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Comment by miohtama | Hacker News Reader

If anyone is young and has opportunity, I highly recommend backpacking and going off the beaten track. Stay in weird hostels like these with strangers. It is one of the best recreational experiences you can have.

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This, plus hitch hiking - not just A->B but a longer trip, spanning weeks or months. I took a gap year in 2012 and visited 17 countries on a ~€5/d budget. It was a life-changing experience.

This is something I've never had the guts to do. Do you mind sharing how did it change your life?

I’m not parent but I, too, can say hitchhiking changed my life. First it made it possible for me to travel, because I was too poor to move around otherwise. Travelling is life-changing for many, and it was for me as well. I received lots of love and kindness. Second it was a chance to experience an activity that put me in the present. Like sailing, paragliding, or hunting for instance, hitchhiking is about gathering free energy, the one that’s available right there, right now. But this energy is unlocked through a peculiarly social technique. Which brings us to the third way it changed my life. It was a fantastic chance to exercise my social abilities. Granted, it’s a very specific situation: getting a stranger to trust you in a short time, while assessing if you should trust said stranger, not only in terms of basic safety but also in regards to their ability to actually help you—many want to be kind even to the cost of actually wasting your time. The fourth one would be related to the people I met and the conversations I had with them while in the car. Oftentimes, drivers have a good reason for being on the road. I met many professionals who gave me a glimpse into their world. I had the chance to ask questions for hours to several entrepreneurs. I also got to see some of the diversity of society. Where else can you hear people talk with no regard for political correctness? Fifth, there’s a hitchhiking subculture (at least in Europe) with fascinating characters and a great aesthetic.

I spend 3 months in Australia and New Zealand. And travelled around a lot in other places too. My answer to your question would be learning about different countries, different cultures. Seeing that there are interesting and friendly people everywhere. I feel like it made me a lot more tolerant and open minded.

If life ever gets really though, I know I can always go to NZ. Sounds silly, but I _think_ this has made me more resilient, more able to put things into perspective.

Well it definitely changed my guts ;) I used to be afraid of so many things, and still am! But it got me in the mindset of addressing fear rationally, and treating it as a challenge. (I later picked up downhill longboarding.)

Also: taught me to trust people, to be gracious of gifts and opportunities coming my way, many ways of being creatively resourceful under constraints... It was also one hell of a physical challenge: hours thumbing in the hot weather, kilometres walked because the spot was bad, etc. I've pushed my limits way harder than I was ready for, got ill twice - I'm still pushing myself a bit too much sometimes, but I'm more mindful about it.

I think the most important part was experiencing other cultures - sorry if it sounds cliché! I feel travel is much more "mainstream" these days. I grew up in some city somewhere in central Poland, far from a highway, far from an airport. I was the only person from my "previous life" circles who dared do this kind of stuff, so I've seen and done things that nobody I knew could even tell tales of.

And it paid off (literally), because shortly after, I scored my first job at an international company, where I felt right at home.

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