Dancer In Udaipur - A Quillcards Ecard
It Is Getting Harder To Travel Light
There was a time when I would have been happy to leave my camera at home and let my senses do the recording. Now a camera, lenses, and a laptop are all fighting for space in my pack.
For all that, the guiding principle I have always followed – it is probably in my nature – is to travel light.
Llama Carrying Only Straw
Travel Light
I remember being proud of how little my pack weighed as it went on the scale at the airport check-in at the start of my year-long trip to South America.
Just eight-and-three-quarter kilos (nineteen-and-one-quarter-pounds) – and that included a down jacket and a sleeping bag.
Boots
However, it didn’t include a spare pair of boots and I was sorry about that when I left my only pair to dry by an open fire one evening in the wilds of northern Colombia.
I recovered the boots just in time to heat-weld the sole back on to the uppers by the dying embers of the fire.
That mistake was compounded by the fact that I was on a continent where shoe sizes stopped one size below my nine-and-one-half English shoe size.
It was quite some time before I found a store in Quito in Ecuador that sold my size…
However, I still hold that low weight is one of the most important things one can take on one’s travels.
It makes everything so much easier – from putting your pack in an overhead rack on a bus rather than on the roof, to changing plans, scooping up clothing, and getting on the road quickly.
How Many Bags
I also believe in ‘one bag’. Not two bags or three – not even little ones – unless the little ones can fit in my main pack.
One bag means just one bag to look after.
Gear - From The Rarely Used To The Often Used
But How Many Time Have I Used That
I have some great pieces of gear that I don’t ever recall using more than a couple of times, such as the fold-flat can opener you can see in the photograph and which I always take with me.
Great idea and weighs next to nothing. Which is probably why I have such a hard time leaving it behind.
So what items have proved their worth time and time again?
Three Great Pieces Of Gear
From all the things I have taken on my travels, I would say the best of all are mini binoculars, a magnifying glass, and a length of rope.
Binoculars
Seeing just about anything through binoculars – from animals and birds to just plain and simple crowds of people – makes carrying the weight of them definitely worth it.
And what you are looking at doesn’t have to be far away. Something that you may not have thought of is that looking though binoculars at an exotic bird that is just 20 feet away can turn a great experience into a phenomenal one.
Magnifying Glass
Picture a lazy afternoon somewhere on your travels. You spy a piece of crystalline stone on the ground or a recently expired insect on the window sill. That is where a magnifying glass comes into its own and a whole new world opens up.
I have a soft spot for this particular magnifying glass – the one in the photograph above. It is Russian, and I bought it in a street market in Tallin in Estonia shortly after the break-up of the Soviet Union.
That was the time when everything from military-grade night vision binoculars to periscopes were on sale in markets across Eastern Europe.
Rope
A piece of rope two or three millimetre thick and long enough to tie down a pack or hang up a pair of jeans. That is something that always goes in my pack.
As you can see, I have bought several lengths over the years…
The last time this item of gear earned its place in my pack was when my wife Tamara and I were cramped into a sardine can of a bunk on an overnight bus journey from Bundi in Rajasthan to Delhi.
Our packs were at the end of the bunk and I tied them against a stanchion to keep them off our legs. That turned our sardine can into a somewhat more cosy sardine can.
Of course, a piece of rope is useful for tying your pack onto all kinds of modes of transport…
Tie Your Pack Down
Always Carry A Compass
I can’t leave the subject of gear without mentioning that I always carry a compass on my travels now.
However, I didn’t some years ago when I wandered into a forest in southern Mexico and then lost my bearings.
That was when in my mind’s eye I recalled the map of the area that I had pored over before I left home, and realised that the forest was the size of Wales.
For one awful moment I imagined the worst – that I might never find my way out.
A Forested Hill
After trying to get my bearings from the sunlight peeking through the trees, I climbed a forested hill and found that I was standing on the rim of an extinct volcano. Far down below an Indian boy was fishing, or at least he was until he saw me.
With a shout of ‘gringo’ to someone behind him, he disappeared into the trees.
For a while I stood staring down at the perfectly circular lake below me, and at the beautiful blue of the water, wondering how I was going to find my way back to civilisation.
Meanwhile a part of me was wondering how the fish got into the lake in the first place.
The Path Less Traveled
Eventually I made contact with some field workers walking across a scrubby area and they guided me to a path that ran past a terribly poor Indian village and from there it was just a long walk back to the road-head.
A compass would have saved me from all of this time spent wandering around the forest, but then I may not have seen the tiny striped piglets scurrying about that I saw in that Indian village.
