Are you tired of all the connectedness around you? Want to get away from it all? Unfortunately, truly getting away from civilization can be tough, even with the will and time to head off to an otherwise inaccessible spot.

An interesting map of connectedness published in New Scientist back in April factors in road, rail, river, and shipping networks, as well as terrain and access, to calculate how long it would take to travel to the nearest city of 50,000 or more people by land or water.

Just how hard it is to find a relatively inaccessible spot?

• Less than 10 percent of all land* is more than 48 hours from the nearest city via ground-based travel (according to the map, created by the European Commission's Joint Research Center and the World Bank).
• Many areas considered remote are not as far off the beaten track as we might think. In the Amazon, river networks and expanding road systems mean only 20 percent of land is more than two days from a city. That's about the same as Quebec province.
• So, where is the most remote spot? It's at an altitude of 5,200 meters on the Tibetan plateau (34.7°N, 85.7°E, to be precise), and is a three-week trip to the cities of Lhasa or Korla — one day by car and 20 on foot.

*Looking at the map above you may notice an arguably remote continent missing — Antarctica. Perhaps because it's already pretty far from "civilization," the mapmakers left that ice-covered land out of their calculations. Barring that entire continent, look for the darkest spots on the map above to find the most inaccessible spots. I've always wanted to go to Greenland.

New Scientist, via uncooped.com