ABSTRACT
Walking practices and perceptions of nature and wilderness are socially and culturally determined and encoded. Edensor (2010) argues that movement in general is governed by rules, habits and conventions that are implicit forms of social knowing. This is a basic acknowledgement that where, how and why we move is dependent on a multitude of social, cultural, political and economic dimensions. Walking, as a most fundamental way of moving, is an easily accessible example of a mundane activity that yet holds within it a complicated array of codes of behaviour. Although the majority of the world’s population walks, walking for leisure and as touristic activity, such as hiking, trekking, rambling and other related walking practices, are commonly associated with Western culture, finding its roots as an acceptable leisure pastime in the Romantic era as a individualistic as well as socially rewarding leisure activity (Ingold 2004). Research has thus been focused on Western tourists’ motivation and experiences of walking, for example, on the Inca trail (Arellano 2004; Cutler et al. 2014), an autoethnographic narrative of walking the South West Coast Path (Wylie 2005), and the development of the Appalachian Trail community (Berg 2015; Hill et al. 2014; Littlefield and Suidzinski 2012), to name a few examples. While there is some research available looking at walking practices in non-Western contexts, these tend to not be focused on walking as recreational (e.g. Simbao 2013; Middleton 2009, 2011; Vaughan 2009; Legat 2008; Tuck-Po 2008; Collier and Hannam 2016).
