Quotes & Sayings About Backpackers

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. — Annie Fisher

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. — Rita Golden Gelman

Watching it all, I had a panic attack.
Holy shit! Most of the Thirld World sees America through the actions of backpackers. They're our diplomats in places like this. Our grungy kissingers. These folks must think we're all drawstring pant-wearing, Hacky-Sacking, white Rasta freaks. We're doomed. — Franz Wisner

There's a reason that there are oodles of young Aussies, Germans, Japanese, even Chinese backpackers traipsing around the world. They are unencumbered by debilitating student loans. No such luck for the American Theater Arts major with $120,000 in loans. — J. Maarten Troost

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. — Julian Barnes

Backpackers can pack much more meows than baggers. Beggars never feed stray cats as street cats are self-sustaining. — Will Advise

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. — Katy Colins

I bumped into freakish backpackers, made random friends and heard some unusual stories in the time that I spent there. But more than anything, I realized that if ever there was a place tailor made for self-discovery, it would have to be Rishikesh. — Sachin Garg

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

The backpackers are back on the bandwagon like this was my comeback season back, back in the day — Drake

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. — Nino Ricci

They're ruining the city, aren't they," remarked Rafe. "The backpackers. — Caleb Crain

Backpacking has noble ideals: to see how the locals live, to interact with them, to be respectful and blend in as much as possible. Backpackers want to learn, we want to understand the worlds we have entered, not simply consume them. — Rachel Friedman

An America we can be proud of, rather than an America to be embarrassed of. You know it's a sign, when you see American backpackers traveling abroad with Canadian flags on their packs! — Dave Wakeling