenient option is to stay in Amsterdam is ideal.

Fez, Morocco

The tanneries of Fez are a star attraction, precisely due to the beautiful colours.

Photographer: adtamo

Photographer: porz

Photographer: adtamo

Boca, Buenos Aires

This area of Buenos Aires is famous for its colourful streets

Photographer: Midworlder

Photographer: marlis

Photographer: Peacocks

Photographer: HT

Photographer: Capicúa

Havana, Cuba

Havana can be a bit like a time capsule. A gorgeous time capsule filled with colourful people and vintage cars and revolutionary images everywhere.

Photographer: Kendall T

Photographer: JOSE_MARIA

Photographer: marlis

Photographer: marlis

Photographer: jza80

Santorini, Greece

Greece embraces their national colours throughout the country, but Santorini is particularly known for its whitewashed walls combined with blue doors and frames.

Photographer: RobandEve

A view of Oia - Super G

Photographer: Kamar

Of course there are many more places around the world where colour abounds a little more than usual. If you have some great travel photos of your own to share, be sure to contribute to our photo galleries by uploading them.

9 of the best places around the world for colourful pictures remains copyright of the author Peter, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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Yes everyone, your maps can now follow the roads. And it gets even better than that - they can follow train tracks and even specific bus routes.

The default for your trips will however remain the curves and straight lines we've grown accustomed to. If however you want to change your existing trips to also follow specific routes, here's how you can go about it.

1. Visit your travel map
2. Click on the trip you want to edit. At this point you will see a list of stops on the left.
3. Click on one of the stops to reveal the stop editor.

4. After selecting a transport mode, you will see some options for available routes (assuming we could find some).

5. Change it to the one you want and the route on your map will update

It's that easy!

This update also brings some improvements to the Planner view of your trips. You could already see the different route options in there, but now you can also select the one you want. There's a bit more detail provided in the planner, including estimated duration, distance and sometimes multiple transport modes needed.

The routing is based on Rome2rio's excellent multi-modal travel search engine and as a result is clever enough to find routes even when multiple modes of transport are needed. If the trip requires a plane followed by a drive, then that route option will be available. Ferry routes are also provided. Handy if you've been moving around the Caribbean by ferry for example.

Have fun mapping out your trips!

Our maps just learned how to stay on the roads remains copyright of the author Peter, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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Congratulations to Shantitraveler for winning our Best of 2014 travel photo competition. The prize is a US$250 voucher for use on Travellerspoint accommodation.

A Difficult Life

Monument Valley

India Gate hires - Pradeep Chamaria

Rice Terrace Yunnan

Rainstorm over the working Cattle Station

Reflection

Scottish Highland Castle

Quiver tree

Life's a beach

Castle Stalker

Saharan Sunrise

Bikers on the road

The soft colours of blue and white

A big thanks to everyone who took part in the competition. We always love to see the amazing photos that the Travellerspoint community delivers! If you want even more great photography, be sure to check out our gallery of featured photos from all around the world.

The Top 13 Travellerspoint Photos for 2014 remains copyright of the author Peter, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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Congratulations to all the finalists below who have automatically received an entry into the Best of 2014 competition.

Children Riding a Water Buffalo, Laos. Photo by NattaL.

Feeding His Cow, Myanmar. Photo by BenteK.

Rainstorm Over the Working Cattle Station, Australia. Photo by Rianda.

Madagombe Farmer, Zimbabwe. Photo by BenteK.

Rice Terrace Yunnan, China. Photo by beyondthe.

A Difficult Life, India. Photo by Shantitraveler.

Barley Fields, Powgavie, United Kingdom. Photo by trish54.

Mustering Brahman cattle in Northern Territory, Australia. Photo by Rianda.

Advertising - Viet-style, Vietnam. Photo by simjam.

Good to Go!, India. Photo by Shantitraveler.

Yaks on the Mount Everest Trail, Nepal. Photo by manolo84.

Myanmar Farmer, Myanmar. Photo by beyondthe.

A Large Herd of Sheep, Spain. Photo by margaretm.

Yak Milking, Mongolia. Photo by beyondthe.

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Life on the Land: 14 Photos of Rural Scenes remains copyright of the author KellieBarnes, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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Congratulations to our finalists below who have automatically received an entry into the exclusive end of year competition.

Bikers on the Road, India. Photo by prads12000.

Monk with Bucket, Myanmar. Photo by simjam.

Strokkur, Iceland. Photo by chaorabbit.

Chilean Fishing Boats, Chile. Photo by Jack'sWild.

The Soft Colours of Blue and White, Greece. Photo by Rianda.

Te Rewa Rewa Bridge, New Zealand. Photo by Galavantie.

Canadian Maple Leaves, Canada. Photo by Mavr8k.

Shetland Harbour, United Kingdom. Photo by trish54.

Meknes Sunrise, Morocco. Photo by chaorabbit.

India Gate, India. Photo by prads12000.

Rhythms, Brazil. Photo by Crissty.

Catching the Wave, New Zealand. Photo by Galavantie.

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12 Photos Celebrating National Pride remains copyright of the author KellieBarnes, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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Congratulations to the ten finalists below who have automatically received an entry into our exclusive end of year competition.

Sheikh Zayed Mosque, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. Photo by devi.shankar.

