In the wake of a morning downpour, Ruifang Township, Taipei County, is overcast and sweltering, the high heat and humidity levels leaving you covered in sweat after just a few steps. You'd hardly expect people to be out traveling in this kind of weather.

But the sticky heat has done nothing to dampen the enthusiasm of two young travelers named Liu Peiru and Huang Xiaoheng. Virtually impervious to the steamy day in their shorts and flipflops, the not-yet-25-year-old women are bursting with excitement as they buy their train tickets and set out for their destination-the Sandiaoling Station.

Liu Peiru and Huang Xiaoheng stroll along the railroad tracks in the quiet environs of the Sandiaoling train station, seeking the solitude described by travel writer Liu Kexiang.

The most precious solitude

The station is deserted this Monday afternoon: Liu Peiru and Huang Xiaoheng are the only people here. They photograph an unused signal box near the station and stroll along the tracks looking for traces of Japanese-era tunnels. Unlike typical tourists, they don't clutch guidebooks in their hands, but an essay entitled "The World's Most Precious Solitude-Sandiaoling Station" by renowned eco-tourism author Liu Kexiang.

"Unfortunately, they stopped selling actual printed tickets for Sandiaoling-Jingtong several years ago," laments Liu Peiru. Liu Kexiang's essay describes his fortuitous encounter with a young Japanese tourist at the station at New Year's in 2000. The young man had bought every one of that day's printed Sandiaoling-Jingtong tickets. He explained that he intended to give them to friends in Japan because he felt that the characters on the tickets suggested distance and drifting, and evoked a sense of wandering far from home. "These are precious gifts, the kind of thing that money can't buy," said the young Japanese man.

While they weren't able to buy tickets evoking solitude as the young Japanese man did, Liu and Huang were able to write about their visit in a blog entry entitled "Little Station":

"There were only two chatting attendants in the ticket booth keeping an eye on the train schedules and seemingly everything else in the station. One of the two laughingly admitted that he'd never visited any of the waterfalls and mines in the area. He just rode the train into work and home again every day, and devoted the rest of his time at the station. The sentiment was pretty, and seemed to reflect its own kind of solitude...."

Liu and Huang's motivations for their "travel book Taiwan" trip were travel and writing. They visited sites mentioned in the works of 27 writers, including Liu Kexiang, Wu Nien-jen, Lin Wen-yueh, Yang Kui, Chiu Hsiu-chih, and Lung Ying-tai on their six-week journey, mixing their impressions of these works with their firsthand experiences in essays and journal entries of their own that they produced on the way.

The two women had been classmates in the Chinese literature program at National Chengchi University, and were both at turning points in their lives at the time of their trip. One had just left her job, and the other had just graduated with a double major in advertising. As a result, their "literary" journey was more than just a quick tour of the sights: it was also a means to sharpen their skills for the job market by pushing themselves to write.

Drivers travelling from Western to South Australia must cross the 1,200-kilometer-long Nullarbor Plain. Backpackers from around the world love to challenge the road across this seemingly endless wasteland, which is punctuated by warnings to watch out for camels, wombats, and kangaroos.

Travel as learning experience

There's an old saying that goes, "Read 10,000 scrolls, travel 10,000 li." Throughout history, many people have, like Liu and Huang, used their travels to test and reflect on what they have learned. Perhaps the most famous of these was the Han-Dynasty historian Sima Qian. Setting out from Chang'an at the age of 20, he traveled the Yangtze and Huai rivers through Sichuan and the central plains, collecting stories, legends, and historical information while taking in the magnificent scenery and seeing how people lived.

Sima ventured as far south as Mt. Lu, visited the "nine rivers" that Yu the Great was reputed to have dredged, traveled to Confucius' native state of Lu, and saw charioteer outfits used in ancient rituals. He even lingered along the way to learn local archery techniques and drinking rituals. These youthful travels became one of his most valuable resources for his later masterwork, Records of the Grand Historian.

