It's sort of a funny feeling: you're in an apartment with perfectly functioning heat, plumbing, and electricity, and yet for some reason, you pack up your bike and live outside for the next several days in the cold.
I'm not really sure what it is; maybe it's adventure seeking, or maybe it's some deep-seated rejection of society and a strange longing for homelessness that a psychiatrist would prescribe medication for. I kid, I kid. I'm not [that] messed up in the head.
It's sort of hard to describe what's so great to me about bikepacking. Normally the feeling comes to me when riding along a doubletrack road in a state forest I've never been to, or in the evening when I'm hanging out with my friend around a campfire after riding all day to a campsite. Either way, it's fun enough for me that I'm willing to trade a warm apartment for a cold tent and gas station food.