Backpacking Quotes

My meals were easily made, for they were all alike and simple, only a cupful of tea and bread. ~ John Muir

If you want to read anything nasty about me, just go to the backpacker websites. There's this kind of elitist branch where they really believe that I had no business going backpacking. ~ Cheryl Strayed

To equip a pedestrian with shelter, bedding, utensils, food, and other necessities, in a pack so light and small that he can carry it without overstrain, is really a fine art. ~ Horace Kephart

It is one of the blessings of wilderness life that it shows us how few things we need in order to be perfectly happy. ~ Horace Kephart

When I left school, I went backpacking around the world for two years. ~ Georgia Salpa

Millennials: We lost the genetic lottery. We graduated high school into terrorist attacks and wars. We graduated college into a recession and mounds of debt. We will never acquire the financial cushion, employment stability, and material possessions of our parents. We are often more educated, experienced, informed, and digitally fluent than prior generations, yet are constantly haunted by the trauma of coming of age during the detonation of the societal structure we were born into. But perhaps we are overlooking the silver lining. We will have less money to buy the material possessions that entrap us. We will have more compassion and empathy because our struggles have taught us that even the most privileged can fall from grace. We will have the courage to pursue our dreams because we have absolutely nothing to lose. We will experience the world through backpacking, couch surfing, and carrying on interesting conversations with adventurers in hostels because our bank accounts can't supply the Americanized resorts. Our hardships will obligate us to develop spiritual and intellectual substance. Maybe having roommates and buying our clothes at thrift stores isn't so horrible as long as we are making a point to pursue genuine happiness. ~ Maggie Georgiana Young

They're the fakes... Those who travel to exotic places, but never walk the streets or meet the people. Preferring instead their cosy interiors of buses, hotels and holiday bars. That's how Harry sees them. A backpacker is never a part of their breed. ~ Harry Whitewolf

I would never go travelling on my own. Some people like to go backpacking alone, but there's no way I would do that, even if you paid me - I just don't see the point. If I discover something beautiful, for me it's very important to be able to share it with someone and not just see it for myself. ~ Olga Kurylenko

I'd really like to visit India and South America. I think India will be a great mix of sightseeing and relaxing, and I've got a feeling it will also be good for one's soul and spirit. And I'd love to go backpacking around South America at some point. I did that in Australia when I was younger, and the camaraderie was great fun. ~ Emilia Fox

Backpacking has noble ideals: to see how the locals live, to interact with them, to be respectful and blend in as much as possible. Backpackers want to learn, we want to understand the worlds we have entered, not simply consume them. ~ Rachel Friedman

When pressed, hunters who claim that they just want "to be out in the wilderness," will admit that the kill is essential - or at least the hope of a kill. As it turns out, there is no correlation between hunting and hiking, climbing, backpacking, kayaking, or any other outdoor activity. Hunters do not purposefully linger in the woods after a kill, but quickly begin the process of preparing to head home with the corpse. For hunters, the kill is the climax - the most important moment. They are not driving into the woods (or sometimes actually walking) for the sake of beauty, but in the hope of a kill. ~ Lisa Kemmerer

Meandering cows, tenacious bicyclers, belching taxis, rickshaws, fearless pedestrians and the occasional mobile 'cigarette and sweets' stand all fought our taxi for room on the narrow two-lane road turned local byway. ~ Jennifer S. Alderson

Go to other countries. Not a typical backpacking tour. Planned tour
means you will hang with Americans on bikes and flirt with drunk
Germans and someone will steal your Levi's in the hostel and a guy
from Poland will sock you in the face while bad techno plays
everywhere and you will learn nothing except that your face hurts and
not everyone showers. Get into other cultures and talk politics and
love. Meeting other people is the only way to know if you believe what
you believe cause it's been handed to you, or if it really rings true
in your heart.
Getting lost should be seen as a sweet chance to be found.
Remember, you belong everywhere. ~ Derrick Brown

Then came the gadgeteer, otherwise known as the sporting-goods dealer. He has draped the American outdoorsman with an infinity of contraptions, all offered as aids to self-reliance, hardihood, woodcraft, or marksmanship, but too often functioning as substitutes for them. Gadgets fill the pockets, they dangle from neck and belt. The overflow fills the auto-trunk and also the trailer. Each item of outdoor equipment grows lighter and often better, but the aggregate poundage becomes tonnage. ~ Aldo Leopold