In the Tang Dynasty, the famous Buddhist monk Xuanzang undertook his own journey at the age of 25 after discovering how widely interpretations of the Buddhist classics varied. Seeking answers to his questions about Buddhism, he slipped out of China without permission and traveled to India to study. Though he experienced innumerable difficulties on his journey, he ultimately arrived in India and realized his dream of studying the sutras.

On returning to China, Xuanzang chronicled his trip in a volume entitled Great Tang Records on the Western Regions, a work that includes detailed information on the languages, customs, and governments of the states he visited from Xinjiang to India. In the centuries since, this book has become a treasure trove of information for historians studying ancient India. It was also the means by which China learned of the exploits of the great Indian king Ashoka.

Western civilization also has a long tradition of encouraging young people to travel. It even has the concept of a "gap year" in which young people take a year to travel before formally entering the working world. In late-16th-century Britain, for example, the sons of the nobility would, when they'd reached a given point in their studies, cross the English Channel with a tutor and a servant to visit Paris, Rome, Venice, and other major European cities, soaking up the cultures of the European mainland and broadening their worldview. In fact, they weren't thought qualified to return to Britain and inherit the family fortune until they had completed this "grand tour."

Countless well known individuals have kept up the tradition, including Charles Darwin, who, after graduating from Christ College at Cambridge University at the age of 22 set sail aboard the Beagle for a five-year journey around the world. Puzzled by the living creatures and fossils he encountered on the voyage, he took up the study of species variation when he returned to the UK and ultimately produced his signature work, On the Origin of Species.

Tibetans hang colorful banners at the entrance to mountain passes to represent natural phenomena-blue skies, white clouds, red flames, and the green earth-and ask for blessings. The photo was taken at Mt. Mila on the Sichuan-Tibet Highway.

Experience others, seek yourself

What is it about travel that it has attracted an endless succession of young people both past and present? Lee Ming-tsung, a 37-year-old "senior youth" and assistant professor in the Department of Sociology at National Taiwan University, believes that no matter what form travel takes, it is significant in three ways: it offers an escape from the everyday, an experience of others, and the opportunity to seek oneself. For young people, who haven't yet been fully "socialized" and are not yet set in their ways, the latter two are especially important.

Lee explains that in much the way that we use other people's perspectives on us to better understand ourselves, our encounters with other people while traveling provide contrasts that allow us to explore our own culture and environment. On the individual level, the process of seeing how the people of different regions of the world compare to us, and moving from there to questions such as "Who am I? How have I been shaped? Who do I want to become?" opens up the possibility of committing to something. More broadly, it shapes the future of individuals and of their nations.

Lee stresses that even though digitized information is now almost universally available, travel remains invaluable because personal experience has "authenticity." It isn't just a matter of seeing things at first hand, but rather of being wholly immersed in a place and time with all our senses in play, pricked by stimuli made especially piercing by their unfamiliarity.

"Goldfish in a bowl"

But if you take a meticulously planned trip with a group or go on a package tour, you're only going to experience a kind of "staged authenticity." "It's like seeing a single performance at each location," says Lee, "The result is that you only see those aspects of a country that it most wants you to see." He argues that self-directed trips are the only way to garner the kind of genuine experiences that satisfy young people's craving for authenticity.

The 34-year-old travel writer who goes by the handle "943" is also an advocate of "do-it-yourself" travel.

"In the past, Taiwanese preferred to go abroad with groups," says 943, currently a PhD candidate in the UK. "Young people weren't any different." But 943 learned from experience that group travel is somewhat insulated-you ride in luxury tour busses, stay in highly rated hotels, and visit only scenic spots and stores selling local products. Taiwanese tourists tend to dislike unfamiliar flavors and worry about the possibility of diarrhea, so tour groups even arrange for them to have their meals at Chinese restaurants. "I didn't interact with the place at all. I felt like a goldfish in a bowl, separated from the world by a layer of glass. None of the places we visited made a lasting impression," recalls 943.

