Backpack Travel Quotes

Nothing was ever in tune. People just blindly grabbed at whatever there was: communism, health foods, zen, surfing, ballet, hypnotism, group encounters, orgies, biking, herbs, Catholicism, weight-lifting, travel, withdrawal, vegetarianism, India, painting, writing, sculpting, composing, conducting, backpacking, yoga, copulating, gambling, drinking, hanging around, frozen yogurt, Beethoven, Back, Buddha, Christ, TM, H, carrot juice, suicide, handmade suits, jet travel, New York City, and then it all evaporated and fell apart. People had to find things to do while waiting to die. I guess it was nice to have a choice.

My dream is to walk around the world. A smallish backpack, all essentials neatly in place. A camera. A notebook. A traveling paint set. A hat. Good shoes. A nice pleated (green?) skirt for the occasional seaside hotel afternoon dance.

Rule #1: You may bring only what fits in your backpack. Don’t try to fake it with a purse or a carry-on. Rule #2: You may not bring guidebooks, phrase books, or any kind of foreign language aid. And no journals. Rule #3: You cannot bring extra money or credit/debit cards, travelers’ checks, etc. I’ll take care of all that. Rule #4: No electronic crutches. This means no laptop, no cell phone, no music, and no camera. You can’t call home or communicate with people in the U.S. by Internet or telephone. Postcards and letters are acceptable and encouraged. That’s all you need to know for now.

I beg young people to travel. If you don’t have a passport, get one. Take a summer, get a backpack and go to Delhi, go to Saigon, go to Bangkok, go to Kenya. Have your mind blown. Eat interesting food. Dig some interesting people. Have an adventure. Be careful. Come back and you’re going to see your country differently, you’re going to see your president differently, no matter who it is. Music, culture, food, water. Your showers will become shorter. You’re going to get a sense of what globalization looks like. It’s not what Tom Friedman writes about; I’m sorry. You’re going to see that global climate change is very real. And that for some people, their day consists of walking 12 miles for four buckets of water. And so there are lessons that you can’t get out of a book that are waiting for you at the other end of that flight. A lot of people—Americans and Europeans—come back and go, ohhhhh. And the light bulb goes on.

You don’t know about the other travellers you meet and they in turn have no idea who you are, and that is truly special, for there isn’t any detrimental preconceived notions about the other, and in this space there is room for understanding and healing. When you backpack, for the first time in a long time, you feel like you belong and are connected to not only with the world, but also with your inner self.

The world isn't built with a ramp.

Travel is little beds and cramped bathrooms. It’s old television sets and slow Internet connections. Travel is extraordinary conversations with ordinary people. It’s waiters, gas station attendants, and housekeepers becoming the most interesting people in the world. It’s churches that are compelling enough to enter. It’s McDonald’s being a luxury. It’s the realization that you may have been born in the wrong country. Travel is a smile that leads to a conversation in broken English. It’s the epiphany that pretty girls smile the same way all over the world. Travel is tipping 10% and being embraced for it. Travel is the same white T-shirt again tomorrow. Travel is accented sex after good wine and too many unfiltered cigarettes. Travel is flowing in the back of a bus with giggly strangers. It’s a street full of bearded backpackers looking down at maps. Travel is wishing for one more bite of whatever that just was. It’s the rediscovery of walking somewhere. It’s sharing a bottle of liquor on an overnight train with a new friend. Travel is “Maybe I don’t have to do it that way when I get back home.” It’s nostalgia for studying abroad that one semester. Travel is realizing that “age thirty” should be shed of its goddamn stigma.

When I travel, people say ‘Yet another place in this world’. But I see ‘Another world inside every place I go

Wilderness areas are first of all a series of sanctuaries for the primitive arts of wilderness travel, especially canoeing and packing. I suppose some will wish to debate whether it is important to keep these primitive arts alive. I shall not debate it. Either you know it in your bones, or you are very, very old.

Driving down deserted early morning roads. Round and round. Round downtown. Through naked streets. Lips pursed on two litre bottles of beer, but pursuing the lips of freedom's night. Swapping cars. Winding up at karaoke bars or Bolsi- the best place in town. For the food. For the folk. For the service. For the crema de papaya. And for that late night dawn's whiskey coffee.

If we wear our worst reviews like a backpack, they travel with us.

...That's the difference between backpackers and holiday makers. The former can't help but invite hassle whilst the latter pay to escape it.

ANDRÉ: . . . And when I was at Findhorn I met this extraordinary English tree expert who had devoted himself to saving trees, and he’d just got back from Washington lobbying to save the Redwoods. And he was eighty-four years old, and he always travels with a backpack because he never knows where he’s going to be tomorrow. And when I met him at Findhorn he said to me, “Where are you from?” And I said, “New York.” And he said, “Ah, New York, yes, that’s a very interesting place. Do you know a lot of New Yorkers who keep talking about the fact that they want to leave, but never do?” And I said, “Oh, yes.” And he said, “Why do you think they don’t leave?” And I gave him different banal theories. And he said, “Oh, I don’t think it’s that way at all.” He said, “I think that New York is the new model for the new concentration camp, where the camp has been built by the inmates themselves, and the inmates are the guards, and they have this pride in this thing that they’ve built—they’ve built their own prison—and so they exist in a state of schizophrenia where they are both guards and prisoners. And as a result they no longer have—having been lobotomized—the capacity to leave the prison they’ve made or even to see it as a prison.” And then he went into his pocket, and he took out a seed for a tree, and he said, “This is a pine tree.” And he put it in my hand. And he said, “Escape before it’s too late.

It's not "jalan-jalan" nor "liburan". It's just something we do naturally. Like breathing and eating. It's basically living.

Secondhand books had so much life in them. They'd lived, sometimes in many homes, or maybe just one. Theyd been on airplanes, traveled to sunny beaches, or crowded into a backpack and taken high up on a mountain where the air thinned.

