Building on previous work on backpacking, this book takes the analysis of backpacker tourism further by engaging both with new theoretical debates into tourism experiences and mobilities as well as with new empirical phenomena such as the rise of the ‘flashpacker’ and alternative destinations. Chapters include material on flashpacking, the virtualization of backpacker culture, the re-conceptualisation of lifestyle travellers, backpackers as volunteer tourists, as well as backpackers' experiences of hostels, mobilities and their policy implications. It sets a new benchmark for the study of independent travel in the contemporary world.

Backpacking Beyond Boundaries is the story of a young man who puts his career on hold in search of adventure and the discovery of his inner being. He leaves South Africa in 1990 while Nelson Mandela is still in prison and South Africa ruled by a white minority government. His travels take him through 35 countries and cultures as far afield as South East Asia where he spends one year; exotic islands of Thailand, hitchhiking through Malaysia, charming beauty of Sri Lanka, overland through India into Nepal and finally back to Thailand. He also buses through Morocco and into the Sahara Desert. In Turkey he joins a group of 11 fellow backpackers and travels across the country. Behind the Iron Curtain he visits East Germany and the Berlin Wall, Czechoslovakia, Poland and Hungary seeing communism at work. In 1996 he returns to a free South Africa, one now with equal rights and called the Rainbow Nation, before choosing a new life in Canada. In 2003 he travels to Namibia and reconnects with his army past. And in 2005 he makes a special journey to Mozambique with two army friends to see the prison where one of them was held captive.

Backpacker tourism has shifted from the margins of the travel industry into the mainstream. Backpacker Tourism: Concepts and profiles explores the current state of the international backpacker phenomenon, drawing together different disciplinary perspectives on its meaning, impact and significance. Links are drawn between conceptual issues and case studies, setting backpacking in its wider social, cultural and economic context.

In the period after their military service, Jewish Israeli youth customarily embark on a unique touristic practice: the backpacking trip. Combining sociological, anthropological, and psychological research—based on innovative fieldwork conducted with Israeli backpackers in Israel and abroad—this book depicts the complex relationship between the traveling youth and their society of origin. Via a perspective the editors term "outside-in," we learn how social and cultural tensions and tenets, identities, fantasies, and preoccupations are acted out within a symbolic, touristic space by scores of Israeli youth.

Backpackers have shifted from the margins of the travel industry into the global spotlight. This volume explores the international backpacker phenomenon, drawing together different disciplinary perspectives on its meaning, impact and significance. Links are drawn between theory and practice, setting backpacking in its wider social, cultural and economic context.

The Backpacker Tourist: A contemporary perspective explores the increasing number of people traveling around the world as backpackers and analyses the great diversification of this demographic and their varied experiences while traveling.