Backpaking lifestyle
of these lifestyle travellers. My past travel periods typically ranged from six to nine months,
as after this length of time I ordinarily exhausted my savings and turned to casual
employment in the United States to save up funds for my next extended backpacking trip.
Whilst I once adhered to a romanticised vision of a life of backpacking, the research process
saw an eventual ‘secularisation’ of my disposition towards lifestyle travel, despite my
continuing interest in de-marginalising this lifestyle choice. My travel experiences and
research journey thus not only affect how I continue to interpret lifestyle travel, but also
manifest in the present text as a more critical and less romanticised reading of this
phenomenon than I have held in the past.
As field sites, India and Thailand have reputations as attractive destinations for long-term
tourism (Cohen, 1982; Elsrud, 2001) with established backpacker enclaves that provide
contact points with lifestyle travellers
annaabi.ee 