When I was 23, I went backpacking around Australia for three months. I saved up a few grand, quit my job and flew to Sydney, then went to Melbourne and up the East Coast, which was an incredible experience. I remember running out of money and getting my mum to send me a few hundred quid, which helped me get by. ~ Olly Murs

Backpacking is the art of knowing what not to take. ~ Sheridan Anderson

Nothing was ever in tune. People just blindly grabbed at whatever there was: communism, health foods, zen, surfing, ballet, hypnotism, group encounters, orgies, biking, herbs, Catholicism, weight-lifting, travel, withdrawal, vegetarianism, India, painting, writing, sculpting, composing, conducting, backpacking, yoga, copulating, gambling, drinking, hanging around, frozen yogurt, Beethoven, Back, Buddha, Christ, TM, H, carrot juice, suicide, handmade suits, jet travel, New York City, and then it all evaporated and fell apart. People had to find things to do while waiting to die. I guess it was nice to have a choice. ~ Charles Bukowski

My first time to Rome was when I was backpacking with my best friend around Europe for a month at 18 years old, so I remember that excitement of being away from home properly for the first time. ~ Natalie Dormer

I had about as much chance to do that as I did of backpacking my car to the top of Mount Rushmore. ~ Jim Butcher

I made these Sierra trips, carrying only a sackful of bread with a little tea and sugar, and was thus independent and free ... ~ John Muir

Someone once told me a story about long term relationships. To think of them as a continent to explore. I could spend a lifetime backpacking through Africa, and I would still never know all there is to know about that continent. To stay the course, to stay intentional, to stay curious and connected - that's the heart of it. But it's so easy to lose track of the trail, to get tired, to want to give up, or to want a new adventure. It can be so easy to lose sight of the goodness and mystery within the person sitting right in front of you. ~ Joy Williams

The man with the knapsack is never lost. No matter whither he may stray, his food and shelter are right with him, and home is wherever he may choose to stop. ~ Horace Kephart

Wilderness areas are first of all a series of sanctuaries for the primitive arts of wilderness travel, especially canoeing and packing. I suppose some will wish to debate whether it is important to keep these primitive arts alive. I shall not debate it. Either you know it in your bones, or you are very, very old. ~ Aldo Leopold

After seeing South America, my eyes were open to the suffering and injustices in the world. I wanted to keep exploring so I could do something to make the world better. I was on a quest to change the world; I for sure changed my own world. ~ Kathleen Parisien

I've been doing long-distance backpacking since 2002 when I hiked the Appalachian Trail. You start to calm down and relax and get into the slower rhythm of nature. ~ John Mackey

I quit my job. I bought myself a real cheap, like, around-the-world flight ticket, and I went to 16 countries for six months just backpacking, living in cheap hostels, looking for stories with a camera and my ex-girlfriend. ~ Malik Bendjelloul

I'm in love. Again. How on earth do people pick a favorite travel spot? ~ Jen Malone

After the cafes of Paris with their exquisite wines and creamy fromages, crepes and steak tartare
screaming Adore me!
Madrid was these store-bought hunks of unyielding cheese and brick-hard baguettes, consumed in leafless Buen Retiro Park.ll Madrid, dressed as it was, tasting as it did, prideful as hell, didn't care what you thought about it on your junior-year backpacking trip. That was your problem. ~ Michael Paterniti

Hiking is not escapism; it's realism. The people who choose to spend time outdoors are not running away from anything; we are returning to where we belong. ~ Jennifer Pharr Davis

Tragedy seems to bring out all varieties of unexpected qualities in people. It was as if some folks got dunked in plastic, vacuum-sealed like backpacking dinners, and could do nothing but sweat in their private hell. And others seemed to have just the opposite problem, as if disaster had dipped them in acid instead, stripping off the outside layer of skin that once protected them from the slings and arrows of other people's outrageous fortunes. For these sorts, just walking down the street in the wake of every stranger's ill wind became an agony, an aching slog through this man's fresh divorce and this woman's throat cancer. They were in hell, too, but it was everybody's hell, this big, shoreless, sloshing sea of toxic waste. ~ Lionel Shriver

I was a little hippie on a world backpacking adventure, and suddenly I became a vampire princess. I still find it hard to believe that it is real. I feel ludicrously lucky to have been chosen to play such a compassionate, complex character for my first film, and I am so grateful to all the beautiful people who made it possible for me. It was a dream come true. I felt like Cinderella every day, going to work with this amazing team on this dream script. If Cinderella were a vampire. ~ Lucy Fry

The tourists come here to stay put in their hotels, with their holiday-friendly staff, private beaches, private bars and private sunshine. And yet still, when they get back home, they'll claim they've been to Egypt. ~ Harry Whitewolf