Backpacking began to get popular in the 1960s as travelers started looking for ways to really explore the highways and byways of the places they were visiting. These days, backpacking has entered into the travel mainstream for young people the world over.

When he reached his destination in Lhasa, Hsieh sold the bike he had used to cycle across Tibet for RMB1,800. This is his last photograph with the bike, in front of the Potala Palace.

The furthest corners of the Earth

Whether traveling alone or with friends, backpackers reject the notion of luxurious vacations as a reward to oneself. They also object to the notion of travel as a kind of hurried voyeurism and a matter of checking off places on a list. Since they generally have limited funds, most tend to limit their gear, fly cheap airlines such as easyJet and Asia Air, stay in inexpensive rooms at youth hostels and budget hotels, and get around on foot or public transportation.

Backpackers are interested in more than seeing the sights; they hope also to experience how other people live and to get past linguistic and cultural barriers to make friends with locals. As a result, they actively engage with locals and other travelers, discussing their values and talking about what they've seen.

The origins of backpacking have been traced back to a late-17th-century Italian explorer with a degree in law named Giovanni Francesco Gemelli Careri. Frustrated in his career by his lack of an aristocratic background, he decided to give it up and travel the world.

Careri traveled through Persia and Armenia, visited southern India and then went on to China. His route was so unusual that Jesuit missionaries under the Roman Curia mistakenly believed him to be a spy sent by the Pope and helped arrange an audience for him with the Emperor Kangxi in Beijing. He even attended Lantern Festival ceremonies and toured the Great Wall. Careri's adventures circling the globe eventually became the inspiration for Jules Vernes' Around the World in 80 Days.

In the 1960s and 70s, the "Hippie trail" marked the apogee of the youth backpacking phenomenon. In those days, hippie-drifters were to be found all over Europe, the Middle East, Central Asia, Southeast Asia, and even Eastern Australia. Their avowed purpose in traveling-to "find themselves" and engage in exchanges with young people from all over the world-would come to serve as the impetus for innumerable young people to take to the road.

Lin Hwai-min, too

Backpackers carry little luggage and demand little in the way of material comforts in exchange for long, leisurely trips that allow them to really bask in the experience. If they are bold enough, they can even "fly solo," broadening and deepening their travel experience and allowing them to focus on an inner dialogue. Undistracted by other people and lacking any other plausible excuses, the "self" has nowhere to run.

Cloud Gate Dance Theatre founder Lin Hwai-min, a recent recipient of a lifetime achievement award from the International Dance Festival Movimentos in Germany, is an important Taiwanese advocate of solo travel for young people.

In 1972, at the age of 25, Lin picked up a backpack and a copy of Europe on $10 a Day, and set out for Europe with a little money he'd earned from part-time work while a student in the US. He ultimately toured the Continent for three months, visiting the Netherlands, France, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland, Italy, and many other nations.

Recalling this journey, Lin has stated: "I felt 'color' for the first times in the Louvre Museum and the Uffizi Gallery. The skies of Greece and the Aegean Sea introduced me to the limitless layers and tones of blue. I saw the Dunhuang cave paintings for the first time in a beautiful album in Geneva...." He bawled his eyes out in the Rome airport at the end of his trip, distraught at the prospect of returning to a Taiwan then still under martial law. He founded Cloud Gate the next year, turning that aesthetic rush and thirst for freedom into dance, and hastening the birth of a movement of artistic and literary creativity in Taiwan.

Lin is famous for having remarked, "Wandering the world while young provides fodder for your whole life." Even Cloud Gate's performance schedule has him constantly crisscrossing Taiwan and the globe, Lin still regularly puts everything aside for personal trips to distant locales. He also encourages others to travel. In 2004, he used the NT$600,000 in prize money he received with the National Cultural Award to establish the Wanderers' Project, which has given dozens of grants of NT$80-150,000 to young people under the age of 30 to make a two-month trip abroad.