Home is where the backpack is

Ke manapun kau pergi, Tuhan ada. Dia perhati setiap gerakan. Dia dengar setiap keluhan. Dia bantu setiap kesulitan. Walaupun kau tinggalkan dia.

I took my bottle and went to my bedroom. I undressed down to my shorts and went to bed. Nothing was ever in tune. People just blindly grabbed at whatever there was: communism, health foods, zen, surfing, ballet, hypnotism, group encounters, orgies, biking, herbs, Catholicism, weight-lifting, travel, withdrawal, vegetarianism, India, painting, writing, sculpting, composing, conducting, backpacking, yoga, copulating, gambling, drinking, hanging around, frozen yogurt, Beethoven, Bach, Buddha, Christ, TM, H, carrot juice, suicide, handmade suits, jet travel, New York City, and then it all evaporated and fell apart. People had to find things to do while waiting to die. I guess it was nice to have a choice. I took my choice. I raised the fifth of vodka and drank it straight. The Russians knew something.

In those years before mobile phones, email and Skype, travelers depended on the rudimentary communications system known as the postcard. Other methods--the long-distance phone call, the telegram--were marked "For Emergency Use Only." So my parents waved me off into the unknown, and their news bulletins about me would have been restricted to "Yes, he's arrived safely,"and "Last time we heard he was in Oregon," and "We expect him back in a few weeks." I'm not saying this was necessarily better, let alone more character-forming; just that in my case it probably helped not to have my parents a button's touch away, spilling out anxieties and long-range weather forecasts, warning me against floods, epidemics and psychos who preyed on backpackers.

Trail magic, the amazing things that happen when you’re out and about, when you open yourself to new experiences, when you pay attention.

Jika kau biarkan ketakutan untuk keluar mengembara lebih berkuasa berbanding kehendak untuk melihat bumi Tuhan, maka hiduplah sebagai si tua yang dihantui kekesalan.

Daripada percaya kau memang tak pernah cukup duit untuk travel, lebih baik kau percaya umur kau makin suntuk untuk hanya duduk-duduk cipta alasan tak mahu travel.

Kita selalu jumpa orang baik-baik sewaktu mengembara, bukan sebab nasib kita baik. Tapi sebab Tuhan kasihan.

Meandering cows, tenacious bicyclers, belching taxis, rickshaws, fearless pedestrians and the occasional mobile ‘cigarette and sweets’ stand all fought our taxi for room on the narrow two-lane road turned local byway.

Plenty of people take a gap year between high school and university to travel, or spend a summer back-packing through Europe to “find” themselves. (A bullshit statement if ever there was one. Where do you think you’ll be? No one finds anything in France except bread and pretension, and frankly, both of those are in my lap right now.)

You will encounter resentful, sneering non-readers who will look at you from their beery, leery eyes, as they might some form of sub-hominid anomaly, bookimus maximus. You will encounter redditters, youtubers, blogspotters, wordpressers, twitterers, and facebookers with wired-open eyes who will shout at from you from their crazy hectoring mouths about the liberal poison of literature. You will encounter the gamers with their twitching fingers who will look upon you as a character to lock crosshairs on and blow to smithereens. You will encounter the stoners and pill-poppers who will ignore you, and ask you if you have read Jack Keroauc’s On the Road, and if you haven’t, will lecture you for two hours on that novel and refuse to acknowledge any other books written by anyone ever. You will encounter the provincial retirees, who have spent a year reading War & Peace, who strike the attitude that completing that novel is a greater achievement than the thousands of books you have read, even though they lost themselves constantly throughout the book and hated the whole experience. You will encounter the self-obsessed students whose radical interpretations of Agnes Grey and The Idiot are the most important utterance anyone anywhere has ever made with their mouths, while ignoring the thousands of novels you have read. You will encounter the parents and siblings who take every literary reference you make back to the several books they enjoyed reading as a child, and then redirect the conversation to what TV shows they have been watching. You will encounter the teachers and lecturers, for whom any text not on their syllabus is a waste of time, and look upon you as a wayward student in need of their salvation. You will encounter the travellers and backpackers who will take pity on you for wasting your life, then tell you about the Paulo Coelho they read while hostelling across Europe en route to their spiritual pilgrimage to New Delhi. You will encounter the hard-working moaners who will tell you they are too busy working for a living to sit and read all day, and when they come home from a hard day’s toil, they don’t want to sit and read pretentious rubbish. You will encounter the voracious readers who loathe competition, and who will challenge you to a literary duel, rather than engage you in friendly conversation about your latest reading. You will encounter the slack intellectuals who will immediately ask you if you have read Finnegans Wake, and when you say you have, will ask if you if you understood every line, and when you say of course not, will make some point that generally alludes to you being a halfwit. Fuck those fuckers.

After a lifetime of soft, easy living in the West, one's buttocks take an awful hammering out here. Backpacking around India is just one long round of sitting on bone-hard, chafing, bruising and generally uncomfortable seats-whether in buses our trains, or restaurants or cinemas. There is no such thing as a padded seat in the whole country.

In the wilderness, as in life, to get to where you want to go, you first have to know where you are, and in life at least, who you are.

I'm in love. Again. How on earth do people pick a favorite travel spot?

Hookers in whore houses awaiting drunkards at dawn who can't get it up. Broken sprung beds. Sulking, sagging and stained. Foreplay forgotten. Failed and fumbled fucks by the hour.

Ya Allah, aku hendak datang memenuhi panggilanMu, mudahkanlah segala urusanku

...Going into the unknown means returning to the known is a bewitching sweetness. Adventure doesn't always require a sturdy backpack.

What's the worst that can happen?

He thought of Darwin sleeping out on the pampas during his Beagle trip, a middle-class white kid travelling the world, the first of the backpackers. It was only afterwards, really, that he had made any sense of what he had seen. Alex wondered what, in the fullness of time, he himself would make sense of, what small, crucial detail might be lodging itself in his brain that would shake his life to its foundations.