…wilderness backpacking can be a form of spiritual practice…Exposure to the harsh realities and fierce beauties of a world not aimed at my comfort has a way of cutting through the self-absorption of my life. The uncontrolled mystery of nature puts the ego in check and invites the soul back (in more than one way) to the ground of its being. It elicits the soul's deepest desire, enforces a rigorous discipline, and demands a life marked by activism and resistance. It reminds me, in short, that spiritual practice – far from being anything ethereal – is a highly tactile, embodied, and visceral affair. (p 4) ~ Belden C. Lane

There is a lot of stuff I like. I love backpacking. I love going to an island where I can just sit on the beach and read or scuba dive and sail. I do a lot of that. I still go backpacking around Europe in the summers and staying in hostels. I love that. ~ Sam Altman

It had nothing to do with gear or footwear or the backpacking fads or philosophies of any particular era or even with getting from point A to point B.
It had to do with how it felt to be in the wild. With what it was like to walk for miles with no reason other than to witness the accumulation of trees and meadows, mountains and deserts, streams and rocks, rivers and grasses, sunrises and sunsets. The experience was powerful and fundamental. It seemed to me that it had always felt like this to be a human in the wild, and as long as the wild existed it would always feel this way. ~ Cheryl Strayed

Basking in the attention of the people who gathered around me, I didn't just feel like a backpacking expert. I felt like a hard-ass motherfucking Amazonian queen. ~ Cheryl Strayed

The world isn't built with a ramp. ~ Walt Balenovich

Backpackers can pack much more meows than baggers. Beggars never feed stray cats as street cats are self-sustaining. ~ Will Advise

The success that comes from my books is not something I feel very comfortable with. Past a certain point you have to accept the idea that the success is a lot to do with the timing and luck and that divorces you from it massively. There are aspects of it that I haven't got used to at all. But I've enjoyed some parts of it massively. It relates to the same reason I did a lot of backpacking - partly for the experience - it's something to tell my grandkids. It's a weird chain of events to have in your life. ~ Alex Garland

When I travel, people say 'Yet another place in this world'. But I see 'Another world inside every place I go ~ Vivek Thangaswamy

Under most conditions, the best roof for your bedroom is the sky. This commonsense arrangement saves weight, time, energy, and money. ~ Colin Fletcher

Most of my colleagues go on backpacking trips when they have to do some thinking. I go to a good hardware store and head for the oiliest, dustiest corners ... If they're really good, they don't hassle me. They let me wander around and think. Young hardware clerks have a lot of hubris. They think they can help you find anything ... Old hardware clerks have learned the hard way that nothing in a hardware store ever gets bought for its nominal purpose. You buy something that was designed to do one thing, and you use it for another. ~ Neal Stephenson

When I was a teenager, I went to Europe on a backpacking trip by myself, and I met a woman who was following Sebadoh. It was the early 1990s, and that was my introduction to indie rock. ~ Jenny Lewis

When I was 18 years old, in a more innocent time, my first backpacking trip through Europe, I sneaked into the Temple of Saturn in the Roman Forum after nightfall and spent several hours in there avoiding the guards patrolling. ~ Guy Gavriel Kay

Nobody warned me about this part. When I envisioned my trip, I imagined exciting adventures, exotic locales, a jet-set lifestyle. I never thought grief and doubt would climb into my backpack and come with me. I pictured standing at the top of the Sun Gate, looking down at Machu Picchu, without ever thinking about the steps it would take to get there. This is the curse of wanderlust, when the postcard image becomes a brutal reality. ~ Maggie Downs

I'd say I needed to find myself, if that didn't sound like I was heading into the Himalayas, taking only a backpack stuffed with angst and clean underwear. ~ Kelley Armstrong

It's not "jalan-jalan" nor "liburan". It's just something we do naturally. Like breathing and eating. It's basically living. ~ Riana Ambarsari

The old school of thought would have you believe that you'd be a fool to take on nature without arming yourself with every conceivable measure of safety and comfort under the sun. But that isn't what being in nature is all about. Rather, it's about feeling free, unbounded, shedding the distractions and barriers of our civilization - not bringing them with us. ~ Ryel Kestenbaum

Our happiest moments as tourists always seem to come when we stumble upon one thing while in pursuit of something else. ~ Lawrence Block

I see myself being married to my girlfriend and backpacking all over the world. If I can go out and do a 15-mile hike and climb a 12,000-ft. peak, I'm good to go. ~ Matt Long