Backpackers: a community that's always on the go

Mr. Potts, who has been on the road in Asia and the Middle East for the past six years, would like to change the subculture's nomenclature from the piece of luggage it carries to the experience itself. Vagabonding, he says, "is like a pilgrimage without a specific destination or goal - not a quest for answers so much as a celebration of the questions, an embrace of the ambiguous, and an openness to anything that comes your way."

Drawing on the history of wanderers, Potts includes quasi-inspirational quotes from Aristotle, Lao Tzu, and Ibn Battuta, as well as more recent comments from Emerson, Steinbeck, Thoreau, and, the minstrel of the open road himself, Walt Whitman. But Potts also gives advice on the practical side of the trip and, more important, on attitude.

He admonishes travelers to avoid the pitfalls of ideology, especially the antiglobalization vogue, and put aside their guidebooks to just see what's out there.

Mr. Lansky is light on philosophy and heavy on logistics (as well as his trademark one-liners). There are chapters on cost and savings, documents and insurance, even "hanging out," with sidebars on McDonald's, giving to beggars, and how not to use your guidebook and the Internet.

Recently, backpackers were caught up in the war between terrorists and the West, with the deaths of 202 mostly young travelers in the Bali nightclub bombings in October 2002. But Potts notes that, at least anecdotally, backpackers were the main group who kept traveling after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. After the incident in Bali, most left Indonesia for other countries, such as Vietnam, Thailand, and Cambodia.

Two who remain unfazed by terrorism are Nicky Dunnet and Andy Wareing, who hail from London. The two taught scuba diving for several months in the Philippines before they moved on to Sarawak, East Malaysia, on an 18-month trip. To save money for the trip, Ms. Dunnet worked for three years as an accountant, and Mr. Wareing more recently quit his job in offshore oil exploration in order to travel. Between them, they managed to save about £25,000.

So far they've been through the Philippines, Malaysia, and Hong Kong, and they plan to go to Singapore, Australia, and New Zealand, and then move on to South America and up to Mexico.

"It's hard work," says Ms. Dunnet. "People think you're always going to be sitting on a beach, but you've always got to get somewhere." She says the hardest things are doing laundry and figuring out transport in strange places. If you can handle those and not harbor too many expectations, you get to see a world of new people and new things. But it can be "addictive," she warns. This is her third time around the world.

Berg, who has now returned to San Francisco, looks back fondly on the slow, delightful time he spent overseas, reading novels by Nabakov, taking a 10-day meditation retreat on an island in the Gulf of Thailand, and ambling through the ruins of the Angkor kingdom in Cambodia.

During his time traveling, Berg had time to sort out the doubts that he had about his previous life. In the course of his travels, an idea about his future took on a growing resonance. Now he is applying to art school.

"Seeing so many folks working hard just to exist," he says, "made me see how lucky I am, and made me think I should take a chance on smiling."

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