Which is not to say that I would ditch the compass and trust to luck in a similar situation in the future. Travel may be a balance between risk, adventure, and safety, but a compass is a small item that packs a big punch when it is needed, so it always goes in my pack.
And You?
What items do you consider to be essential? What are you favorite pieces of gear? I’d love to hear.
A Compass For The Forest
This article is part of the Lonely Planet Blogsherpa series, hosted this time by Vago Damitio at Vagobond Travels. Why not take a look there for more travel articles.
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{ 15 comments… read them below or add one }
This is a great article about travel essentials.
I travel relatively light, though not as light as the author, and I usually go to one country at a time. I consider a pocket dictionary (for languages I can hope to decipher) or a phrase book (for languages I wouldn’t even try to decipher, such as Hungarian) essential gear.
Esther Hecht
http://www.estherhecht.wordpress.com
Thank you, Esther,
The Lonely Planet country guides have a pretty good mini phrase book in the back end of the books. I can’t say I have made full use of them, but when I have read them they seem very practical, without any mention of postilions being struck by lightning.
I’ve never thought that a rope can be very useful! Would certainly consider it in my next trip.
Just wondering that, with all that survival gear you pack, you don’t have flashlight in your packing list. I once traveled to a place, where we have a blackout all night long.
Thank you for your comment, Benny. I do carry a flashlight – in fact I have one tied to a little keychain carabiner on a loop of my shoulder pack. I didn’t mention it in the article because I thought it was something that everyone takes, and I wanted to concentrate on the things that people might not have thought of.
Binoculars – that’s a great tip. Can you recommend brands?
I would go for a nitrogen-filled model because that keeps moisture out.
Opticron have a range of binoculars around 8×25 that weigh about half a pound (240g).
I would take a look at them if I were in the market for small travel binoculars now.
Go for one that focuses as close as possible because there are often great things to observe that are just a few feet away. The Opticron models focus to less than 7 feet (2 metres).
David,
This was a great read, with good stories to back up your interesting choices. I’ve brought rope before, but mainly to be used as a clothesline. (Unlike you, I don’t travel with a sacred cow so perhaps it is not as necessary for me.)
The can opener and magnifying glass are 2 of my 20-function swiss army knife and they do come in handy. I always carry binoculars but don’t use them that often.
As for my travel favorites, I like the bandana (sun cover, sweat band, emergency tourniquet, washcloth) and dental floss (clothesline, emergency thread & stitches, quick repairs and dental hygene).
Thanks for sharing this post and if I do start traveling with a cow, I’ll pack the rope.
Jason
Glad you liked it, Jason.
Who’ll pack the suitcase?
Touche!
David,
Your article, somewhere in the middle of it, transformed into a philosophical teaching I recall several years ago. There was an accompanying exercise to this important level of understanding, which required the student to find one box, about the size of a shoe box, and put within it – their most valued possessions. It was a brilliant exercise, as it taught me the difference between what was important in life, and what was not.
My box was relatively empty, therefore teaching me to “travel lightly.”
Enjoy your website very much…
Teresa,
Thank you for your kind words and I am glad you found something useful in this article.
I like the shoebox approach.
I am still wrestling with how a home (as in a physical house) fits within the shoebox approach. On the one hand it makes one heavier. On the other hand, everyone needs a home, don’t they?
I think about refugees sometimes, and wonder how they adjust to the loss of what they thought was stable and unending.
In my studies of the Holocaust, I recall, very clearly, the one thing that took away the power of the Jewish people: losing their possessions (their entire identity was reliant on what they wore, and owned.)
When this was removed, their identity was lost. And, without “identity” they lost their power.
Traveling “light” is freedom. It thwarts the action of placing one’s power in possessions. Because when they are lost, so is the soul.
In order to maintain this practice of keeping my own personal freedom, I have found myself “purging” personal possessions from time to time. Whether they be sentimental or not. Sentiment can be very damaging to a person – in the long run.
But, I digress from the point of your article. My apologies.
Nothing to apologise for.
I think the treatment meted out to Jews in the Holocaust would have affected any group of people similarly, and that we all have a comfort zone beyond which many things – loss of identity, the finding of inner strength, peace, madness – are possible, don’t you think?
Possible, indeed. But, in a growing materialistic society, where what is held in the hand, and in the bank, exceeds the value of what is in the mind – can you possibly imagine how many people would be disabled by losing their “outward value”?
I was taught as a child, that nothing outside of myself – could possibly hold the same value as that which is within my mind. I have found this to be true, time and again, as I have grown older.
The elderly have always known this. And, so have I. It is the only thing that can never be taken away…
With the money spent on beauty products, I don’t doubt that what can be held in the hand is considered important.
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