For travel buffs, an old game with a new twist: Recharge by Rachel Lopez

GeoGuessr came out in 2013, but now is the right time to play it. It covers far more of the world, including India.

Were you paying attention in 2013? For about a week, everyone was talking about GeoGuessr, the virtual version of the atlas game we all played as kids. You’d be dropped onto a random spot on the globe, given a 360-degree Google Street View of your surroundings (with a small radius to scroll back and forth), and had to guess your location by pinning the spot on Google Maps.

Can you guess where you are? Can you plot your exact location on a Google Map? GeoGuessr brings childhood atlas games into the 21st century. (Tourisme Italy)

You could score from 0 to 5000 points depending on how close your pin was to the actual location. And, like Whose Line Is It Anyway?, the points didn’t matter – the game was fun.

It got addictive, then fizzled out pretty quickly. Street View hadn’t covered much of the world, so the locations were largely random American highways, Australian towns and Canadian bits of nowhere. The geeks, unsatisfied, moved on.

But over the years, GeoGuessr quietly got better. Street View covered more locations and the game incorporated user photos of places around the world. You can now play specific maps like Famous Places, which might land you in France’s Versailles, Russia’s Hermitage, or Spain’s Aqueduct without applying for a single visa. Best of all, there’s an India section, so the time is right for discovery or rediscovery.

Play GeoGuessr's Famous Places games here

It’s a delight. You never know where you’ll end up, and once you do, it’s like a mini holiday. Some locations surround you in so much greenery; you forget the rain or dust storm outside. Some are so desolate, they’re a break from the street below. There’s no time limit for guessing, so scroll and zoom in every direction to go sightseeing in a random part of the world. It’s probably a clearer, more leisurely vacation than your last 7-days-8-nights package. And your legs ache less.

The India section surprised me. Sure, I identified Humayun’s Tomb right away and scored the full 5000 points. The red laterite of a sea fort led me to guess Goa (it turned out to be in Mangaluru). But it’s amazing how often my orientation was off the mark. I was sure one sunlit gurudwara precinct was in Amritsar – there were even devotees in phulkari kurtas. It turned out to be in Bengaluru, a lovely reminder that we’re really more alike than we realise.

Some locations are inside famous monuments. You can walk around to orient yourself and make a better guess. Or just stroll along faraway lands for free. (Geoguessr)

It’s easy to get a near-perfect score. Take your time and move around. Signage offers fantastic clues to an area’s language and currency; whether they measure distance in miles or metres can tell you a lot. Roads tell you which side they’re driving on. Architecture is often a dead giveaway.

Look up. That’s how I figured that the nondescript café I landed in was right under Rio’s statue of Christ the Redeemer. You’ll realise you know more about landscape – vegetation, soil, landforms, general topography – than you think.

Use Google liberally; cross-check restaurant names, logos, street names and images for the most accuracy. And remember that Street View largely hasn’t mapped Africa, Russia, China and central Asia, apart from tourist attractions, so you can’t be “anywhere” in the world.

You could take things up a notch and play their Daily Challenge, with a 3-minute limit and global leaderboard. But I wouldn’t recommend it. Indian holidays are rushed and competitive enough as it is!

Over the moon about something that’s still under the radar? Tell me at rachel.lopez@htlive.com