Caravan is out: walk the Silk Road, the Camino and Route 66 from home

Download Caravan on the App Store →

Why make a walking app?

Most step counters tell you a number and then forget it. Ten thousand steps on Tuesday look exactly like ten thousand steps on Friday. I wanted the steps to add up to something you could feel: a distance on a map, a town you reached, a road you are halfway along.

Historic roads are perfect for that, because they were walked. Pilgrims crossed the Pyrenees on foot to reach Santiago. Caravans moved between the oases of Central Asia at the speed of a camel. And Route 66 is the road people still drive just to say they did.

So in Caravan, you don't do anything new. You walk the way you already walk, to work, with the dog, around the shops. The iPhone counts it, Apple Health keeps it, and Caravan turns it into a journey.

What happens in the app?

• The camel walks when you walk. Caravan reads walking and running distance from Apple Health. There's no workout to start and nothing to keep open.
• You reach a real place every day or two. Each stop is a real town, monument or roadside landmark, with a short postcard of its history. On the Silk Road, the first one is Afrasiyab, the mound where Samarkand stood for more than 1,700 years.
• Big stops unlock a treasure. A real object from the road's history, such as Ulugh Beg's star catalogue at the Registan, or the Codex Calixtinus at Puente la Reina.
• Every Sunday, your week becomes a story. Distance, steps, the places you reached, ready to share. In December, a Year Wrapped. Both are free, always.
• No streaks to lose. On days you don't walk, the camel rests by the campfire. The road waits.

How do you know the history is right?

This part took longest. Every stop's postcard was written from at least two sources and then checked again in a separate pass. About 400 claims went through that second check; roughly 30 were corrected and about 35 softened where the sources disagreed. Legends are labelled as legends, so Roland's spring in the Pyrenees is presented as a story, not a fact.

Every postcard also has a Report an error link. If you know a place better than the sources do, tell me and I'll fix it.

Which roads are in Caravan?

Chapters 1 and 2 of every road are in the app at launch, with their postcards and treasures. Each chapter takes about four to eight weeks at 5 km a day. More chapters arrive in updates. If you finish one before the next is ready, Caravan tells you it's on the way.

For the numbers behind each road, see how many steps the Camino is, how long it would take to walk the Silk Road and Route 66's first chapter, stop by stop.

What about privacy?

Caravan follows the same rule as the other trulyoffline apps: what you do stays on your device. There is no account, no server of ours, no ads and no analytics. Your walking is read from Apple Health on the iPhone, your journey is worked out there, and it's never uploaded or put in iCloud.

The one thing that leaves the phone is a purchase record. If you buy Pro, RevenueCat checks it with an anonymous ID; it never sees your health data. The App Store privacy label lists only Purchase History, not linked to you. The full detail is in the Caravan privacy policy.

What will it cost?

Free, with no time limit: chapter 1 of one road with all its stops and treasures, every weekly story and the Year Wrapped. Caravan Pro opens every road and chapter, treasures and medals on every road, switching roads without losing progress, and camel outfits. It's $4.99 a month, $29.99 a year or $59.99 once, with Family Sharing. There's no free trial, because the first chapter is the trial.

Caravan needs an iPhone with iOS 18 or later. The app is in English at launch; the App Store page is in 37 languages.