"Best country to backpack" depends entirely on what you're optimising for — cheapest beds, easiest logistics, biggest landscapes, or fewest other backpackers. So instead of one list, here's the honest version: the standouts per category, each linking to a real mapped route through it.
Best value for money
Vietnam is still the king of cost-to-payoff. Twenty dollars gets a bed, three proper meals, and a motorbike rental with change left over — and the scenery escalates from rice terraces to karst mountains as you go. Start with the classic north-to-south route, or go straight for the Ha Giang loop if mountains are the point.
Albania is Europe's answer: the furgon loop covers Ottoman towns, an untamed riviera and the Accursed Mountains on €35 a day.
Honourable mentions: Bolivia, Nepal, and India, which at ₹300 sleeper-train fares remains the cheapest big country on earth to cross.
Easiest first backpacking trip
Thailand exists so that first-timers succeed. The trail is worn smooth: cheap flights in, hostels everywhere, transport that books itself. Browse the best places in Thailand, then pick a coast.
Malaysia is the quieter version of the same ease with better food — we made the full case in Backpacking Malaysia.
Portugal is Europe's gentlest entry: safe, compact, affordable by western-European standards, and surf towns that turn solo travellers into groups within a day.
Biggest landscapes
Peru — the Andes, the Sacred Valley and Machu Picchu justify the hype, and the south circuit through Arequipa and Lake Titicaca doubles it. Kyrgyzstan — yurt stays and alpine lakes with almost no fences, the best-kept secret in this list. New Zealand-priced but Georgia-cheap, the Caucasus (Georgia and Armenia) give you 5,000-metre backdrops on marshrutka fares.
Wildlife without the safari price tag
Costa Rica packs sloths, volcanoes and two coastlines into a country you can cross in a day — done right it's cheaper than its reputation, and we wrote the full playbook in Backpacking Costa Rica. For the real thing at scale, Botswana's mokoro-camping back door into the Okavango Delta is the budget safari nobody tells you about.
Off the standard map
Mauritania — riding the iron-ore train across the Sahara is the single most memorable free ride in travel. Tajikistan's Pamir Highway and Pakistan's Karakoram Highway are the two greatest road trips on earth, still shared mostly by cyclists and the occasional Land Cruiser.
So where should you actually go?
First trip: Thailand or Portugal. Best value: Vietnam or Albania. Biggest wow-per-dollar: Peru or Kyrgyzstan. Wildlife: Costa Rica. Bragging rights: the Pamirs.
Every country above — and 90 more — has at least one real route on farpacker, drawn stop-by-stop on a map by someone who took it. Browse all destinations, read the latest routes, or write your own.
