One night, while backpacking in Guatemala, I was woken up by a pain in my leg. Nearly bumping my head against the upper bunk of the hostel bed, I pulled away the blanket only to find nothing. Confused, I tried going back to sleep, but couldn’t. The pain was still there, and getting worse. Certain I’d been bitten or stung, I got up to properly shake out the blanket, and onto the floor dropped a small, brown scorpion.

Half an hour later, I was on the back of a moped, zigzagging past stray dogs towards the home of the village doctor. But although the nearest hospital was hours away and my throat was starting to go numb, I wasn’t afraid so much as excited. This, I thought, was exactly why I’d come to Guatemala in the first place, and I couldn’t wait to tell people about it. 

Stories like these are more relatable than you might think. For every person who prefers spending their holiday by the infinity pool of an all-inclusive resort, there’s another who sleeps in moldy dormitories, sweats on hours-long bus rides without air conditioning, and lives out of a bulging, threadbare backpack. Instead of rest and relaxation, they seek action, adventure, and “authenticity.” 

A decade of backpacking through countries like Laos, Armenia, and El Salvador has taught me that travel makes poor therapy, finding yourself abroad won’t solve the problems waiting for you back at home, and focusing on the journey rather than the destination isn’t as straightforward as it sounds.

Thanks to a variety of factors—including social media influencers, travel apps like Hostelworld and Couchsurfing, and the post-pandemic prominence of remote work and digital nomadism—backpacking has developed from a niche subculture into a popular form of vacationing.

At the same time, this newfound popularity has brought to light some major contradictions between people’s ideas about backpacking and the experience of itself. Now more........

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