If you aren’t the outdoorsy type, you might be wondering why people like camping. What do they actually get out of sleeping outside on the ground instead of in a nice warm bed with central heating or air conditioning? Quite a lot, as it turns out. In this article, we look at why people enjoy camping and share the opinions of 28 experienced campers who told us what they love most about it.
As campers, it is easy to understand why plenty of people don’t enjoy camping or even the thought of camping. Cold nights, bad weather, uncomfortable beds and toilets that are considerably less luxurious than the one at home aren’t exactly a great sales pitch.
But if you don’t enjoy camping, you might still wonder why so many people go out of their way to do it. The truth is that once you get past the small hardships, camping gives you access to things that are increasingly difficult to find in normal life: silence, space, darkness, wildlife, freedom and a genuine break from routine.
A lot of camping sceptics are also judging it from one terrible first experience. If you don’t know what you’re doing, it’s incredibly easy to take the wrong sleeping bag, sleep on a useless mat, pitch badly or spend the whole night freezing.
Once you fix simple things like bringing a warmer sleeping setup, a decent sleeping pad and a better tent, things suddenly become a lot more enjoyable. And if you really want to rough it, you can even learn how to camp without a tent.
Why Do People Like Camping?
People like camping for all sorts of reasons, but two of the biggest are nature and freedom. Getting away from normal routines and spending a night somewhere quiet can feel like hitting the reset button.
Camping also makes a digital detox almost unavoidable. Instead of checking emails, social media and notifications every five minutes, you might spend half an hour watching a fire, looking at the stars or doing absolutely nothing.
With so much to keep up with in modern life, it is completely normal to get the urge to disappear for a while. Some people dream about being completely alone in nature with nothing but the breeze and stars for company. Others just want to escape traffic, smell damp woodland, listen to a river and wake up somewhere beautiful.
Freedom and escape are only part of it. People also love the views, food cooked outdoors, campfires, morning coffee, the sound of rain on a tent, wildlife, hiking, solitude and the simple sense of achievement that comes from making yourself comfortable outside.
Scroll to the bottom of the page and you’ll also find 28 unfiltered responses from experienced campers explaining what they personally enjoy most.
15 Reasons Why People Love Camping
Freedom
One of the biggest reasons people love camping is the feeling of freedom. No walls boxing you in — tent walls don’t count — no traffic outside the window and no list of household jobs staring at you from across the room.
There is something special about being outside with the trees, mountains, sky, weather, animals, smells and sounds all around you. You can decide where to walk, where to stop and what your day looks like without much of the structure that comes with normal life.
For lightweight trips, check out our list of single-wall tents.
For some people, camping is the epitome of freedom. They think about it all week, then as soon as the weekend arrives they disappear somewhere quiet with a backpack.
To Feel Closer to Nature
“Getting closer to nature” sounds like a cliché until you actually spend a night outside. You’re sleeping inches from the ground, hearing every gust of wind, watching the light change and noticing wildlife you would normally walk straight past.
You might wake up and see a deer nearby, spot a kingfisher while filling your bottle or hear owls calling while you’re lying in your sleeping bag. Even bad weather feels different when you’re inside a tent listening to rain hammer the flysheet.
You stop being someone looking at nature through a window and start feeling like you’re actually in it.
Of course, your tent might collapse, you might spill water all over your sleeping bag, forget the tin opener or discover that the perfect campsite is home to several thousand midges. That’s part of camping too.
It Can Be Good for Your Wellbeing
There are plenty of claims about the health and wellbeing benefits of camping, but I wouldn’t pretend camping itself is some kind of medical treatment.
The obvious benefits come from the things camping often involves: walking, spending time outdoors, taking a break from work, getting away from screens and doing something you enjoy.
If camping helps you relax, move more and return home feeling refreshed, that’s a perfectly good reason to keep doing it.
Digital Detox
Digital detox sounds like something you do after searching something sketchy in the browser, but it really just means stepping away from the endless stream of messages, emails, news, social media and notifications.
Camping makes this much easier because you have something else to do. There is a tent to pitch, food to cook, water to collect, a view to stare at and usually something interesting happening around you.
You can spend hours watching stars or tending a fire without feeling like you’re “doing nothing.” And if there is no signal, even better.
Relax and Unwind
Believe it or not, lots of people find camping genuinely relaxing. Once camp is set up and everything is sorted, there often isn’t much left to do.
Picture sitting in a camp chair beside a fire with someone you like, your favourite drink nearby and a clear sky overhead. That doesn’t sound like a particularly stressful evening to me.
The key is preparation. If you’ve packed badly and spend the entire night cold, hungry and being eaten alive by insects, you’re probably not going to return home feeling spiritually renewed.
Test Yourself
For some people, camping is a challenge. Sleeping alone outdoors, dealing with bad weather or simply proving that you can look after yourself away from home can be extremely satisfying.
Solo camping in particular can build confidence if you’re comfortable doing it safely. There is a very different feeling when you’re the only person responsible for choosing the campsite, pitching the shelter, cooking dinner and sorting out whatever goes wrong.
You don’t need to pretend you’re Bear Grylls and start drinking questionable water from a shoe. Just being self-reliant for a night can feel like an achievement.
Sense of Adventure
Watch enough Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones or wildlife documentaries and eventually you start wanting to disappear over the horizon yourself.
Camping turns an ordinary walk into a small adventure because you aren’t heading home at the end of the day. You’re carrying everything you need to spend the night somewhere new.
You can camp alone, with friends, with a partner or with family, and each feels completely different. Even a campsite an hour from home can feel like another world once the sun goes down.
Solitude
For people who enjoy camping alone, solitude is often one of the biggest reasons they keep doing it. No noisy neighbours, traffic, televisions or people asking you questions every five minutes.
