Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Indefinite Backpack Travel

jeremymaluf.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

251–260 of 429 posts

Re: Indefinite Backpack Travel

#251

Post by lmm »

driverdan wrote: post #239

I did this for a bit. The approach is very useful to learn. Traveling light is so, so much better. I never check bags unless there's a very good reason. It does have some downsides. You're constantly making and throwing away relationships. I found this the hardest part. Your lifestyle is subsidized by society. You depend on other people and services to make it work. You either have to eat out all the time or make man…

> Your lifestyle is subsidized by society. You depend on other people and services to make it work. You either have to eat out all the time or make many small trips to grocery stores and rent places with furnished kitchens. There is no self reliance, no preparation for things to go wrong besides saving money and hoping you can buy your way out.

Everyone lives in and depends on society. I don't think that means you're being "subsidized"; if anything the footprint of living like this is much smaller than someone who owns a house full of stuff and drives a car every day. (At least if you skip the routine flying part. Trains and boats are great)

Re: Indefinite Backpack Travel

#252

Post by jhbadger »

porphyra wrote: post #241
driverdan wrote: post #239

I did this for a bit. The approach is very useful to learn. Traveling light is so, so much better. I never check bags unless there's a very good reason. It does have some downsides. You're constantly making and throwing away relationships. I found this the hardest part. Your lifestyle is subsidized by society. You depend on other people and services to make it work. You either have to eat out all the time or make man…

> You're constantly making and throwing away relationships. Yeah, this lifestyle basically only works as a single young adult. Once you have a significant other, it's very, very hard. Once you have a kid, it's impossible.

Paul Erdős basically lived most of the second half of his (extremely productive) adult life like this (although he lived out of a suitcase rather than a backpack so he had slightly more room). Although granted he never married and had no children.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Erd%C5%91s

Re: Indefinite Backpack Travel

#253

Post by lmm »

ElevenLathe wrote: post #99
Arainach wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Where does the money come from that allows one to sleep in hotels, ride in rental cars, travel in airports, and eat in restaurants for years on end? If you keep your standards modest, the math isn't as bad as it intuitively seems. A $100 hotel per night is the equivalent of a $3000 mortgage/rent. And if you're living out of one bag you don't necessarily need that and probably have cheaper options like hostels (or te…

In other words, it's not a problem if you're one of the wealthiest people ever to exist in human history.

If your on this site, that level of wealth is almost certainly easily available to you if you want it.

Re: Indefinite Backpack Travel

#254

Post by lmm »

yard2010 wrote: post #183
65 wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe one good thing about the torture of living in NYC is you get used to the torture of living in NYC. My very small, very expensive apartment has had no running water throughout the work day for the past two weeks because of water main construction (which I get woken up to at 7am every day). There's a jerk chicken restaurant next door to my apartment that blasts music all day long outside. Roaches and mice and rat…

This resonates deeply with my personal experience, why does everyone like this? Is this becoming magical at some stage?

Earning good money is magical, and having so many services available within strolling distance (or at most a subway ride) is magical. Noisy neighbours, vermin, and unreliable water supplies are problems that should be fixed, but there are good reasons so many people choose to live in cities.

Re: Indefinite Backpack Travel

#255

Post by kemayo »

bluehatbrit wrote: post #167
coffeebeqn wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny thing is the list is not at all far from “latest Apple and arc’teryx” which I’d consider the consumerist side he’s complaining about but - some of those items are objectively really high quality and durable

I found this a bit odd, especially when the author mentioned they lose their apple watch a lot so buy an older one. It feels peculiar to buy such an objectively expensive high end item when you know you constantly lose it, and barely use any of it's features. To me that is continual overconsumption. I can't pretend I don't have my own contradictions going on, so I'm not having a go at the author. But I did find it a…

I do wonder if the sort of person who can lose a watch "frequently" is also the sort of person who would immensely benefit from only owning 20 things and having absolutely zero choices to make about clothes.