So, in what we considered the true spirit of freedom and the timeless nature of our travel plans, a few months after the sacrifice of Dave's airline ticket, the three of us ceremoniously burnt our watches, too.

The tourists come here to stay put in their hotels, with their holiday-friendly staff, private beaches, private bars and private sunshine. And yet still, when they get back home, they'll claim they've been to Egypt.

Nobody warned me about this part. When I envisioned my trip, I imagined exciting adventures, exotic locales, a jet-set lifestyle. I never thought grief and doubt would climb into my backpack and come with me. I pictured standing at the top of the Sun Gate, looking down at Machu Picchu, without ever thinking about the steps it would take to get there. This is the curse of wanderlust, when the postcard image becomes a brutal reality.

Second hand books had so much life in them. They'd lived, sometimes in many homes, or maybe just one. They'd been on airplanes, traveled to sunny beaches, or crowded into a backpack and taken high up a mountain where the air thinned. "Some had been held aloft tepid rose-scented baths, and thickened and warped with moisture. Others had child-like scrawls on the acknowledgement page, little fingers looking for a blank space to leave their mark. Then there were the pristine novels, ones that had been read carefully, bookmarks used, almost like their owner barely pried the pages open so loathe were they to damage their treasure. I loved them all. And I found it hard to part with them. Though years of book selling had steeled me. I had to let them go, and each time made a fervent wish they'd be read well, and often. Missy, my best friend, said I was completely cuckoo, and that I spent too much time alone in my shadowy shop, because I believed my books communicated with me. A soft sigh here, as they stretched their bindings when dawn broke, or a hum, as they anticipated a customer hovering close who might run a hand along their cover, tempting them to flutter their pages hello. Books were fussy when it came to their owners, and gave off a type of sound, an almost imperceptible whirr, when the right person was near. Most people weren't aware that books chose us, at the time when we needed them.

After seeing South America, my eyes were open to the suffering and injustices in the world. I wanted to keep exploring so I could do something to make the world better. I was on a quest to change the world; I for sure changed my own world.

Banyak hal yang dapat dipelajari di jalan dan tidak pernah diajarkan di sekolah formal manapun. Traveling adalah tentang pelajaran hidup untuk membuka mata mengamati dari perspektif yang berbeda, melihat dari sudut pandang yang bukan biasa digunakan.

I will say it again and until my deathbed: backpacking was hands down the best decision I have ever made. You will learn more about yourself than you could ever imagine and you will come back a more grounded person with clearer thoughts and new perspectives.

I have found that success often comes out of many failures. In some of my failures, I have come face-to-face with the fact I just don’t know enough to do what I’m trying to do. There’s no shame in that. I still have worth and value, despite what I don’t know.

Only other backpackers will understand what it's like to leave home to follow your dreams. Those pals back home will nod along, listening to your travel tales, but for them it's just words and pretty pictures. For you, everything has changed and you look around feeling like an alien in the most foreign place you have visited: home. That's why it's called a travel bug - you literally get bitten with this desire to keep moving and keep exploring, as the life you had back home isn't enough any more and may not ever be enough again.

The typical backpacker is unmarried, educated, but not yet on the career track. Among the backpackers, there are always a lot of young Europeans who work for a year or two at home, save their money, then travel until it runs out. Canadians and Australians are also backpack travelers; so are Israelis, taking a year off after serving in the army, and New Zealanders on their great “OE,” overseas experience. There are Americans as well; but the Americans are usually on a tighter schedule, and I find them less friendly, at least to me.

I pulled my suitcase out of the backseat of my bug, along with Cannoli's new travel case, a spiffy animal print pet backpack on wheels. When I first saw it, I thought maybe the dog was supposed to wear the backpack, but it turned out the person wore the backpack with the dog in it.

Recently, she had begun allowing herself to imagine what it must feel like to live for the moment - to wake up and not have your day mapped out in front of you; to go where you pleased; to meet new people from all walks of life and to absorb sights most people only witness in TV documentaries.

There is a whole generation of young people just like us wandering around Europe and the rest of the world, trying to find some meaning for why they are alive and what they should choose to do with their time. When Martha leaves and we sit in front of the fire in the living room, I look to Lily until she turns to me and I can see the grief that hides just under the surface of her expression. We are, or at least were, two of those lost souls: wanderers, backpackers, season workers, Wwoofers, Workawayers, travellers: searching the world for something or someplace to hold on to. And we have come home not because we have retired from trying to find answers and are ready to settle into adulthood, but because my death has come upon us fast and unexpected. I am not the first person of this generation of travellers- or any person who lives in this godless, superficial society- to die. But I think that it feels to Lily and to me, my mother too perhaps, that I may very well be.

Setiap orang bebas menentukan pilihannya dalam menjelajah dunia melalui cara yang berbeda-beda yang disesuaikan dengan keterbatasannya masing-masing baik secara waktu, biaya, tenaga, kebiasaan serta faktor batas kenyamanan. Namun sejatinya pengalaman perjalanan yang telah dilalui akan berdampak pada berkembangnya kualitas kehidupan kita.

I wasn’t only afraid of becoming my mother, but a mother. I was afraid of being the steadfast, stationary anchor who provides a jumping-off place for another young adventurer whose travels I might envy and whose future is still unmoored and unmapped. I was afraid of being that archetypal figure in the doorway—frowzy, a little plump—who waves good-bye and blows kisses as a backpack is stashed in the trunk; who dabs her eyes with an apron ruffle in the fumes of departing exhaust; who turns forlornly to twist the latch and wash the too-few dishes by the sink as the silence in the room presses down like a dropped ceiling. More than of leaving, I had developed a horror of being left.

But you scratch the surface, it’s crumbling, it’s dying, there’s no future on that miserable island. The same in America. You think India is poor? Go and travel around America. I couldn’t believe it. Meanwhile some backpacker in Paharganj wanders around crying about our poverty, shaking his head, taking pity on us, taking photos for the people back home.

