What is backpacking?

As we went on to travel, and after we returned we get this question a lot: what is backpacking? Carrying a suitcase is not backpacking? Did you shop a lot?
In my opinion, backpacking is different from a regular trip in many ways.
The most obvious is, traveling with a backpack. To carry only bare essentials that would not impede the travel itself- which effectively means if you had to lug your bag with you all the time on your back, you would still be able to enjoy the sights without worrying about the load. So to keep this true, we carried backpacks however realized eventually that even what we carried was not the bare essentials and in our next trip we could go with fewer stuff. Considering how global most countries are now, you can find almost anything, anywhere ( maybe thanks to China!).
Travel time is typically long. A 2 week trip would be considered short for backpacking since the time you spend in each place needs to be sufficient to immerse yourself in the local culture.
Along with living like a local, comes how much money you spend on the trip. Typically on a backpacking trip you would spend only as much as a local would living in that country. The budget is self imposed and depends on each traveller's situation, however during our travel to keep it real we calculated everything in rupees( and not in dollars) to get a perspective on how expensive or cheap it was coming out to be.
Key backpacking features:
- Eat as the locals do ( cook , roadside or in small, heavily frequented and busy joints)
- Live as the locals do or sort of ( hostels, couchsurf)
- Sightseeing of key attractions/ must see's for each place, but also include non-touristy get-aways, beaches etc.
- Most importantly, interact with the locals - learn sign language or local language!
- Minimum or no shopping- Keep it light