Bikepacking is not really my thing, but yeah, looks quite interesting... The people he talked to looked quite awkward and not particularly willing to engage though
This reminded me of something though... I met a friend of a friend for a few beers today, as he's been traveling in SE Asia for a few months now and made it to my town today. Which in itself is of course cool, as traveling is great and all that, and there are of course many different individual ways of doing that. However, we got into a discussion as he mentioned he's not particularly interested in either sightseeing/nature or in bars/nightlife, not really keen on meeting the locals either, so it got me thinking - wtf is the purpose of that? You basically spend your time in hostels that are all the same, together with other European (or "Western" in general sense) people similar to you, you have to save money as your trip is long term so you need to budget your savings, and so you're not really indulging into food, drinks, or local culture at all. I feel like I'm missing the point somewhere here.