A lot of people think backpacking presumes a lengthy trip that requires you to quit your job, give up your house and empty your bank. We’ll talk about the money later, but the duration of your trip, that is to say, how much time you can afford to take on your trip is paramount to most of your planning.
First of all, you can be a backpacker even on a weekend trip somewhere. But I would not recommend it – you won’t even have time to unwind. Of course, the longer you go for, the better – but up to a point. As a rule of thumb, the more time you have, the tighter your daily budget is going to be. And unless you want to become the one of those extreme backpackers that travel indefinitely, you probably want to have an end date in mind. I’ve met people traveling for a couple of weeks, but also a couple of years.
Personally, I wouldn’t advise going for over a year. When you are gone for that many months, remember – it would be quite hard to get back into the rhythm of “normal” life. You would likely start missing your friends and family at some point, and would dream of your home bed, home food and shower. Everybody has their own comfort period of being away from home – for some people, they can be quite long. Me, I haven’t been on the road for longer than 6 months – I love my backpacking life, don’t get me wrong, but I also love my regular life – the city life, friends, drives around the country, weekends, daytrips, and so on. When you are a backpacker, a day of the week stops mattering. Every day is a weekend, and after a while, you kind of start shifting into a calendar oblivion of endless hostels, buses, street food stalls and beer parties. Sounds like fun? It absolutely is. As long as you keep a perspective and don’t forget to call home and check up on the folks who will surely try to connect you back to your “other” life. Presuming you had one.
But I digress. Travelling for a long time has its clear advantages, of course. You can truly explore the region, the continent, or heck, the entire world. You don’t have to budget your time as much – just mind your finances as few of us are blessed with capability of earning money while travelling. You can take a rest day every now and then, and if you get hungover, you can easily postpone that surfing lesson – you’ve got time. If you fall in love with a town or a beach, you can stick around for a few days, weeks or even months.
When you have a shorter time, say a month, the key thing is budgeting your time and not overextend yourself. I’m not saying plan every single day before you leave for the airport – me, I normally plan day by day starting from reading a guide book on the way over – but get the idea of the places you absolutely have to visit and the “nice-to-haves if you have time”. Depending on your actual trip duration, you can focus on a specific region, or an island, or a few places nearby, or even a couple of countries if they are small enough. For some Central American countries, for example, you can do a lot in just a week or two.
When you are on a time budget, your trip becomes a little bit more about the destination than the journey, unlike for someone traveling for 10 months. You should be able to afford a taxi here and there, or maybe even a guided tour if it saves you time and effort. You probably don’t want to stay in a hostel as sometimes getting sleep there can be problematic. And you need to be well-rested for your next morning’s adventure, and you can’t afford to oversleep.
So what’s the minimum trip length you should go for? Well, as I said, even a few day’s trip can be surprisingly fun for some destinations with proper planning and a bit of funding. But regardless of the destination, it will take you about a week to leave the home worries and concerns behind you. It will probably take another week to get fully comfortable with the traveling routine – time zone, language issues, eating, sleeping, figuring out transportation, etc. So you would probably want at least one other week on top of that to really enjoy yourself and be well-rested upon your return home. Indeed, 3 weeks is the minimum-recommended duration for a backpacking trip. In 3 weeks, you should be able to have some relaxing time, some active and cultural pastime, maybe spend a few days learning a skill – cooking, surfing, language, you name it, and strike the balance between being prudent with money and not shoestringing too much.
Three weeks – my minimum recommended backpacking travel time, peeps.