“Traveling is a brutality. It forces you to trust strangers and lose sight of everything that is familiar and comfortable to you from your friends and your home. You are all the time in imbalance. Nothing is yours except the most essential: the air, the hours of rest, the dreams, the sea, the sky; all those things that tend towards the eternal or towards what we imagine as such ”.
Cesare Pavese
Backpack ... what? The politically correct description defines the backpacker as a traveler, shoulder bag, with a limited budget. But since, I admit it, I am an insatiable romantic, for me the backpacker is something else, it is the true essence of the traveler
The rules of the games are easy:
→ THE BACKPACK. A backpacker without a backpack is like starting the diet on a Friday, a cheescake without cheese, catching the elephant that was swinging on a cobweb: Impossible!
→ MONEY, MONEY, MONEY. Your dream is to know the world but you are afraid of not getting it because your uncle is not Gilito? Welcome to the club! All backpackers have been through this, but there is a secret: you can travel without spending much. And there are also ways to make a living and self-finance the trip. Or get free accommodation on your trips.
→ TIME. Normally a backpacker unlike a tourist travels for long periods ... weeks, months or years! But it is not indispensable, you can be a backpacker on a weekend!
→ THE LOOK. Starting with a backpack does not make you a true traveler. The difference will be made by your eyes. You have to stop seeing the world as through a shop window, you have to learn to look at it, to feel it. If the tourist is the one who watches a movie, the backpacker is who is behind the camera, who narrates it and who feels everything that happens without being limited to the moment of the "action chack!"
Are you ready to learn a little more about the backpacker's way of traveling?
The family is that of the backpacker, but the species are the most varied: there is the globe globetrotter that never moves without updating the status of Facebook with its latest i-phone, the neo hippy who believes in the strength of peace & love, the guy beach, the mountaineer which does not fall below 1000 meters, or the urban which prefers the asphalt jungle. The lonely or the one who moves in pack surrounded by their kind ... there are backpackers of so many types that it would be a mistake to catalog them all, but they always share some characteristics: backpack, budget lowcost and different look.
Let's not spin it. To know about how much money do we need to travel It is the number one dilemma. How much does it cost to travel? If you move as a backpacker depends largely on one thing: destiny. In our 9 month adventure in Asia we have spent between eating, sleeping, moving, safe, visas an average of € 14 a day! Of course you can spend less, or more! It depends on how you manage ... There are always ways to save a little money, check out our articles on "How to save traveling" and "Tricks to save on your day to day". And you can always get some way to self-finance the trip.
Learn these acronyms: GH. The Guest House They are hostels that offer cheap rooms or dorms. Another option is to stay in Homestay, private houses that rent rooms at convenient prices. And if you do not want to spend anything but do not want to sleep under a bridge is the couchsurfing: an online community where you can search / offer a sofa / bed / floor to sleep. And the best of all is not saving the hostel money if you do not come into direct contact with the local people!
There is also the alternative of work a few hours in exchange for accommodation, very interesting to stay seasons in the same place. We did it in Japan and it was an unforgettable experience. We also fall in love with housesitting and live in several countries taking care of pets. 🙂 You can see many offers on the Woldpackers website, you will have to subscribe, if you do it with this link you have a $ 10 discount!
We tell you many options on how to get free accommodation on your trips.
We already know, mom's food is the best, without a doubt. But out there there is a world full of surprises and if you like to eat and discover new flavors, Wait and see! In many countries you eat with € 1 in street stalls, and how good! Rice, noodles, curry and the oddest dishes. And if you are traveling through Asia, learn to say NO SPICY in the local language: the taste buds of Asians, we dream them!
Bus, train, ship, plane? You would hallucinate knowing how many means of transport exist: tuk tuk, rickshaw, jeepney, canoe, tandem, motorcycle of the Second World War, horse carriage, unidentified flying object that if caught by NASA puts it under state secret ... No matter, the important thing is that it is the most economical! And remember that the ecofriendly and FREE means of transport are your feet!
How to arm it? Oops that depends on you! In our passport (the traveler's best friend!), Camera, multi-use pareo (it is the most versatile object in the world!), Travel notebook, notebook and mp3! Keep in mind that it is a backpack, not the bag of Mary Poppins, but above all remember that it will be you who will have to charge it day after day, not the opposite. If you travel in summer or in warm countries 10 kg are more than enough! Anyway, I always fit the mini hair straightener, backpacking yes, but with style! No, this better not to say ...
When you travel as a backpacker you understand that true luxury is not the 5-star hotel, if not lie under the stars. It is walking with bare feet on the grass, is improvising every day what you want to do, is living an adventure where who writes the pages is you, where the days are not numbers and stop being Tuesday, Thursday or Sunday to become the day I met a happy-happy monk, a giant lizard crossed my path, we stayed in a Thai mountain without gasoline ... and many more! But the real luxury is being a boss not a slave to time.
Knowing English helps, that's clear. But it is already known that Italians (Rober is Italian honoris causa) have a natural talent to communicate: we talk with our hands, and what speeches !! They understand us even in Burundi… the important thing anyway is not to have a good accent, or to know a language perfectly, what locals appreciate most is that we are interested in their culture, that we learn some basic words: Hello, how are you, mmm very good, very expensive (with this they laugh fixed!), whatever your name is, goodbye ...But okay, speaking a little English is very important, look at some techniques to learn English in a fun way.
Lao Tse said that a journey of a thousand miles begins with a step. Ythis first step is the most difficult: “If I am not made to travel? And if the plane falls? And if the backpack falls on my foot and I leave my pinky? What if… " We have all gone through this phase, but traveling hundreds of people are known who have been afraid and that thanks to that shy first step they have been able to open their mind, eyes and heart, and have been able to live their dream. If yours is also traveling and knowing the world you know you can! We don't know anyone who has regretted taking that step ...
We hope ourpractical guide for future backpackers you liked it 🙂
