07:52 Packing you whole life in one backpack is challenging – but after you have lived this way for some time you really understand how little we need to function and be happy!
I started planning our backpacks content about 2-3 months ago. Read numerous blogs and consulted with experienced backpackers.
You will get help from reading blogs but in the end you have to figure it out by yourself (you will probably need to make changes on the way – dumping unnecessary things and acquire few new items).
Our travel list was not too big as I wanted us to move as lightweight as possible. My goal was to have a backpack that can always fit to carry on airplanes, fit in bus or other transportation. Harder than you think, but in the end pretty easily doable. Finding perfect backpack for these criterias is not simple (to make things harder, we left finding backpack to pretty last minute). Most travel backpacks that are carry on are just dull and won’t fit good for hiking (as we are going to do that also).
In the other hand, most hiking bags are not so good for traveling around airports and big cities (as they are narrow and tall with lots of outside storage and visible zip lines that some bad guys would like to open on the way). We made compromise and chose 48l Osprey hiking bags to cover all our needs.
They fit on every airplane and have enough room for our needs at the moment (they’re 1/3 empty as we started) – you can compress the bags before entering airplane so they always fit in the allowed space requirements Tip: try to enter airplane among the first, so you would have storage space near where you’re sitting – otherwise your bag could be put far away or in worse wouldn’t fit on the plane at all.
If you’re in extremely crowded areas or just paranoid, you can always use rain cover, to cover up all the compartments. The best way is just to be aware of your surroundings and keep one eye on the bag every possible second!
Here’s the list of our travel essentials – as we travel as a couple we can share some content like med kit, survival/hiking stuff and cables, to spare the space and weight.
Osprey 48l hiking bags
Money belt:
- Passports
- Driving license
- Credit cards
- Cash
- Business cards (yet to be printed)
Copies of passports, insurance papers etc (also on memory stick & computer as .pdf)
Money belt:
- Passports
- Driving license
- Credit cards
- Cash
- Business cards (yet to be printed)
Clothes for me
- 3x underwear
- 3x pair socks
- 1x long trousers (needed for leaving cold Estonia)
- 1x long sleeved sweater (needed for leaving cold Estonia)
- 1x shorts
- 1x tank top
- 1x t-shirt
Clothes for Veronica
- Few pairs of underwear
- Few pairs of socks
- Shorts
- 3x t-shirts
- 2x long trousers
- 1x long sleeved shirt
Emergency bag (all small compact items)
- Söetabletid (charcoal tablets for stomach problems)
- Antiseptic cream
- Malaria tablets (probably no need to use in Asia)
- Paracetamol tablets
- Eyedrops (for infection)
- Wound clue (helps to clue up small wounds)
- Bandages (different sizes)
- Rubber gloves
- Panthenol infection cream
- Allergy tablets
- Some wound ties
- One roll wound tape
Survival kit
- Thermal blankets
- Lifestraw (for drinking water everywhere)
- Fire making stick
Toilet bag
- Toothbrushes (with mini toothpaste)
- Antiseptic hand gel
- 1x little mirror
- 1x little hand towel
- 1x shaver
- 1x box of baby tissues
- Q-tips and cotton pads
Veronicas makeup bag
- Consists of few things for ladies (lipstick, body lotions etc :))
Miscellaneous
- Scrapbook and few pens
- Small solar calculator
- Bag of earplugs
- Small but powerful LED headlamp
- Few different ropes (shoe strings and one thicker)
- Local magazine (that I forgot to Estonia :()
- Sunglasses
Electronics
- Laptop
- Mouse for laptop
- Small tablet for her
- Camera + ultralight tripod (300g)
- Portable harddrive
- Large power bank (18000mAH)
- Large usb3 memory stick (128gb)
- E-reader for books
- Some cables (phone, harddrive etc)
It’s important to hold your money belt on you all the time. In the sketchier areas wear it even at night or put under your pillow. If you lose your bag you will survive as these are just things – but losing your documents makes your trip a lot more hell on earth.
Always have passport copies with you as they might want to hold your passport when renting scooter or place to sleep. Never give away your original passport. I also carry .pdf files with our passport copies if we needed to print more copies (and don’t want to give our passport in stranger hands).
Wear as little cash with you as possible – so even if you lose or worst happens, you still have your cards. There are a lot of places where there aren’t any card payments or cash machines – So it is hard to know how much cash you need, but you could always ask suggestions from fellow travellers on the way or online.
You don’t need a lot of clothes in tropical areas and if you need more clothes, they are usually pretty cheap. So don’t drag along cold weather gear with you and you don’t need new outfit for every day! Keep the bag light = Happy backpackers 🙂
Emergency bag doesn’t need be that complete as ours, but as most of the things are small bottles I thought better safe than sorry. If you don’t have medical help near you, then you can fix yourself up until help arrives or you arrive to help.
Into toilet bag put just hygienic essentials you need – you can buy most of the stuff locally, and if you want your stuff to be carry on, you can’t have over 100ml bottles/tubes anyway.
Miscellaneous – you could have whatever you might feel you need on the way to spend some time waiting you airplane or just some other essentials that could make your travel more comfortable.
I would like to travel without any electrons at all – or at least to cut back to bare minimum. But being designer I need my laptop for now and also keeping our blog up to date. Laptops and other electronics tend to be pretty heavy (even the never and lighter ones) if you’re trying to be lightweight. To really enjoy and experience everything is to spend as little time behind screens (computer, mobile, tv – doesn’t matter).
In near future I would like to complement our bags with some more hiking gear – ultralight sleeping bags, matresses and maybe one tent or just cover for sleeping. Ultralight gear in Estonia was extremely expensive, but I’m hoping to find some of the things cheaper in Asia.
We haven’t been on the road for too long, but till now I haven’t missed anything and some of the stuff even seems redundant. Everybody needs to find they’re own way and adopt as you’re on the road. Feel good to give away stuff you don’t need and don’t buy stuff you might find interesting at the moment, but unnecessary later on. Don’t take this post not so much as „what to back“ (as said before, it is a lot individual), but as „what we backed“ 🙂
