Those of us who have spent time traveling to distant locales with nothing but a backpack know well the thrill of
experiencing new places and the people who innhabit them. There is an indescribable joy to entering a new town or city
or village for the first time. This is the essence of travel, all the wonderfully fresh input to your senses in seeing
a place that you’ve never known and may perhaps never visit again.
This article by a veteran backpacker does a
nice job of ennumerating the thrills you get when you’re on the road, and it gets to the heart of the backpacker
experience. It talks about all the new things that you encounter, the people, the sometimes bizarre connection they
have with a place and the fascinating story behind how they got there. The stories (briefly) told here are going to be
familiar to anyone who has backpacked, but sitting here reading it, some of my best memories came flooding back to
me.