Doer, Watcher, or Wanderer: What’s Your Backpacking Style?
Are you the kind of traveller who arrives at a new place, guidebook in hand, ready to see everything worth seeing, do everything worth doing, and then move on? Or do you prefer a more laid-back approach, chatting to the locals, absorbing the atmosphere, wallowing in a city’s culture?
Or perhaps you’re just a drifter, not too concerned about where you end up or why, just as long as there’s fun to be had, and booze to be consumed?
Ben Groundwater, of the Sydney Morning Herald Travel Blog today pondered those questions, dividing backpackers into three main types: Doers, Watchers and Wanderers.
Doers arrive with expectations: they ‘line up at the museums to see the important pieces, take the open-topped bus tour around the city to get their bearings, climb all the things that are there to be climbed, see all the things that are supposed to be seen, and, if they do all that, walk away thinking “mission accomplished” ‘.
Watchers, on the other hand, prefer a less mapped out experience. They’re the kind of traveller who could ‘spend a whole afternoon in one cafe, sipping coffee after coffee (or beer after beer), chatting to people, and watching the city’s life go by’.
And then there’s the Wanderers, those with no fixed ideas on what to do, or where to go. Wanderers, Groundwater surmises, ‘don’t have any real purpose for travelling, it’s just another place in which to do what they want to do at home – ie, hang out, get drunk, lie in the sun’ (not that there’s anything wrong with that, he adds).
In my case, I’d say I was somewhere in between a Doer and a Wanderer – there are many things I love to see in a new place, but I don’t like racing from one place to another in a mad rush to ‘see it all’. In between, I like to balance it with some watchful down-time, giving me a chance to absorb the experience instead of it becoming just another stop on a long list of must-sees.
What kind of traveller are you?
(Photo: Werner Schnell/Flickr)
Useful (related) links for backpackers:
Book Hostels – find and book your hostel online
Backpackers Travel Insurance – cover your trip with comprehensive travel insurance from WorldNomads.
Posted in General Travel
April 10, 2008 at 4:05 pm
Do you think there could be a dreamer category as well? I get to travel somewhat but not as much as I would like to so some of my trips I really plan out first, sifting through all the best local attractions and looking for the ones I maybe don’t know about yet. So I’m probably a cross between a Doer and a Watcher – but a Planner and a Dreamer as well. While planning and dreaming about a trip round Australia’s western and northern parts I found a website called http://www.worldreviewer.com which has a place to create a wish list of places to go – like 43 Places but with more choices I found. It had quite a lot of places and experiences (that’s what they’re about too) that I hadn’t heard about or read about which were recommended by people who had been there or lived there. Not a bad resource for Doers and Watchers… and Wanderers need some impetus to get out on the road in the first place I guess…
Very cool way to think about traveler types and make sure you’re traveling with complimentary types!