What is the best way to travel?

I think, at least once, we have all fallen into these discussions, and I’m including myself, but I try to do it as little as possible and also to respect the choices of each one.

 

I don’t know how to properly react when I listen to other travelers ensure that others don’t know how to travel and I actually find it ridiculous to even have to define with a name what kind of traveler you are.

Once in Chiang Mai, a gentle traveler assured me that he had made a trip and had managed to “go back to the roots of the backpacking” … my immediate question was… What the hell does that mean?

 

Traveler or Tourist? Backpacker or Flashpacker? Spiritual traveler? Shopping or All-Inclusive Traveler?

The truth is that each one has the freedom to look for the style that best suits him, that makes him happy, that makes him enjoy the trip as an opportunity to live life better.

In the end, that is freedom.

 

 

I’ve been thinking a lot about how my tastes have changed over the years and how this has even affected my travel style.

 

Therefore, this reflection considers my current situation and when it reaches the age of forty, it will probably have to be updated, fortunately, human beings change with each experience and with each story that we live.

 

I don’t think there is a better age, nor a perfect or ideal moment to do anything. The moment will simply be when you are ready to do it.

 

I can’t stop telling you: It’s never too early or too late to fulfill your dreams.

It still amazes me a bit to remember how my trips were like at the beginning.

 

Those first trips began with an exhaustive plan that included a detailed listing of ALL the places I wanted to visit, I was even creating a daily schedule to be able to reach and see all the things I wanted in the 4 weeks I had during the holidays.

 

Of course, I was doing it with my backpack, a very small 20 liters which allowed me to carry only the strictly essential on my back during those 30 or more days of travel.

 

Light travel makes the travel experience simpler, as it gives you greater mobility and independence, especially if you travel alone.

Because yes, those first trips involved walking a lot and hitchhiking if necessary to get as cheap as possible towards my destination.

Traveling with that small backpack, also meant security, because I could have it very close to me and thus prevent possible thefts.
At that time, 16 years ago, traveling in South America was a little less safe than today and above all on the buses, there were many robberies in the trunks.

Then, I was part of the tribe of backpackers who traveled with very little money. I even kinda hated the luxury and thought that the people who stayed in resorts or in five-star hotels were the most boring on Earth.

 

I felt that I would lose the adventure if I didn’t sleep in a tent or in a hostel with more backpackers like me to make friends and share part of the trip.

 

Because traveling meant that: going for adventure, living the world without missing a minute of what was out there.

 

That time was when I was 18 or 20 years old. I traveled with the money I was collecting in the thousands and different jobs I was doing while I was studying. I worked as a waitress, a masseuse, a craftswoman, a saleswoman, and many others.

Is it better to travel at your twenties or the thirties?

 

The trips one does during the twenties are clearly different from those in the thirties, or at least mines are.

Those trips have transformed my travel style into an eclectic, varied and always changing one.

 

Over the years I have been living so many different experiences traveling, which have allowed me to recognize what my interests really are.
I don’t know if it will be the years or only the experiences that make our tastes change, but today I’m very clear that I’m no longer a backpacker.

 

I no longer travel with the anxiety of wanting to know everything in one trip, or not to miss the best party of life.

 

I still call the adventure, I still feel the urge to eat the world, to live intensely every second, but I must assume:

I am no longer a backpacker, but rather a traveler with a backpack

 

At least as I understand the term backpacker, I am no longer willing or say that I enjoy less not having certain comforts in my day to day, even if that means losing some action.

 

I no longer enjoy so much sleeping in a fruit stand to wait for the next bus or hitchhiking to get faster or cheaper to a place.

I now admire those who travel with that style, going cold and hungry sometimes, enduring eternal and uncomfortable journeys … I already lived all that and I know I can do it, so today I choose the opposite.

 

I respect those who travel looking for party and living with many people in the same room, but for me that, today, is the closest to a night of terror.

 

What is being a Flashpacker?

The term Flashpacker began to be used a few years ago and today defines the traveler who has changed his style of travel, from being a backpacker to a traveler with a backpack.

 

A Flashpacker continues to maintain the essence of a backpacker because he still likes adventure, travel independently, without many plans, love interaction with local people, but also likes luxury.

Like me, I still travel with my backpack today, but my tastes have changed.

 

After living the best of both worlds, I prefer comfort and for example, I very much value having a clean, quiet and safe place to sleep.

 

If I don’t have to sleep in a tent I probably will not, because I’d rather have the option of having a freshly brewed coffee at the hotel’s breakfast and clean sheets at night.

The last time I stayed in a backpacker hostel, the one in which there is a party all night, was the worst night of my first stay in La Paz in 2010.

 

I know that many will say that I am crazy, that luxury is only for rich, that hotels are for old, they are boring, etc, but today I choose comfort.

I still stay in hostels a few times, but I choose them very well and hopefully, they are as far away as possible from being a party hostel.

Because having to listen to the conversations of 10 other people, or noises of all kinds, the scents and the mess of whom I don’t even know, no longer generates me any pleasure.

Some indicate that what also differentiates Flashpackers from a backpacker is the use of technology, although I think this is already becoming more transversal and many backpackers are traveling with a tablet, kindle or at least a cell phone to communicate and entertain.

 

 

The truth is that it’s best not to look at definitions and travel, to travel as you can, to travel as you feel is the best way to travel.

Overall, the experiences are always personal and between staying at home and going somewhere I tell you: GO.

 

It doesn’t matter how you travel.

 

If you feel that you have to move and leave, do it, explore, travel the world, and find your own way to travel.

Don’t get confused or bound to anyone saying how you must do it, backpacker, traveler, flashpacker or tourist, no style will make you better or worse traveler.

 

Have the freedom to try and decide what it’s that you like and fits with your life today, have the freedom to change, because tomorrow you may want different things, believe that the perfection doesn’t exist and that everything is always changing … And that is also perfect.

 

Happy travels!

Do you also feel that your travels have changed over the years?