Challenging his fears

Perhaps the most moving Wanderers' Project award went to Hsieh Wang-lin, who was among the first recipients of a grant under the program. In his third year at Soochow University, where he was double-majoring in law and political science, Hsieh found himself constantly struggling with his direction. He promised himself that once he finished his degrees, he would turn to his true love-literature.

But deep inside he worried that pursuing literature would mean consigning himself to solitude and intractable poverty. Seeking to face his fears, he set out on a bicycle journey along the Yunnan-Tibet Highway in the fall of 2004 after receiving his Cloud Gate grant.

Hsieh spent a grueling two months on the road, dealing with vomiting, diarrhea, colds, coughing blood, attacks from Tibetan mastiffs, and blisters in his groin (the result of weeks on his bike). At one point while rushing through the evening darkness on his way to Deqen County, he nearly tumbled into a Baima Snow Mountain crevasse hundreds of meters deep. Pushed to the limit by countless challenges and hazards, he emerged a different man.

"I had moments of being sick, terrified, lost, and weak, experienced every kind of frustration and worry, felt loneliness and despair. Fortunately, none of these completely halted my progress. If I hadn't kept moving forward, the negative emotions and adverse circumstances would have beaten me into the ground both mentally and physically," writes Hsieh, recalling his determination to keep going. But Hsieh's tortuous journey really did give him the resolve to embark on the "lonely but rewarding" path of literature. He published the story of his journey, Circling a Mountain, in 2008 and is now studying in the graduate program in Taiwanese literature at National Tsing Hwa University.

A life's worth of nourishment

Private groups like Cloud Gate aren't the only ones supporting travel. The National Youth Commission (NYC) also spends nearly NT$50 million per year helping young Taiwanese go abroad to volunteer or participate in activities organized by international youth organizations. It also sponsors domestic programs such as Grand Tour in Taiwan, which encourages young people to propose creative travel plans and apply to the NYC for assistance with their travel costs; and Trekking Taiwan, which supports local non-profit programs like a Taixi Township aquaculture camp or a "maritime life workshop" on Penghu's Jibei Island. Such programs make use of hands-on experiences to reacquaint Taiwanese with the place in which they grew up.

NYC minister Wang Yu-ting, herself a traveler, says, "Taiwanese kids are often too well protected by their parents. They lack the skills to lead an independent life. These programs give them the opportunity to venture out on their own, rapidly maturing these 'hothouse flowers' into adults and helping them embark on their own path."

NTU's Lee Ming-tsung has also had the cheap-travel experience. Though family difficulties and problems with his military service kept him from going overseas until relatively late, he did manage to make it to Tokyo, just a three-hour flight from Taiwan, at the age of 27.

"The first time I went abroad, I was fascinated by everything I saw. I was like a swatch of cotton, thirsty for water," says Lee. "I was traveling on a tight budget, so I stayed and ate in the cheapest places I could find, and haggled over everything. But even so, every day was just packed."

Lee recalls eating with Japanese office workers at the cheap curry joints by the train stations, listening to people walking by sprinkling their conversations with liberal measures of words borrowed from European languages, and seeing traditional Japanese homes intermingled with modern high rises. He found everything about Japan both strangely confusing and oddly familiar to him.

Lee later wrote his PhD dissertation on how Japanese consumed, inherited, and transformed Western objects, incorporating them into their own cultural tradition to create a "Japanified Western culture" that then became an influential model for its former colony, Taiwan.

Whether young people travel on the cheap to learn to be independent, to find themselves, to become more competitive in the job market, or even just to explore the world, such journeys are incredibly valuable. Young people today are very fortunate to have so many options available to travel abroad, including not only financial support from the government and the private sector, but also strategies like home exchanges, working holidays, and volunteer travel.

Don't delay! Now is the time to spread your wings. Don't dawdle and come to regret the opportunities you missed. Take advantage of your youth to take a trip on the cheap today!