Best Backpacking Quotes & Sayings

What am I going to do?
I wish I knew the answer, Sienna. The man your going to marry is walking this earth. He's alive right now, somewhere. He could be in Australia, backpacking with friends; he could be working in a bar in China; he could be a hotshot American lawyer; he could be a musician; he could be going about his life in London at this very moment ... Any day now, your paths could cross. She smiled when I said this, like it brought her comfort. — Jessica Thompson

When I left school, I went backpacking around the world for two years. — Georgia Salpa

The old school of thought would have you believe that you'd be a fool to take on nature without arming yourself with every conceivable measure of safety and comfort under the sun. But that isn't what being in nature is all about. Rather, it's about feeling free, unbounded, shedding the distractions and barriers of our civilization - not bringing them with us. — Ryel Kestenbaum

The rule of thumb for the old backpacking was that the weight of your pack should equal the weight of yourself and the kitchen range combined. Just a casual glance at the full pack sitting on the floor could give you a double hernia and fuse four vertebrae. After carrying the pack all day, you had to remember to tie one leg to a tree before you dropped it. Otherwise you would float off into space. The pack eliminated the need for any special kind of ground-gripping shoes, because your feet would sink a foot and a half into hard-packed earth, two inches into solid rock. — Patrick F. McManus

I see myself being married to my girlfriend and backpacking all over the world. If I can go out and do a 15-mile hike and climb a 12,000-ft. peak, I'm good to go. — Matt Long

Faxian and Xuanzang might have been the first Chinese to travel to India, but sometimes it felt like I was the first. — Hong Mei

When I was a teenager, I went to Europe on a backpacking trip by myself, and I met a woman who was following Sebadoh. It was the early 1990s, and that was my introduction to indie rock. — Jenny Lewis

The world isn't built with a ramp. — Walt Balenovich

Sunrise over the mountain-forest was gorgeous - Aurora brushing out her golden tresses with a comb of dark-needled pine and bare-limbed oak. — J. Aleksandr Wootton

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. — Charles Bukowski

There is a lot of stuff I like. I love backpacking. I love going to an island where I can just sit on the beach and read or scuba dive and sail. I do a lot of that. I still go backpacking around Europe in the summers and staying in hostels. I love that. — Sam Altman

I was a little hippie on a world backpacking adventure, and suddenly I became a vampire princess. I still find it hard to believe that it is real. I feel ludicrously lucky to have been chosen to play such a compassionate, complex character for my first film, and I am so grateful to all the beautiful people who made it possible for me. It was a dream come true. I felt like Cinderella every day, going to work with this amazing team on this dream script. If Cinderella were a vampire. — Lucy Fry

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

Under most conditions, the best roof for your bedroom is the sky. This commonsense arrangement saves weight, time, energy, and money. — Colin Fletcher

Then came the gadgeteer, otherwise known as the sporting-goods dealer. He has draped the American outdoorsman with an infinity of contraptions, all offered as aids to self-reliance, hardihood, woodcraft, or marksmanship, but too often functioning as substitutes for them. Gadgets fill the pockets, they dangle from neck and belt. The overflow fills the auto-trunk and also the trailer. Each item of outdoor equipment grows lighter and often better, but the aggregate poundage becomes tonnage. — Aldo Leopold

I quit my job. I bought myself a real cheap, like, around-the-world flight ticket, and I went to 16 countries for six months just backpacking, living in cheap hostels, looking for stories with a camera and my ex-girlfriend. — Malik Bendjelloul

I would never go travelling on my own. Some people like to go backpacking alone, but there's no way I would do that, even if you paid me - I just don't see the point. If I discover something beautiful, for me it's very important to be able to share it with someone and not just see it for myself. — Olga Kurylenko

I'd really like to visit India and South America. I think India will be a great mix of sightseeing and relaxing, and I've got a feeling it will also be good for one's soul and spirit. And I'd love to go backpacking around South America at some point. I did that in Australia when I was younger, and the camaraderie was great fun. — Emilia Fox

In 1995, when I was backpacking through Europe solo, I would head to the train station, look up at the big board, and decide right there and then where I would go that day. — Joseph Pisani

The success that comes from my books is not something I feel very comfortable with. Past a certain point you have to accept the idea that the success is a lot to do with the timing and luck and that divorces you from it massively. There are aspects of it that I haven't got used to at all. But I've enjoyed some parts of it massively. It relates to the same reason I did a lot of backpacking - partly for the experience - it's something to tell my grandkids. It's a weird chain of events to have in your life. — Alex Garland

When I was 23, I went backpacking around Australia for three months. I saved up a few grand, quit my job and flew to Sydney, then went to Melbourne and up the East Coast, which was an incredible experience. I remember running out of money and getting my mum to send me a few hundred quid, which helped me get by. — Olly Murs

Basking in the attention of the people who gathered around me, I didn't just feel like a backpacking expert. I felt like a hard-ass motherfucking Amazonian queen. — Cheryl Strayed

My first time to Rome was when I was backpacking with my best friend around Europe for a month at 18 years old, so I remember that excitement of being away from home properly for the first time. — Natalie Dormer

Books possess an ounce-of-weight to minute-of-entertainment ratio that compares quite favorably to intoxicants. — Jon Krakauer

I, made in England, felt excluded, miffed, resistant to the idea of even visiting India, a position of increasing absurdity as, one by one, backpacking friends returned from the place with the standard anecdotal combo of nirvanic epiphany and toilet horror. — Glen Duncan

Joy of Backpacking, — Elizabeth Wenk

If you want to read anything nasty about me, just go to the backpacker websites. There's this kind of elitist branch where they really believe that I had no business going backpacking. — Cheryl Strayed

I'd say I needed to find myself, if that didn't sound like I was heading into the Himalayas, taking only a backpack stuffed with angst and clean underwear. — Kelley Armstrong

When I was 18 years old, in a more innocent time, my first backpacking trip through Europe, I sneaked into the Temple of Saturn in the Roman Forum after nightfall and spent several hours in there avoiding the guards patrolling. — Guy Gavriel Kay

Always take the scenic route. — Janice Anderson

...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

I've been doing long-distance backpacking since 2002 when I hiked the Appalachian Trail. You start to calm down and relax and get into the slower rhythm of nature. — John Mackey

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. — Frank Kusy

When I travel, people say 'Yet another place in this world'. But I see 'Another world inside every place I go — Vivek Thangaswamy