Adventure travel is a type of tourism, involving exploration or travel with perceived (and possibly actual) risk, and potentially requiring specialized skills and physical exertion. Adventure tourism has grown in recent decades, as tourists seek different kinds of vacations, but measurement of market size and growth is hampered by the lack of a clear operational definition. According to the U.S. based Adventure Travel Trade Association, adventure travel may be any tourist activity that includes the following three components: a physical activity, a cultural exchange and connection with nature. Adventure tourists may be motivated to achieve mental states characterized as rush or flow, resulting from stepping outside of their comfort zone. This may be from experiencing culture shock or through the performance of acts, that require significant effort and involve some degree of risk (real or perceived) and/or physical danger (See extreme sports). This may include activities such as mountaineering, trekking, bungee jumping, mountain biking, canoeing, rafting, kayaking, zip-lining, paragliding, sandboarding, caving and rock climbing. Some obscure forms of adventure travel include disaster and ghetto tourism. Other rising forms of adventure travel include social and jungle tourism. Access to inexpensive consumer technology, with respect to Global Positioning Systems, flashpacking, social networking and photography, have increased the worldwide interest in adventure travel. The interest in independent adventure travel has also increased as more specialist travel websites emerge offering previously niche locations and sports.

Lifestyle travellers often engage in free lance jobs, entrepreneurship, or own companies, but some do not work at all. In preference to "settling down" with a family or other traditional life goals, some lifestyle travellers can actually develop a career or even start a family whilst "on the road".  Younger people often pursue a year or two of travelling, called a gap year, before settling down, returning to university, or otherwise resuming a "regular" lifestyle. This is known as backpacking. A very small minority, however, follow the path of a lifestyle traveller, as a path for a major part or even all of their adult lives.  Some lifestyle travellers purchase a sailboat, which provides a place to live and a mode of transportation at the same time. Others rely on cheap berths on cargo ships or modern aviation to take them from destination to destination, purchasing, for example, inexpensive standby or open-jaw tickets to meet the flexibilities of their schedule. Others, according to their budget and way to generate income, travel with a van, or in rare instances have their own airplane, or even continue backpacking. Lifestyle travellers, as opposed to shorter-term backpackers, often spend at least three to six months in their various destinations, usually to cut down on costs but also to get a fuller experience from each new culture they explore. Stays of two, five or even ten years are not uncommon, at the far end of which the only distinction between being an expatriate and a lifestyle traveller is...