I had traveled across Asia for six months with a backpack when I was twenty-two. My mood on those exotic days in Katmandu and Da Nang alternated between euphoria and lonely terror. I had traveler’s checks that I kept with my passport in a little sack that I wore under my T-shirt at all times, afraid that someone would snatch it and then I would be completely fucked.

As our journey unfolded, we learnt more and more about Australia every day. Our fears and apprehensions were re-placed with wonder and amazement at how weirdly peculiar and utterly beautiful this land and its people are. We were left poorer in the pocket but richer in our experience. In the end, we ran out of money before we ran of time, but it was an amazing journey of discovery.

Victory was inexorable, Overbeck believed, because the Americans wanted it more, because they had trained harder in the Florida swamp heat and because they had competed more fiercely among teammates who turned pumpkin carving and card games and scavenger hunts into blood sport, because they had survived the lean years of backpack travel and diets of candy bars and queasy soup steeping with the heads of chickens, because they had ridden the coal trains until their faces were black with soot, because they had lived in rickety hotels with one hour of hot water out of 24, because they had run sprints in hotel stairways and parking lots and abandoned fields, because they ignored the disbelievers, building their sport from nothing into a consuming moment, a galvanizing instant, that would make people remember where they were and what they were doing.

I tried to focus on my toes, looking for answers to the questions swirling around in my head, wondering if my reasons for traveling were the right ones, whether I shouldn't be at home doing a job like everyone else I knew. But the more I thought about it, the more ridiculous all the money chasing seemed. I had very little cash, none of us had, but we were the happiest people alive; we hadn't stopped grinning since we'd met. Everyday was different, often spent with different people from every conceivable background, and usually in a new place, which I loved.

The issue that many travellers (and we were no different) face when visiting Australia is that they picture it as just another country, much like India or Germany or even the USA. However, Australia is most certainly not just another country but rather a vast continent; an immense landmass that spans three time zones. Until the eighteenth century, the existence of this mega-landmass was a fancy hypothesis, albeit with some merit: ‘Surely there has to be a giant continent somewhere in the southern hemisphere to balance all the landmasses in the northern hemisphere?

He couldn’t have known it, but among the original run of The History of Love, at least one copy was destined to change a life. This particular book was one of the last of the two thousand to be printed, and sat for longer than the rest in a warehouse in the outskirts of Santiago, absorbing the humidity. From there it was finally sent to a bookstore in Buenos Aires. The careless owner hardly noticed it, and for some years it languished on the shelves, acquiring a pattern of mildew across the cover. It was a slim volume, and its position on the shelf wasn’t exactly prime: crowded on the left by an overweight biography of a minor actress, and on the right by the once-bestselling novel of an author that everyone had since forgotten, it hardly left its spine visible to even the most rigorous browser. When the store changed owners it fell victim to a massive clearance, and was trucked off to another warehouse, foul, dingy, crawling with daddy longlegs, where it remained in the dark and damp before finally being sent to a small secondhand bookstore not far from the home of the writer Jorge Luis Borges. The owner took her time unpacking the books she’d bought cheaply and in bulk from the warehouse. One morning, going through the boxes, she discovered the mildewed copy of The History of Love. She’d never heard of it, but the title caught her eye. She put it aside, and during a slow hour in the shop she read the opening chapter, called 'The Age of Silence.' The owner of the secondhand bookstore lowered the volume of the radio. She flipped to the back flap of the book to find out more about the author, but all it said was that Zvi Litvinoff had been born in Poland and moved to Chile in 1941, where he still lived today. There was no photograph. That day, in between helping customers, she finished the book. Before locking up the shop that evening, she placed it in the window, a little wistful about having to part with it. The next morning, the first rays of the rising sun fell across the cover of The History of Love. The first of many flies alighted on its jacket. Its mildewed pages began to dry out in the heat as the blue-gray Persian cat who lorded over the shop brushed past it to lay claim to a pool of sunlight. A few hours later, the first of many passersby gave it a cursory glance as they went by the window. The shop owner did not try to push the book on any of her customers. She knew that in the wrong hands such a book could easily be dismissed or, worse, go unread. Instead she let it sit where it was in the hope that the right reader might discover it. And that’s what happened. One afternoon a tall young man saw the book in the window. He came into the shop, picked it up, read a few pages, and brought it to the register. When he spoke to the owner, she couldn’t place his accent. She asked where he was from, curious about the person who was taking the book away. Israel, he told her, explaining that he’d recently finished his time in the army and was traveling around South America for a few months. The owner was about to put the book in a bag, but the young man said he didn’t need one, and slipped it into his backpack. The door chimes were still tinkling as she watched him disappear, his sandals slapping against the hot, bright street. That night, shirtless in his rented room, under a fan lazily pushing around the hot air, the young man opened the book and, in a flourish he had been fine-tuning for years, signed his name: David Singer. Filled with restlessness and longing, he began to read.

We were flying to Brisbane via Kuala Lumpur, a journey of around fifteen hours, including the brief transit stop. Australia was a long way from anywhere yet modern aviation had made travel so convenient and affordable that no one really thought of it as difficult or hazardous anymore. Today’s travel woes centered around overcoming jet lag or figuring out your duty-free limits. I tried to imagine life in the eighteenth century when the First Fleet made the long and arduous sea voyage from Great Britain. The aviation industry was non-existent at that time, steam-powered ships were still decades away and the sailing vessels that arrived in 1788 took over a hundred days to reach Sydney.

I heard a choking sound behind me. When I looked back, Cannoli was hanging from the backpack harness with her hind legs circling frantically in the air. She looked like she was riding a bike just above ground level. "Cannoli," I yelled. I unhooked her and made sure she was breathing on her own. When I tried to get her back in the backpack, she whimpered. I talked to her soothingly yet firmly, then tried again. This time she started howling like I was hurting her. People turned and stared as they walked by. "What are you looking at?" I said to one couple. I suddenly felt true remorse for every time I'd stared at a parent with a toddler throwing a tantrum. I made a vow to be a better aunt to Tulia's kids if I ever made it out of this parking garage. I pleaded with Cannoli one more time.

