*this article is free from all forms of artificial intelligence chatbot utilization*
The following is an excerpt from the best-selling adventure memoir, “Cold Beer and a Hot Dart”, available now on Amazon:
“We made it to Coffee Bay late into the night and came upon two unique hostels side by side. We checked into the Coffee Shack Backpackers and made our way out to the community backyard, entering into the most welcoming scene.
Let me paint this picture…
Some backpackers sit playing cards and talking over cold beers at one table. Some are poring over maps and routes at another table. Others circle together and play various African instruments while a guitar strums and voices sing. You can hear intermixed languages throughout the grounds, and each person that you make eye contact with shimmers with a pure energy of fascination and adventure.
Sojourners, wanderers, and backpackers are a certain breed of traveler, and let me tell you why they are the most authentic and interesting group of people roaming around our world.
Backpackers are those that live and breathe for nature, wonder, peace, and adventure- all intertwined with the romanticism of exploration and appreciation of culture. Backpackers are those that choose to escape the vanities of the developed world, leaving behind pointless possessions and realigning priorities to be that which can be captured as a memory, that which can be journaled, and absorbing any experience amongst the open road that will captivate the mind and hit all the pleasure senses.
There is nothing fake about a backpacker. You’ll rarely see the latest clothing fashions, you’ll rarely see excessive makeup, or those that are freshly toned from the gym. With a backpacker, you’ll likely find a vulnerable human with a past, with hurts, with strengths and weaknesses and insecurities and imperfections.
Conversations with a backpacker will rarely involve the latest TV shows or the ins and outs of a 401(k) plan. Fellowship with a backpacker will involve an interest in the last time you impressed yourself and an interest in the last time you experienced life and love. Real shit, the shit that matters in the grand scheme of this one life.
These travelers thrive off of physical and emotional connection like none other, for there is very little to lose when everything most cherished is tightly wrapped around your back. You’ll sleep together, eat together, and tell stories of the road while planning out your next adventure together.
You’re in a foreign unknown land together, and while you know that there are risks and dangers all around, backpackers also mutually know that beauty is found amidst every atmosphere- be it chaos or peace. The mystery and anticipation of the adventure ahead instantly bonds backpackers together like family, regardless of skin color or nationality.
Backpackers discuss their native countries together while debating and laughing off cultural differences and political nonsense. A backpacker will challenge your worldview beyond the default societal mindsets and conditioning that you may have been programmed into, therefore broadening one’s cross-cultural knowledge and sharpening critical thinking.
A backpacker will brave disease with you, laugh with you, cry with you, hold you, love you, and cherish you only as you are and nothing more or less. A backpacker will make you believe that authentic friendship is possible, and the fellowship encountered on the trail will forever be etched in your memories, completely altering the meaning of life.
Life on the open road will humble a person no doubt, and it is people like the backpacker- one that chooses change, chooses experience, chooses excitement, chooses simplicity, chooses challenge- that are out there making life pretty fucking worthwhile.”
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