10 Inspiring travel videos that’ll make you want to pick up and go

‘Inspiring travel quotes’ are fine when they’re plastered on your Instagram feed, but there’s nothing like a cinematic masterpiece to get you in the mood to move. The average punter can easily go gonzo and shoot a pretty decent film on their iPhone, but for the awe-inspiring, edge-of-your-seat, just-wanna-get-out-of-here-now travel clips you’ve got to leave it up to the pros. Here’s a collection of 10 inspiring videos that’ll make you want to pick up and go.

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1. Genius filmographer and YouTube personality Casey Neistat literally runs around the world on Nike’s dime for their “Make It Count” campaign. He frantically visits 10 countries in 10 days, and captures it all on film.

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2. One of the best travel films every made, filmmaker and traveller Leonardo Cappadocia takes us on a whimsical journey from Istanbul to Cappadocia in Turkey. Shot over 20 days, the beautifully edited Watchtower of Turkey shows how travel can be a wonderfully dizzying and powerful assault on the senses — an experience to be fully embraced.

3. Ever wondered what it would be like to free-fall down a mountain at 250km/h and live to show the tale? Espen Fadnes is the world’s fastest flying human and also probably the craziest.

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4. You can’t go past a good timelapse, especially if it’s part two of a short film that went viral back in 2010. Since his first video, filmmaker Kien Lam has visited 15 additional countries and taken over 10,000 photographs to produce this timelapse masterpiece.

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5. Filmmaker Ross Ching presents the ‘Roads Less Travelled’ using a collection of images he took while road-tripping around his hometown in the United States. He strings these images together to give the illusion of motion in travel, all the while imploring you to stay still to uncover the unexpected beauty in your own backyard..

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6. It should be said that Hitch-hiking isn’t the safest (or in some cases, legal) form of travel, but for some inquisitive nomads like Benjamin Jenks, it’s the only way of living. Jenks fulfilled a dream of hitch-hiking 5000 miles across the USA from LA to Maine, and these are the 930 odd people he met along the way.

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7. There’s no doubt ‘drone footage’ was the darling of film in 2014. No other video affirms this more than Solstice. Rated one of the top drone videos of 2014 by smithsonian.com, Solstice highlights the sweeping views of Alaska’s Wrangell wilderness as well as the south central areas around Anchorage and Girdwood on the eve of the summer solstice.

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8. Danny Cooke’s drone footage portrayal of Pripyat, the nuclear town next to the Chernobyl disaster area, is slightly unnerving to watch. The eerie, post-apocalyptic landscape abandoned for decades is fast becoming a curious carnival many feel compelled to attend. Tourism is on the up and up, so if feel like getting your quota of radiation, then watch this film to inspire you to visit.

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9. A must see. The transfixing visuals and thought-provoking words of English philosopher (and voiceover) Alan Watts (reciting an excerpt from his The Nature of Conciousness essay) will stay with you long after this Adventure.comfilm has ended.

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10. A beautiful film about the daily disconnectedness of Cuba from the outside world. ‘The Island Lost In Time’ is a visual feast highlighting the Cuban people’s optimism, happiness and delight in the simple pleasures of life.

Words by Stefanie Acworth