When we live intensely, we run more risks and we become more fragile. We already know that people who do nothing suffer nothing. But avoiding doing things out of fear of getting hurt is not a path to growth. When we mix our fears with reality, we are limiting ourselves. Don’t forget that the decisions we don’t make also cause us pain. Be careful about how you interpret what happens to you. If you don’t have an explanation that brings you peace, don’t make one up. What causes one kind of emotional pain to be more intense than another? Well, it depends on the emotional attachment to the source of the pain. What hurts more intensely is what directly affects us or the people we love. What hurts more is what affects our greatest aspirations and objectives. We are more easily hurt by what affects our desires or fears, and the more intense our desire, the more painful our frustration when we do not achieve it. The emotional involvement determines and explains the intensity of our pain. The greater the emotional involvement, the greater the pain. When pain comes in the door, perspective goes out the window, taking with it our ability to reason properly, to analyze events, and to make good decisions. Each time you remember what happened you transform what happened. None of our experiences is in vain if we are capable of learning from what happened to us and from the suffering and pain it caused us. But we won’t be able to learn from what happened if we don’t look back and review our experiences. Carrying your past is like carrying a huge backpack full of stones that prevents you from walking freely. But to walk through life all you need is a bit of water and food, a dream, and a destination—and, in a pinch, you can probably do without a destination. Let bygones be bygones, learn from what happened, and bring that chapter to a close. Your beliefs feed your decisions, your fears, and your desires. Knowledge will set you free, so make an effort to learn, study, read, travel.

Thegirls also ordered catalogues for items they could never buy, and theLisbons' mailbox filled up once again: furniture catalogues fromScottshruptine, high-end clothing, exotic vacations. Unable to goanywhere, the girls traveled in their imaginations to goldtipped Siamesetemples, or past an old man with bucket and leaf broom tidying amoss-carpeted speck of Japan. As soon as we learned the names of thesebrochures we sent for them ourselves to see where the girls wanted togo. Far East Adventures. Footloose Tours. Tunnel to China Tours. OrientExpress. We got them all. And, flipping pages, hiked through dustypasses with the girls, stopping every now and then to help them take offtheir backpacks, placing our hands on their warm, moist shoulders andgazing off at papaya sunsets. We drank tea with them in a waterpavilion, above blazing goldfish. We did whatever we wanted to, andCecilia hadn't killed herself: she was a bride in Calcutta, with a redveil and the soles of her feet dyed with henna. The only way we couldfeel close to the girls was through these impossible excursions, whichhave scarred us forever, making us happier with dreams than wives.

One of the few entry points to the Baltic Sea, the Kattegat passage is a busy and treacherous waterway. The entire region is a maze of fractured islands, shallow waters and tricky cur-rents which test the skills of all mariners. A vital sea route, the strait is used by large container ships, oil tankers and cruise ships alike and provides a crucial link between the Baltic coun-tries and Europe and the rest of the world. Navigating is difficult even in calm weather and clear visibility is a rare occurrence in these higher latitudes. During severe winters, it’s not uncommon for sections of the Baltic Sea to freeze, with ice occasionally drifting out of the straits, carried by the surface currents. The ship I was commandeering was on a back-and-forth ‘pendulum’ run, stopping at the ports of St Petersburg (Russia), Kotka (Finland), Gdańsk (Poland), Aarhus (Denmark) and Klaipėda (Lithuania) in the Baltic Sea, and Bremerhaven (Ger-many) and Rotterdam (Netherlands) in the North Sea. On this particular trip, the weather gods were in a benevolent mood and we were transiting under a faultless blue sky in one of the most picturesque regions of the world. The strait got narrower as we sailed closer to Zealand (Sjælland), the largest of the off-lying Danish islands. Up ahead, as we zigzagged through the laby-rinth of islands, the tall and majestic Great Belt Bridge sprang into view. The pylons lift the suspension bridge some sixty-five metres above sea level allowing it to accommodate the largest of the ocean cruise liners that frequently pass under its domi-nating expanse.

We pulled into town in the early evening, the sun dipping into the Tehachapi Mountains a dozen miles behind us to the west. Mountains I’d be hiking the next day. The town of Mojave is at an altitude of nearly 2,800 feet, though it felt to me as if I were at the bottom of something instead, the signs for gas stations, restaurants, and motels rising higher than the highest tree. “You can stop here,” I said to the man who’d driven me from LA, gesturing to an old-style neon sign that said WHITE’S MOTEL with the word TELEVISION blazing yellow above it and VACANCY in pink beneath. By the worn look of the building, I guessed it was the cheapest place in town. Perfect for me. “Thanks for the ride,” I said once we’d pulled into the lot. “You’re welcome,” he said, and looked at me. “You sure you’re okay?” “Yes,” I replied with false confidence. “I’ve traveled alone a lot.” I got out with my backpack and two oversized plastic department store bags full of things. I’d meant to take everything from the bags and fit it into my backpack before leaving Portland, but I hadn’t had the time. I’d brought the bags here instead. I’d get everything together in my room. “Good luck,” said the man. I watched him drive away. The hot air tasted like dust, the dry wind whipping my hair into my eyes. The parking lot was a field of tiny white pebbles cemented into place; the motel, a long row of doors and windows shuttered by shabby curtains. I slung my backpack over my shoulders and gathered the bags. It seemed strange to have only these things. I felt suddenly exposed, less exuberant than I had thought I would. I’d spent the past six months imagining this moment, but now that it was here—now that I was only a dozen miles from the PCT itself—it seemed less vivid than it had in my imaginings, as if I were in a dream, my every thought liquid slow, propelled by will rather than instinct.

