Transforming codeigniter URLs to SEO friendly URLS

[eluser]Saints77[/eluser]
My apologies if this has been answered somewhere else but I cannot find a solution to this problem.

I'm looking to create URL's such as this: world-travel-locations instead of using the codeigniter controller/method style links: gallery/locations

I can do this very easily in a non-MVC style approach but being now to CodeIgniter I have no idea how to achieve this.

I've tried configuring my routes.php file in the following manner:

$route['world-travel-locations'] = "gallery/locations";

I thought this would be the best way to achieve the above but no joy whatsoever.
I've looked over the codeIgniter documentation and don't find it very useful in explaining how to achieve the above.

How easy is it to achieve a keyword rich, SEO friendly url with codeIgniter rather than the default controller/method naming style?

Do I have to write the controller methods like this:

world_travel_locations

and then use url_title to transform those into SEO friendly URL's?

Kind Regards