Travelling light... or not

September 3rd 2013, 8:17:00 am

So I set out on this trip aiming to travel light, with just a 46 Litre backpack and a daypack, but after nearly 4 months on the road I put up the white flag.

Up until I hit Africa I managed ok, but almost always had an overflow bag clipped on to make packing a bit less of a pain day to day, but I could squeeze everything in when I needed to fly.

Doing Africa overland demanded that I buy a sleeping bag, and air mattress, which meant I could no longer squeeze just into the two bags. I tried strapping a now quite heavy overflow bag on the back of my pack, but it just mean that weight distribution was terrible and I wasn't carrying any less shit.

I'd planned on chucking out the sleeping bag and roll-mat after Africa, but I couldn't bring myself to do it knowing that day to day packing would still be a pain in the ass without the overflow bag, and they will probably come in handy couch surfing, and so I decided it was time to buy a bigger bag.

I went on an epic search in Istanbul and found countless shitty quality hiking bags (top-loaders), and nearly gave up, before finding a Deuter distributer who had a 70+10L travel pack which can hold all my stuff without expanding it.

The price I ended up paying is actually cheaper than it's listed on Amazon, which I was pretty happy with. I left my old bags with the hostel we were staying with, so hopefully the go on to help someone else out.

What am I taking away from this? Travelling light is a great goal, but holidaying, and actually living out of a bag long term are two different things. If I was only going for a shorter, fixed period of time, with a predetermined list of destinations, I could probably be without a laptop, poi, juggling balls and a lot more easily fit into the smaller bag; but living on the road these aren't parts of my life I'm willing to give up for what could be quite a while.

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