Tana Toraja, Indonesia (Sulawesi Island) The island of Sulawesi doesn't get many visitors with most travellers in Indonesia opting for Java, Bali or Lombok. Those who do come will be richly rewarded with rock bottom prices and fascinating local traditions. Tana Toraja translates to 'The Land of Heavenly Kings' and its inhabitants are a predominantly Christian ethnic group known as the Torajans. Of their many rituals it is the spectacular death ceremonies that really stand out. The funeral is treated as the most important ceremony in the life of a Torajan as it is believed they continue to look over and protect their families after death. As such it can take many months of planning and involves the purchases of buffalos and pigs which are sacrificed at the main event. The funeral season takes place during July and August but it's a fascinating destination year round and Rantepao, the cultural centre is a good starting point.

East Timor in total contrast is much more interesting but desperately poor and has suffered a brutal history under Portuguese and Indonesian rule. It only finally gained independence in 2002 after a bloody civil war and UN peacekeepers were withdrawn a couple of years ago indicating that it is becoming safer. Still hardly any travellers come here, put off primarily by its dangerous reputation. Efforts are being made to build a tourism industry and if you come you will be greeted with an enormous amount of curiosity by locals. It's a fabulous destination for skuba diving with some stunning coral reefs and with great mountain and jungles treks it's certainly a destination for adventure travellers.

I thought about my prison cell and my room in the nurses’ dormitory. I understood him all too well. “I want to travel,” he continued. “Visit distant countries. Backpack through the Himalayas or paint New York red for two or three weeks. Then fly to Tokyo and eat sushi. Not staying anywhere too long, always on the move, always a new goal on the horizon. That’s what I want.

Walking is the speed we were created to use when travelling through life.

It is hardly surprising that the initial stage of most mountain journeys involves laborious uphill hiking. Coming at a time when the typical hiker is out of shape, unacclimated, and transporting the heaviest load of the entire trip, the seemingly endless hillsides can elicit rumblings from even the hardiest backpackers. The first section of the High Route qualifies as a splendid example of such unremitting travel, for the hiker must toil up 6,000 feet to the first major pass, a disheartening prospect. Weathered dead pine at timberline Optimistic hikers who seek the brighter side of unpleasant situations, however, will quickly discover mitigating factors on this interminable slope. The well-manicured trail zigzags up the north wall of Kings Canyon with such a gentle gradient that the traveler can slip into a rhythmic pace where the miles pass far more quickly than would be possible on a steeper, rockier path. Thus freed from scrutinizing the terrain immediately ahead, the hiker can better appreciate the two striking formations on the opposite side of the canyon. Directly across the way towers the enormous facade of Grand Sentinel, rising 3,500 feet above the meadows lining the valley floor. Several miles to the east lies the sculpted oddity known as the Sphinx, a delicate pinnacle capping a sweeping apron of granite. These two landmarks, visible for much of the ascent to the Monarch Divide, offer travelers a convenient means of gauging their progress; for instance, when one is finally level with the top of the Sphinx, the upward journey is two-thirds complete. Hikers able to identify common Sierra trees

Sexual Tourist When I travel I love making love to the native women. They know I'm a sexual tourist because when I fuck them I still have my backpack on.

ANDRÉ: . . . And when I was at Findhorn I met this extraordinary English tree expert who had devoted himself to saving trees, and he’d just got back from Washington lobbying to save the Redwoods. And he was eighty-four years old, and he always travels with a backpack because he never knows where he’s going to be tomorrow. And when I met him at Findhorn he said to me, “Where are you from?” And I said, “New York.” And he said, “Ah, New York, yes, that’s a very interesting place. Do you know a lot of New Yorkers who keep talking about the fact that they want to leave, but never do?” And I said, “Oh, yes.” And he said, “Why do you think they don’t leave?” And I gave him different banal theories. And he said, “Oh, I don’t think it’s that way at all.” He said, “I think that New York is the new model for the new concentration camp, where the camp has been built by the inmates themselves, and the inmates are the guards, and they have this pride in this thing that they’ve built—they’ve built their own prison—and so they exist in a state of schizophrenia where they are both guards and prisoners. And as a result they no longer have—having been lobotomized—the capacity to leave the prison they’ve made or even to see it as a prison.” And then he went into his pocket, and he took out a seed for a tree, and he said, “This is a pine tree.” And he put it in my hand. And he said, “Escape before it’s too late.

So, I did some illustrations." Turning the laptop around again, I explain each drawing as I click through them. I've drawn a couple of the most recent dishes and also ones from the most popular episodes of Lily's, Katherine's, and Nia's series---baba ghanoush and samosas from World on a Plate, Easy Peasy Split Pea Soup and Julia Child's Play Boeuf Bourguignon from Fuss-Free Foodie, and a baked Alaska and cannoli cheesecake from Piece of Cake. I've also done some minimalist illustrations of each of the Friends, highlighting their respective settings and personal style with mostly solid colors and basic shapes. Since Rajesh's show takes him to a lot of different restaurants around the country, I've drawn him with wavy black hair and brown skin, standing under a generic restaurant sign and wearing a graphic T-shirt and the green backpack he always carries on his travels. Seb and Aiden are side by side in the FoF studio, in their white and red aprons, respectively, and looking like the little culinary angel and devil on your shoulder. And I've depicted Katherine standing in one of the prep kitchens with her hands on her hips and her wild auburn hair piled in a bun atop her head. She's surrounded by plates of miscellaneous food and the yellow notepad she jots her recipes down on, using the most basic steps and terms, and then displays on camera at the end of each episode.

I'm breathing with a light and free feeling. It's a feeling of release and independence as I begin my European journey. Backpacking somehow sets me apart from everyone. Even in this airport. True, people here are traveling, but they each have things to do, deadlines to meet, itineraries to follow, specific things to see. Not me, I'm different. I have everywhere to go and anything to see. My destination is culture and knowledge and experience. in 'Waking up to Winter

There is sometimes a misconception that you have to be self-assured, oozing with confidence, a social butterfly, and comfortable with your own company to long-term solo travel. But that is simply not true

Extreme care must be taken when within close proximity to heat sources such as cylinder stoves. It is all too easy to accidentally brush up against the stove with your coat sleeve or, worse, your sleeping bag!

