This paper problematises the concept of searching for self in the context of lifestyle travellers – individuals for whom extended leisure travel is a preferred lifestyle that they return to repeatedly. Qualitative findings on the search for self from in-depth semi-structured interviews with lifestyle travellers in northern India and southern Thailand are considered in light of opposing academic perspectives on self. The study reveals a theoretical tension that exists between lifestyle travellers who may seek a unified sense of self underpinned by the essentialist position that one’s ‘true self’ exists and contrasting academic viewpoints that conceptualise embodied selves as processual, situational and in flux
