Three
people, sat around a campfire, in the wild, next to the crocodile infested
Zambezi River are part of canoe expedition ran by an adventure company- Who is
the tourist? One’s on holiday for two
weeks, the other is a travelling volunteer and the other is on a year-long
round the world trip. That all three are involved in an activity designed for
tourists, and all are, not on packaged holiday trips, makes this question more
difficult than expected. Add to the mix that one of the three is offended to be
labelled a tourist and you also have the makings of a common backpacker debate
that’s been had in youth hostels across the world.
Central to
this debate is the question of what makes a travelling individual, or a
backpacker, different to some other type of tourist. Is it simply that
backpackers are seen to embrace serendipity and are ‘travelling’ for longer
periods of time that is the crucial difference?
Or rather, has the nature and scope of tourism just changed? And if so,
is there a charge of ‘travel snob’ for those who claim to be ‘travellers and not tourists’? I’m inclined to agree with this charge. If not only
for the fact that there are now masses of backpackers following the circuits
advised by the Lonely Planet and Rough Guides, who bounce between the recommended
youth-hostels and party in the designated and seemingly ‘foreigner only’ nightclubs.
And it’s not just Australia, the obvious backpacker destination, which has
embraced backpackers as tourists. Take all those cafe’s along Australia’s East
Coast which serves up the ‘backpacker cuisine’ of fruit shakes, banana pancakes
and the all-time Western favourites like burgers, salads and pasta dishes -
they are now found the world over. From the rooftops in towns across South East
Asia and on the beachfronts throughout Latin America, the backpacker fare is
remarkably consistent.
Furthermore, the mode of transport
used by backpackers is no longer characterised by the dilapidated forms of
transport - ancient wheezing trains, clapped out local ‘chicken buses’, river
ferries, pickup trucks or local equivalents such as bemos (Indonesia) or tuk
tuks (Thailand) - that backpackers often pride themselves on. Instead, the
backpacker is steadily relying more and more on the local
tourist industry. Organised trips to popular local spots and arranged cheap
transport to the next backpacker destination are now becoming the rule, and not the exception. Often these methods are quicker and allow lone
travellers to meet fellow backpackers, but it does break the traveller’s ethos
of meeting locals and experiencing ‘real’ life experiences which, supposedly, makes
the difference between the traveller and the tourist.
Indeed, a ‘backpacker’
may be better described as a tourist on a budget, who is always adjusting
between serendipity and planning depending on his or her mood, health, and bank-balance.
In this light, the current phenomenon of backpacking is perhaps best viewed in
the broader context of tourism and the economic and political developments brought
about by globalisation. Gone now, is the job for life type of career. And here instead
are the temporary / part-time jobs that enable one to save (or sponge-off
parents) and travel. So what was once a marginal
and unusual activity undertaken by hippies and adventurous dropouts is now an
accepted form of tourism. That the backpacker is now an activity perhaps more
akin to mass tourism
than to a form of ‘genuine travel’ suggests that those travelling on a budget
are not quite ‘the brave and intrepid explorer who is seeking the ‘natural’
native’ they wish to paint themselves as. This is not to say that backpacking
is not a worthwhile and adventurous endeavour, but recognition that backpacking
now forms a large part contemporary tourism and to pretend otherwise is not
only archaic, but a little bit snobbish too.
