Lifestyle travelling
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Lifestyle travelling is a type of alternative lifestyle practiced by people who wish to travel their entire lives, usually from country to country, in preference to "settling down" with a family or other traditional life goals. Some lifestyle travellers can actually develop a career or even start a family, but usually the costs associated with renting housing (as in hotel rooms, hostels, or other) and obtaining only freelance work prohibit this.
Young people often pursue a year or two of this lifestyle, called a Wanderjahre, before settling down, returning to university, or otherwise resuming a regular lifestyle. This is known as backpacking. A very small minority, however, follow this path for a major part or even all of their adult lives.
Some lifestyle travellers purchase a sailboat, which allows a place to live and a mode of transportation at the same time. Others rely on cheap berths on cargo ships or modern aviation to take them from destination to destination, purchasing, for example, inexpensive standby or open-jaw tickets to meet the flexibilities of their schedule. Popular destinations include Goa and other areas of India, Thailand, Mexico, Vietnam, Cambodia, Algeria, Morocco, and to a lesser degree Egypt, Turkey, and Romania. Lifestyle travellers, as opposed to short-term backpackers, tend to spend at least three to six months in their various homecities, usually to cut down on costs but also to get the full advantage from each new culture they explore. Stays of two, five or even ten years are not uncommon, at the far end of which the only distinction between being an expatriate and a lifestyle traveller is the certainty that one is leaving.
