Packing and travelling light, the kit list I still use

‘Where is started for me’

As I was preparing my presentation for a work conference in the USA and then putting my thoughts to what I needed to pack for my trip a work colleague suggested that as I was changing flights, just taking hand luggage would improve my chances of all my luggage arriving with me. So with my laptop bag and my faithful Lowe Alpine Contour Event 35 (sadly discontinued many years ago) I set off on my first work trip abroad.

It was a productive trip, presenting at a number of sessions at the conference and a good start to my later adventures. Turns out this was great advice as when the connecting flight on the way home I was cancelled grateful to have everything I needed in my hand luggage when the others did not have access to their hold luggage.

Following on from this trip I was starting to think about what would be possible for other trips; in particular the question in my mind was: would it be possible to have a sightseeing and hiking holiday with just hand luggage. Time for some reading to see what others thought the art of the possible was; I came across this website and I was hocked.

http://www.travelindependent.info/what-to-pack-travel.htm

Around this time I was starting to consider a sabbatical to do some travelling, so a three week trip to Canada was planned to enable me to dip my toe and see if it was something I would enjoy. With my flights booked and a suggested approach to travelling I packed the following bags and off I went.

The feeling of being able to sight-see on the way from the bus stop to the hostel with everything on your back, the simplicity of not having much to pack every morning and the benefit of putting the luggage in the over head rack was great; this is an approach I have used a lot on subsequent trips ranging from holiday and business trips. While I was way in New Zealand, my approach evolved into what we would now consider Fast Packing, although more on that in another post.

As I have had more and more longer trips and particularly trips like travelling to Nepal with my children while they were young; the other approach I have used is to take a larger amount of equipment to a central hub, either a hotel or friends house, then taking what I need for shorter trips and leaving the bulk of the extra things in holdalls in hotel storage or a spare room. I will talk about how this worked well on a family trip with two young children we had to Nepal.