Backpaking lifestyle
harder to find when you stay in the same place. So, for example, really simple
words like freedom, spontaneity, aloneness, miracles, and newness (Ryan,
Australian, 48).
A traveller identity, like all social identities, is based on a belief of what one is not in
relation to the Other (Hall, 1996). Thus, whilst life on the road is positively valued by the
participants, life at home is portrayed in opposition as constraining, regressive, boring,
routinised, materialistic and production-oriented:
I couldn’t live the same lifestyle back home. I didn’t have the same free spirit
there. There’s too many rules, regulations, taxes, laws, everything’s confined. It’s
too constrictive for me now with the way I feel, the way I think, the way I want to
live. I think if you travel long enough, there comes a point in time where you’re
annaabi.ee 