Secondhand books had so much life in them. They’d lived, sometimes in many homes, or maybe just one. They’d been on airplanes, traveled to sunny beaches, or crowded into a backpack and taken high up a mountain where the air thinned. Some had been held aloft tepid rose-scented baths, and thickened and warped with moisture. Others had childlike scrawls on the acknowledgment page, little fingers looking for a blank space to leave their mark. Then there were the pristine novels, ones that had been read carefully, bookmarks used, almost like their owner barely pried the pages open so loath were they to damage their treasure. I loved them all.

food,

Since the early 1990s, dozens of international backpackers have vanished without a trace while traveling in and around the Parvati Valley, an average of one every year, earning this tiny, remote sliver of the subcontinent a dark reputation as India’s backpacker Bermuda Triangle.

Germans have a term, Fernweh, that signifies “yearning for a distant place.” Having grown up in small-town Ohio, almost literally in the middle of a cornfield, I’ve always had a particularly strong sense of Fernweh. When I went to college, I took every opportunity to travel, working in Hawaii with dolphins, attending a semester abroad in England, and even backpacking through Greece. There have been countless vacations and trips. The world is a vast and infinitely interesting place, and in truth, I’ve always looked down on people who chose not to wander, not to see and experience different cultures. Maybe there was something deeply ironic in the fact that this chance encounter with an elderly Athabascan woman pushed me to reconsider my stance. She was content, serene. Could I say the same? Not really. She didn’t need to tell stories about wild sled rides to make her friends jealous; she didn’t need to supplement her life with cheap souvenirs from tourist traps. She only needed the now of the weather, the dogs, and the mushers. I wondered if all the adventures in the world could ever bring me such peace.

Too much stuff in your life, I’m guessing. You’re weighed down. You need to clear out, give away and travel light. I’m just a guy with a backpack and a surfboard and I’ve never been happier.

Travel, I was convinced, was not something frivolous, to be indulged in merely by the idle or the wealthy or the unshowered backpacker. It was something worth fighting for. Travel changed my life; it could change yours. Travel mattered: that was my message.

Facing failure and learning to overcome it can be a powerful motivator, giving us a boost that transcends the problem currently facing us.

Being kind and generous doesn’t always have to cost us a lot. It’s more a matter of attuning ourselves to those around us. But that takes practice, like everything else.

By taking less, I’m able to do more, and the result benefits the entire community. What more could we want for a healthy and fulfilling life?

Grief and times of desolation will visit every one of us, and learning to see them as a gift rather than a curse can change our resistance.

We must learn to consciously remind ourselves of our copious blessings even when the rest of our life doesn’t measure up in the way we want. There will always be aches and wishes beyond our reach, and yet we can still appreciate what we have and share our plenty.

If we’re not constantly pushing the boundaries of what we know and how we’re interacting with the world around us, then life becomes repetitive and tedious.

The philosophy that guided my ultralight backpacking innovations—“take less, do more”—also guided me in just about every aspect of my life.

When we know exactly what we need and how to provide it for ourselves, then we also come to recognize what is not essential.

In all aspects of our lives, balance matters, and it shapes what our ultimate experience will be. But to find our own true and unique balance, we have to first assess our choices.

She wasn’t my type, though I really don’t have a type. I’ve spent my entire life traveling overseas. My parents worked for a charitable foundation in places like Laos and Peru and Sierra Leone. I don’t have any siblings. It was exciting and fun when I was a kid, but it got tiresome and difficult as I grew older. I wanted to stay in one place. I wanted to make some friends and play on one basketball team and, well, meet girls and do teenage stuff. It’s hard to do that when you’re backpacking in Nepal. This

Always take the scenic route.

Chapter II: Morning   The morning came and it was time for Steve to leave for Snowland. He got ready by putting all his his potions, weapons, and food in his inventory. When he opened the door, there were two guards waiting for him out there. "Are you ready?" They were holding a back pack on their hand. "Here, take this, you are going to have to carry a ton of stuff." Steve took the backpack and put it on his back. "Follow us," The soldiers started walking toward the wooden door at the end of the hallway.   They opened the door and there was a horse waiting outside. One of the guards patted the horse and said, "This is yours, take care of him." Steve nodded and said, "He'll be safe with me." The guard reached into his pocket and took out a compass and map. "Here, let me show you how to get to Snowland. I have the location marked on the map here. Don't get too attached to the compass, there's something weird going on down there that makes compasses mark North the wrong way, so pay attention to the map. The trip will take you about three days if you travel most of the day, and you don't lose your horse. If you lose your horse, the trip will take about a week so make sure you tie him well when you dismount. About one and a half of traveling days should be easy. The rest of the way is going to be challenging because of the fact that it begins to get freezing cold. Now get on the horse and be on your way. I wish you luck."   Steve jumped on the horse and said, "Thank you, but I don't need luck." He gave the horse a slight kick with his heel and said, "Walk." The horse obeyed his command and began walking through the trail until he stopped at the end of Springfield where the gate to the exit was. The guard at the door pointed his diamond sword at Steve and said, "Hold it right there! Where do you think you are going?" Steve took out a scroll with the king’s seal on it, showed it to the guard, and said, "I am traveling to Snowland by the king’s orders." The guard at the gate stepped back and put down his sword. "I'm sorry, sir, let me get the gate for you.

I was ashamed to find myself contemplating that for the traveller, Iran’s charms lay in its isolation. This was not a mindset I liked, or approved of; I didn’t want to be like the smug backpackers in The Beach, trying to keep their special place a secret. I wanted the Iranian people to reap all the benefits from engaging with the world and for the rest of us to wake up to the reality that Iran is not a nation of desert-dwelling terrorists.