Re: Indefinite Backpack Travel

#256

Post by tristor »

mcdeltat wrote: post #250
tristor wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not the OP, but traveling in a nomadic way is often significantly cheaper than you would expect. When I was doing this, I had roughly $4000/mo in expenses, and more than half of that is because I kept a house in the US while I was on the move, so I had to still pay mortgage, insurance, utilities, property taxes, etc. All-in, it's fairly easy to get by on less than $2k/mo as a single person in /most/ of the world…

Legit question, how do you work stably enough to have a good income to support this? Personally I find living a "regular" life and maintaining a 9-5 job is hard enough in terms of time management and logistics. And that's with the ease of not having to think about where my next accommodation, next meal, next shower will be. Do you find yourself more time pressured? More stressed? Spending more on conveniences to make…

Honestly, when I was doing it, I didn't really find any of that difficult. The biggest pressure was from other people who I met while traveling to go out and party or do fun activities while I preferred working. I used time zones to my advantage when I was in Europe and Africa, so I'd have a nice relaxing morning, have a good breakfast, and then work in the mid-day through the evening, go to bed and do it again, and my weekends were still my weekends to do whatever I chose. When I was in South America I just worked normal east coast hours because most of the continent is on EST time zone or similar. It really wasn't as big a deal as you might imagine.

It's not like I was homeless, I would know I wanted to spend a month or thereabouts in a city and I'd get an AirBnB or otherwise arrange accommodations, I'd pay for a coworking space to have a good place to work with stable internet connectivity (this actually was one of the most difficult things in some parts of the world, back then), and I'd eat like the locals either cooking at the AirBnB or going to local restaurants/cafes.

I don't think being nomadic has to mean living like a hobo, those are not necessarily the same things. I never stayed anywhere that didn't have basic indoor plumbing at least, although a few times I'd have to hand wash clothes in a sink and hang them to dry outside the window, which was kind of a bummer but not a world-ender.

Overall, my productivity didn't suffer at all, and I didn't find it stressful from the things you mentioned with even a modicum of planning ahead. In fact, being able to explore different parts of the world and head out when I felt satisfied or got bored, meant that I always had some sort of moment for inspiration that helped to fuel both my curiosity and my work.

Re: Indefinite Backpack Travel

#257

Post by lmm »

xp84 wrote: post #209
plastic3169 wrote: post #107

I am surprised one bag crowd seem to pack so many computing devices with them. Some have phone, laptop, ipad and kindle and pride themselves on being minimalists.

You could make a decent case for an iPad with cellular being the "correct" device for this for an Apple user, since you should be able to just treat it as "your phone" with some kind of VoIP workaround, but also as "your computer."

IMO that's the worst of both worlds - too big to comfortably make calls on but also doesn't have a keyboard to write on. You can carry an external keyboard but that actually ends up being fiddlier to pack than a conventional laptop.

Re: Indefinite Backpack Travel

#258

Post by [deleted] »

delichon wrote: post #10

I lived out of a backpack for two months on a Pacific Crest Trail hike. I got comfortable with it and told myself that I had overcome my materialism, and could henceforth live happily without a lot of stuff and conveniences. Not so much. Now a couple of decades later, I've got a house and garage crammed with stuff. Yesterday I had a plumber here working on a leak, and this morning I have no running water, and here I…

[deleted]

Re: Indefinite Backpack Travel

#259

Post by delichon »

dolebirchwood wrote: post #244
raffael_de wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two months isn't really that long.

Maybe, but as someone who's done a 4-month backpacking stint, I was over it after 1 month, so I think even just that amount of time is enough to make an impact psychologically. By month 3, I was acclimated to it, but still eager to be done with it. (As an aside, the experience actually made me less enthusiastic about nature and gave me a deeper appreciation of civilization. Never in my life did I have such deep grati…

After several weeks I got to a campsite that had a picnic table. It was such a pleasure to have a place to sit upright and prepare my dinner. I'll never take one for granted again. After getting used to doing everything on the ground a table and a bench are a luxury experience.

Re: Indefinite Backpack Travel

#260

Post by sandspar »

jhbadger wrote: post #252
porphyra wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You're constantly making and throwing away relationships. Yeah, this lifestyle basically only works as a single young adult. Once you have a significant other, it's very, very hard. Once you have a kid, it's impossible.

Paul Erdős basically lived most of the second half of his (extremely productive) adult life like this (although he lived out of a suitcase rather than a backpack so he had slightly more room). Although granted he never married and had no children. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Erd%C5%91s

Erdos is awesome but he's so singular that I think his exception makes the rule.
Post reply on HN