After three backpacking trips, one of the most fascinating things for me about traveling a la backpack is the subculture. There are a couple of distinct tribes that one runs into in almost every hostel…
First there are traveling couples. Most couples treat backpacking as a more-adventurous-than-average romantic get away, but many pairs actually meet while traveling. Couples tend to seek out other couples for company, and spontaneous double date dinners seem to be the main way they meet new people on the road. I’ve had really positive interactions with traveling couples for the most part; on average they seem more mellow, tend to veer on the slightly older side (late 20s early 30s), and are very pleasant company. But as a solo traveler it’s hard to toe the line between good company and a third wheel.
Next we have one of the most common type of backpackers, the recent graduates. Most of the people you find in a youth hostel have either just graduated high school or college. Backpacking is often a graduation gift to themselves, or an occasion to take a breather from academia and work before going back into the daily grind. Depending on how long these kids are traveling for, they will tend to have different personalities and behave in distinct ways as well. Those with a timeline and only a couple of weeks will be very well organized and have most of their days planned, others with a year or more and only fuzzy sense of itinerary will often be found simply lounging several days at a time in a place without feeling guilty about not taking in the sights.
People travel for all types of reasons, and there is the saying that not all those who wander are lost, but on the backpacking trail it seems like very most people are wandering because they’re in some way or another lost. A lot of people (although they probably won’t admit it if you’d ask them) are traveling to pretty much find themselves. As cliched as it is, traveling still makes sense as a hiatus for people to figure things out. I don’t think there’s any magical quality of the air in Latin America or India that offers enlightenmen, but often natural downtime during a trip and not having a job or school to worry about gives oneself a lot of time to reflect. I commonly meet people who are changing careers, have just quit (or gotten fired), ended a long relationship, or just don’t really know what their next steps should be. These guys or gals are always quite fun to shoot the shit with , and it always surprises me how quickly and fully strangers open their hearts up to you over a beer at the hostel bar.
Last but not least, a subset often of the recent graduate travelers are the backpacking fratstars (or their corresponding fratstarlets). Their lives are pretty simple, drink as much and as often as possible, and sleep with as many people as possible before they go back home. For them traveling is a means for easy access to drugs and cheap booze, and to meet other people to party hard with. It’s a bit puzzling at first to meet people who come half way across the world to South America or Asia only to party with kids from the same country, but I’ve come to see that they have pretty good reasons to do so (re: easy access to drugs, cheap living, like-minded people). I can’t help but think though that it’s a bit of a shame to come to a completely different country and culture but immerse yourself in booze and miss out on the place itself.
Jack Wang 