Time Creation in Travelling

Abstract

This paper deals with long-term budget travelling from different time perspectives. Narratives of travel, given by women backpackers and interpreted through `time lenses', lead to an analysis of the journey as an individualized time-space in which the traveller regains control of her own time and movement. It is argued that this control, sensed as `freedom', opens up both mind and body to a complexity of different time experiences. These vary depending on context and speed of movement. Thus, the long-term journey into different and diversified cultures is discussed as a move away from clock-time and other structuring devices into a space and time where the traveller is, to a certain extent, left alone to do her own structuring. The backpacker is both living and creating her own time.