Posts tagged 'Bags'

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.

So I bought the 40L bag I'd been eyeing off last week. After doing a few trial packs with it, I've decided that I cant fit everything I want in it well enough, so tomorrow I'm taking it back to see what my other options are.

I can just about fit everything in the 40L bag, but it's stuffed so tight that I have concerns about my laptop getting cracked if the bag were dropped, or something was dropped on it; and it doesnt give me any excess room whatsoever.

So when I was last in the adventure district looking at travel gadgets and clothing, I was talking to one of the staff in the store and he put the idea in my head that travelling with just a small backpack would make a lot of things easier.

It means you can keep your bag with you in a lot of situations where you'd otherwise have to leave it in the luggage section and hope it doesn't get searched through too much by dodgy characters, and it allows you to use crowded public transport much easier, or even just walk distances that you wouldnt want to get stuck lugging a heavy pack.