At first, the silence can feel strange. Then you start noticing just how much noise there actually is in nature.
For some people, being alone in the middle of nowhere with nothing but their own thoughts is incredibly liberating. For others it sounds horrific. That’s the beauty of camping — you don’t have to enjoy it the same way as somebody else.
Peace and Calm
Even if you don’t particularly want solitude, camping can provide a sense of peace that is difficult to recreate at home.
There is something incredibly calming about sitting beside water, listening to rain on a tent or watching the sky get darker without having anywhere else you need to be.
If you’ve never experienced the almost complete silence of a calm mountain evening, it is hard to describe just how good it can feel.
Family Traditions
Camping can become a family tradition, with the same campsites, meals and routines passed down through generations.
If you grew up camping, sleeping outside can feel completely normal. It becomes part of summer in the same way that other families might have a particular holiday destination.
Camping can also carry a lot of memories. Returning to somewhere you once camped with someone who is no longer around can feel like a way of reconnecting with those experiences.
It’s Fun
Sometimes there doesn’t need to be a deeper psychological explanation. Camping is fun.
Packing your gear, looking at maps, finding somewhere beautiful, setting up camp and then laughing at whatever ridiculous situation you’ve managed to get yourself into is part of the appeal.
Some of my favourite camping memories involve things going slightly wrong rather than everything going perfectly.
Camping Can Be Cheap
Camping can be much cheaper than hotels if you use the equipment regularly. Buy a decent tent, sleeping bag and pad once and they can last for years.
You definitely don’t need the most expensive gear to enjoy yourself either. Some people have thousands invested in ultralight equipment; others have a basic tent, a cheap sleeping bag and an absolutely brilliant time.
And the locations can be ridiculous. You can wake up beside a lake, in a forest or looking over mountains from somewhere that would cost a fortune if there happened to be a hotel built there.
Your own beachfront apartment or mountaintop bedroom. This is the new rich.
An Excuse to Get Outdoors
Everyone occasionally needs a reason to go outside. Maybe it’s walking the dog, going for coffee or getting some exercise.
Camping gives you an excuse to spend far longer outdoors than normal. Instead of visiting somewhere for an hour and driving home, you watch the evening arrive, sleep there and wake up in the same landscape the next morning.
That completely changes how you experience a place.
Physical Effort Feels Rewarding
Carrying camping equipment over rough ground can be hard work, especially if you haven’t gone down the ultralight rabbit hole yet.
That’s partly why dropping your pack at the end of the day feels so good. You have walked somewhere under your own power, found somewhere to sleep and built yourself a tiny home for the night.
The same thing applies to cooking outside. When you’ve spent half an hour getting everything ready, even fairly ordinary food can suddenly taste unbelievable.
Meet Like-Minded People
Camping can be surprisingly social. Campsites, trails and outdoor communities are full of people who already have at least one thing in common with you.
The best place to meet people interested in the same things is usually while you’re actually doing those things. Trainspotters didn’t all know each other before somebody stood beside them on a railway platform.
So if you see another camper, give them a wave or say hello. You never know who you’re going to meet.
What Do People Enjoy Most About Camping?
It is almost impossible to pick one thing that makes camping enjoyable because so much of the appeal comes from everything happening together.
For me, freedom and getting away from it all are right near the top. But ask another camper and they might say the morning coffee, the campfire, waking up somewhere beautiful, time with family or simply sleeping under the stars.
That is why we decided to ask other campers rather than pretending there was one correct answer.
28 Answers to the Question: Why Do People Like Camping?
I asked a community of passionate wild campers what their favourite thing about camping was. Below are their unfiltered replies with their personal details blurred out.
Nature, freedom, solitude and escaping normal life came up again and again, but there were plenty of smaller reasons too. This is probably a much better answer to the question than anything one person could come up with on their own.
Why Do Some People Hate Camping?
It is worth saying that not everybody is going to love camping, and that is fine. If you hate being cold, dislike insects, need a proper mattress or simply don’t enjoy being outside for long periods, camping may never become your favourite hobby.
A bad first trip can also put people off for years. Sleeping on hard ground in a cheap tent while freezing all night is not exactly an irresistible introduction to outdoor life.
Often the difference between hating camping and loving it is simply being warm, dry and comfortable enough to actually enjoy where you are.
Why Is Camping So Addictive?
Once you have a few good trips, camping can become strangely addictive. Part of it is the anticipation: looking at maps, checking weather, choosing a route and thinking about where you might sleep.
Then there is the satisfaction of getting everything right. Finding a brilliant pitch, making dinner, watching the sun go down and realizing you’ve got nowhere else you need to be is difficult to replicate at home.
Eventually you find yourself looking at every hill, forest and lake thinking, “I wonder if I could camp there?”
Is Camping Worth Trying if You Don’t Think You’ll Like It?
Yes, but make the first experience easy. Don’t decide your introduction to camping should be a freezing night halfway up a mountain in terrible weather.
Pick somewhere accessible, take enough warm equipment, bring decent food and give yourself an easy escape route if things aren’t working out.
The objective of your first camping trip shouldn’t be survival. It should be discovering why millions of people voluntarily leave perfectly good beds behind.
Final Thoughts
Why do people like camping? For some it’s solitude, for others it’s adventure, family, cheap travel or simply getting outside. Most campers probably enjoy a mixture of all of them.
There is something undeniably satisfying about carrying what you need on your back, finding somewhere beautiful and making yourself comfortable there for the night.
And once you’ve sat outside with a coffee while the sun comes up over somewhere spectacular, the question tends to change from “why would anybody want to go camping?” to “when can we go again?”