Damn,” said Karou, seeing a trio of scruffy backpackers lounging at their favorite table. “Pestilence is taken.” “Everything is taken,” said Zuzana. “Stupid Lonely Planet book. I want to go back in time and mug that damn travel writer at the end of the alley, make sure he never finds this place.” “So violent. You want to mug and tase everybody these days.” “I do,” Zuzana agreed. “I swear I hate more people every day. Everyone annoys me. If I’m like this now, what am I going to be like when I’m old?” “You’ll be the mean old biddy who fires a BB gun at kids from her balcony.” “Nah. BBs just rile ’em up. More like a crossbow. Or a bazooka.” “You’re a brute.” Zuzana dropped a curtsy, then took another frustrated look around at the crowded cafe. “Suck. Want to go somewhere else?

Willie and I are both pretty directionally challenged, so we spent most of our time lost. We would jump in a bus that seemed to be going in the right direction and end up having to walk for miles to get back to town. We were both super skinny from all the walking when we got back, despite the good Italian food we ate while we were there. We had the best time, but there were a few scary moments, as well. One night we were sleeping on the train heading to Barcelona, Spain. We were traveling through the south of France and a group of thieves were on the train. Willie was sleeping with his feet on the door, so every time they would try to open the door he would wake up and they would run off. One time, he didn’t feel the door open and the thieves grabbed the backpack of one of the girls who was traveling with us. Willie jumped up and started chasing them through the train! They dropped the backpack, but Willie kept chasing them through a couple of cars. I was standing there thinking, “What’s going to happen if he catches them!” Luckily, Willie had that same thought, gave up the chase, and came back to our car. He didn’t sleep the rest of the night; he just sat up and protected us. What a man!

Nothing was ever in tune. People just blindly grabbed at whatever there was: communism, health foods, zen, surfing, ballet, hypnotism, group encounters, orgies, biking, herbs, Catholicism, weight-lifting, travel, withdrawal, vegetarianism, India, painting, writing, sculpting, composing, conducting, backpacking, yoga, copulating, gambling, drinking, hanging around, frozen yogurt, Beethoven, Bach, Buddha, Christ, TM, H, carrot juice, suicide, handmade suits, jet travel, New York City, and then it all evaporated and fell apart. People had to find things to do while waiting to die. I guess it was nice to have a choice. I took my choice. I raised the fifth of vodka and drank it straight. The Russians knew something.

You could run a fingertip along the spines, smell that glorious old book scent, flick them open, and unbend a dog-eared page. Read someone else’s notes in the margin, or a highlighted passage, and see why that sentence or metaphor had dazzled the previous owner. Secondhand books had so much life in them. They’d lived, sometimes in many homes, or maybe just one. They’d been on airplanes, traveled to sunny beaches, or crowded into a backpack and taken high up a mountain where the air thinned.

pilot announced the problem and added, “There are four of us but only three parachutes. It’s my plane, my parachutes—I have to take one of them.” The others agreed. He strapped the parachute on and jumped to safety. Left on the aircraft were a brilliant professor (a rocket scientist, no less), a minister of religion and a backpacker. The professor jumped to his feet insisting, “I am one of the greatest minds in the country. I must survive. I must take one of the remaining parachutes.” The others agreed. He prepared himself and launched out. The elderly clergyman started to explain to the young traveler, “I’ve lived a long life. I do not fear death. You take the last parachute.” She stopped him mid-sentence with, “No, it’s fine. That brilliant professor just jumped out with my backpack strapped on!

Wordlessly, Darren sits at the edge of the next bed, which leaves the one between him and the wall for me. I’m going to have to sleep next to Darren. For THREE nights. What if I dream about him? What if I say something during those dreams? What if he says something in his sleep? What if I roll over and bump into him? I set my camera and backpack down on the desk, dig out a pink tank top, matching pajama shorts, and my toiletry pouch, and get ready for bed in the bathroom. When I come back out, Darren’s sitting at the desk, elbow propped on it, head supported in his hand. He’s already changed into a pair of red-and-white plaid pants and a black T-shirt. For some reason, the sight of him in his PJs gives me a little thrill. He motions toward the beds. “They’re passed out.” I glance at the fully clothed spooning figures and look away before my cheeks get the better of me. The clock on the desk shows that it’s only 8:25. I know traveling wears you out but I feel completely wired. “Are you ready to go to bed or…?” I let my voice trail off and swallow. I don’t know why I’m so nervous about sleeping one bed over from him. “You want to go for a walk?” I pinch the fabric of my shorts as if to say, In these? and frown. He looks down at my bare legs, then meets my eyes. “Just throw on your sneakers.” There’s a flutter in my chest, but I imagine myself squashing the little winged creatures. No butterflies allowed. I can do this.

You need to build a workout plan that can be done anywhere, at any time that efficiently trains your body so you are prepared for any situation. For example, although I rarely go rock climbing, I’ve built my body in such a way that if you sent me climbing today, or whitewater rafting tomorrow, I could do pretty darn well. If I had to run a 5K tomorrow I could do so, even though I haven’t necessarily trained for it. When I traveled around the world with a backpack for a year, I never once set foot in a gym and still managed to get myself in the best shape of my life because I learned to train with antifragility in mind. You need a workout plan that is as antifragile as you hope to become: It can be completed nearly anywhere (no gym required) and helps you build functional strength and power. Want to know the best way to do that? Progressive bodyweight strength training, and varied short-distance running. Combine those two things with a sensible nutrition strategy and you’ll have yourself an antifragile body just like your favorite secret agent.

Someone once told me a story about long-term relationships. To think of them as a continent to explore. I could spend a lifetime backpacking through Africa, and I would still never know all there is to know about that continent. To stay the course, to stay intentional, to stay curious and connected – that’s the heart of it. But it’s so easy to lose track of the trail, to get tired, to want to give up, or to want a new adventure. It can be so easy to lose sight of the goodness and mystery within the person sitting right in front of you.