Backpacker? No. Free traveler, yes!
Why should you sleep in places with poor comfort, risk the proliferation of intestinal parasites in places with questionable hygiene, drag a dusty backpack for miles, wear shapeless clothes and find other backpackers around? a beer in the evening to tell your adventures under the pretext that you are young and backpacker? Why would you have to pay for a very expensive week in a hotel-club in the Mediterranean, put up with the presence of noisy entertainers around a swimming pool, stand in line in front of an insipid buffet in a cafeteria atmosphere, see the country through a timed excursion? on the pretext that we are a family with children?
IN THE CASE
Let me tell you another story. Maybe the start of your next adventure. I usually buy a flight ticket on the Internet, a travel guideto book my first nights in a hotel and leave like this, with my spouse and my children under my arm. Neither really “package”, nor really backpacker. Of course, free traveler, it does not fit into the boxes.
In our current societies, we like to put people in boxes. It allows you to situate, categorize and it’s awfully handy for making population statistics. Personally, I prefer the white to black pages of my stories. Free to choose, to think, to be me.
When we talk about travel, it’s the same. There are only 2 boxes: Indiana Jones or Francois Pignon, adventurous or stuck, reckless or chicken. You will give in to the call of the organized trip or you will brave all the dangers of the backpacker. Two tiny options that have the annoying tendency to make me see red or mope.
Like you, fellow readers, my weeks of paid vacation can only be counted on the fingers of one hand. That is why I opt for comfortable holidays without depriving myself. I choose my destinations according to these criteria and prefer to give up leaving if the travel conditions do not meet my expectations and those of my little family.
I like having the choice, staying 1 or 2 more nights here, offer me a nice hotel over there, fall for a dinner in a renowned restaurant, enjoy a giant ice cream with my children in front of a wild game of yam’s, have the dirty laundry washed, buy lots of souvenirs, take taxis, tuk-tuks, rickshaws to avoid fatigue, drink a mojito-passion in a sky-bar, take the time for a delicious massage. Still no travel-kamikaze the wasp!
Lucky, fearless, ambitious, daring, backpacker, adventurous, no doubt. But first and foremost a traveler : the one that only ticks the starting box.