Scottish Highland Castle, United Kingdom. Photo by Rianda.

Kathakali Make-Up, India. Photo by frenchmonkeys.

Quiver Tree, Namibia. Photo by Utrecht.

Elephant Eye, Bandhavgarh, India. Photo by Utrecht.

Life's a Beach, Australia. Photo by Galavantie.

Saharan Sunrise, Morocco. Photo by chaorabbit.

Ahinahina, USA. Photo by Shantitraveler.

Castle Stalker, United Kingdom. Photo by trish54.

Monument Valley, USA. Photo by The Tipsy Gipsy.

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10 Beautiful Examples of Monochrome Photography remains copyright of the author KellieBarnes, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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Following the unenviable task of judging the best travel photos of 2013, we chatted with photographer, travel journalist and Picture 1000 Words author Cam Cope about what inspires his photography.

What’s your background and where can we find your work?

I'm originally from Gippsland, the southeasternmost region of mainland Australia. I became a photographer/travel journalist to explore life creatively and combine travel adventures with history, art, culture and storytelling—amongst many other things. My work can be found in published photo-books, published articles, and gallery exhibitions.

How did the Picture 1000 Words project eventuate?

Picture 1000 Words is an experimental love-child conceived in a highly reactive part of my imagination where an age-old truism met with an art philosophy I believe in. If it were an equation it might read something like:

"A Picture Tells a Thousand Words" X "Don't try to be the best. Try to be Different." = Picture 1000 Words

It struck me that it would be great to invite creative writers to collaborate on a project where they can each express the '1000 words' a given picture tells them and share the results in a photobook anthology and exhibition. As much research as I could endure determined that no one had put this concept together before; it was therefore different and 'new', and when I ran the idea past authors their response was terrific. The project itself then eventuated through a great amount of sweat from the combined brows of myself and all the talented authors involved.

Your photography covers many diverse countries and situations – what first interested you about travel?

When I was growing up my dad instilled me with a curiosity about the world, and because he spent significant periods of time overseas, I was always itching for 'my turn'. By the time I finished school my interests in history, the environment, art, languages, indigenous cultures, music, dance, hiking and camping all combined into the ultimate vehicle for travel. Photography has become a natural extension of that, but I am also very serious about the craft and am as equally inspired by great photographers as I am by the people I meet through the course of my work.

What has been the most memorable place or experience you have photographed?

Despite having sailed in Patagonia, ridden horses with nomads in Mongolia, lurched on the back of a truck in the Bolivian Andes, deep sea fished in Samoa, hitchhiked the Canadian arctic, island-hopped Indonesia and scaled volcano craters in Vanuatu, the most memorable experience I've had was actually very close to home in Australia. It was working on a project, Boorun's Canoe, that was all about an elder passing on local Gunai/Kurnai traditional Aboriginal culture to younger generations. The experience really proved to me that you don't have to go to the high ends of the earth to find an amazing story.

Describe your camera kit for a typical photography assignment.

I don't seem to get typical assignments! But I always use a Canon 5D Mark II camera body, sometimes with a battery pack, and choose from one of three lenses: the Sigma fixed 50mm f1.4 lens, the Canon 24-70mm f2.8 lens and the Canon 70-200mm f2.8 lens. I've also started to use a Fujifilm Instax to add some instant-photo fun to the equation and make the experience of photographing people I meet on the road into more of an immediate exchange.

Where would be your ideal assignment?

Anywhere on Earth that's remotely inhabitable with the strict proviso I have the time and flexibility to go into depth and do the subject justice and make a fair living at the same time—I'm allowed to dream aren't I?

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You can follow Cam's world travels on his blog or visit his website for more breathtaking photos.

Cam Cope Talks Storytelling and Travel Photography remains copyright of the author KellieBarnes, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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"Fantastic framing and composition here! There's a real energy to the image, not only because of the nature of the event and what's going on in the frame, but because of the decisions the photographer made when capturing the action" – Terence Carter

Congratulations to timinphuket, who won the Judge's Prize and has scored a $500 voucher for the Viator travel experience of his choice!

People's Choice Prize Winner: Dueling Horses, Mongolia. Photo by beyondthe.

beyondthe wins a 160x120cm ixxi photo collage!

Best Storyteller Winner: Early Morning Blessing, India. Photo by o4fuxake.

o4fuxake receives a copy of photographer Cam Cope's book Picture 1000 Words.

"The photographer has captured an intimate moment in a crowd that conveys human spirituality on both an individual and a group level. It is also a very delicate composition of many moving subjects [and] shows excellent use of the low available light" – Cam Cope

Wall Art in Berlin, Germany. Photo by Rianda.

Twins in Mariama Kunda, Gambia. Photo by bicoid75.

Let Love and Compassion Rule Our World, India. Photo by sirishbc.

Kilimanjaro, Kenya. Photo by 30byThirty.

The Ram Ghat, India. Photo by Arunava.

Balloon Rise Bagan, Myanmar. Photo by hayden111.

Banff, Canada. Photo by garycollins2.

Cheetah Closeup, Botswana. Photo by mcpherson.nyc.

Looking Through the Acorn!, USA. Photo by Annette_22.

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The photos above are the top photos from the Best of 2013 Photo Competition.

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The Top Travel Photos of 2013 remains copyright of the author KellieBarnes, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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