Question:
In relative terms, how common do you think this is. I'm thinking of the typeof travel where the under 30 crowd travels frugally on extended tripsabroad, packing light and for the most part staying in hostels and usingtrains and buses and mingling with other travelers they've met. For lack ofa better term I use "cultural backpacking, although of course a lot ofpeople do take more than a backpack. Another term might be "hippie travel",although that term has certain connotations I don't wish to invoke.

Now that I'm too old for this, I kind of wish I had done this when I had achance. However my feeling is this is just nostalgia. I wasn't really awareof this concept at the time, but I don't think I would have been to excitedabout the concept. (I'm very introverted and have always focused more on thephysical aspect of travel- think taking pictures of roads- as opposed to thesocial aspect). I never knew anyone that did cultural backpacking either.

I kind of get the impression this is the type of thing that everyone dreamsabout on some level, but is actually rare in real terms. I don't know thenumbers just for young people, but overall only 20% of Americans havepassports. Figure maybe half of those are for business travel, and then halfof that would be budget travel, so we're talking in the 5% range tops?

Thinking about this while I'm considering traveling to Iceland and renting acar and staying in a nice hotel...

Your thoughts?

Answer: It's very hard to talk in terms of numbers because budget travel takesso many different forms. (BTW, "backpacking"--no need for"cultural"--is perhaps the most idiomatic word for it; wildernesstravel with a backpack is "hiking" in the USA and "hillwalking" inBritain.) It can range from three- or four-day citybreaks (if one isfortunate enough to live in Europe and within easy reach of budgetairlines) to round-the-world trips. The popularity of certain forms ofbudget travel is also determined, to an extent, by culture, bygeography, and by the pricing structures for airfares.

But, speaking in generalities, in Europe it is more common to backpackover a series of short trips (the budget airlines are full of peoplewho do this), while Americans and people from British Commonwealthcountries like Canada and Australia have to get their sightseeing donein long trips, simply because airfare is so expensive for transoceanicjourneys. In places like Britain, Australia, and to a lesser degreeCanada, "gap years" are part of the culture, and round-the-world tripsare a very common way to spend them. Many Europeans also try to spendan extended period of time (usually six months to a year) somewhere inthe developing world; one Norwegian woman I know spent six monthstravelling around South America, one Swiss spent a com