Why We Don’t Travel Light

We don’t travel light. We travel with 2 large backpacks, 2 small kids’ backpacks and 2 pieces of adult carry-on luggage, both containing laptops. It’s the absolute maximum we can carry, just within weight limits for planes and our bodies.

Here it all is waiting for a train from Mirissa to Colombo in the early hours of our final Sri Lankan morning. It’s a terrible photo, but you get the idea.

We don’t travel light and, to be honest, we don’t aspire to, we’re perfectly happy with our way, it works.

Sure, some long-term travellers think it’s easier to throw everything into one carry-on backpack. Maybe it saves a few minutes at the airport and certainly saves you a few dollars on budget airlines, but for us, the inconvenience of not having what we need outweighs a money saving here and there.

We’re happy to carry our packs, we like the exercise.

It makes me feel hardcore to carry 20Kg on my back, more with my computer bag and one or both of the kids little packs. I quite like showing how tough I am at 47 years old, a perverse vanity.

Chef loves his big pack, he wouldn’t trade it for anything, so we’re  happy travellers.

We don’t have many clothes at all, so what’s taking up all that room?

Travel Light? No Way!

So what’s in there that we can’t do without?

Occasional Use Items

We have a few travel items bought years ago for trekking trips, things like a down sleeping bag, mosquito nets and sheet sleeping bags. We don’t use them all the time, but every now and then we need them. When that happens we’re extremely glad we brought them.

Imagine checking into a guest house in a dengue and malaria area to discover there were no screens. Then imagine your children catching something nasty. You’ll be very glad you had a couple of these plus string and a nail.

Sometimes the sheets aren’t as clean as you’d like and sometimes it gets cold. Sarongs, sheet sleeping bags and down sleeping bags have all been useful.

Now, in London, we’re using them every night, the sleeping bags have saved us buying a duvet, so overall, being prepared has saved us cash.

Add to that torches, head torches, Swiss army knives and sporks. They all come in handy.

The Strange and Unexpected

I carry some bizarre stuff.

Plastic coat hangers and a few pegs. They make drying laundry infinitely easier and really take up no space at all. Many of the places we stay are aimed at backpackers staying 1 or 2 nights and don’t have hangers or wardrobes.

Marmite, tabasco and Earl Grey teabags. Not all the time, but they slip into my pack occasionally.

Mosquito killers. Coils, sprays, plug ins, we’ve carried them all and we’ve certainly needed them. We choose not to use anti malarials, so we don’t muck about with mozzies.

Electronic Spaghetti

We absolutely could not travel without any of this! Well, maybe not the 2 semi-broken cameras, but I’m waiting for the opportunity to get them fixed.

But I don’t have a hairdryer, I’m proud of that! The ebags packing cubes have been brilliant for carrying leads and chargers, if you click this link and buy a set I make 5c. Yay!

Kids Stuff

This isn’t all of it!

When we first left home, all we had was two little pouches with a few marbles, bouncy balls and Bakugan. This lot has accumulated over time, we’ve had birthdays, Christmas and once in a lifetime visits like the Harry Potter studios tour forcing us to buy a wand. Plus of course, a few school books, they come and go, as do the reading books, but we always have some along with a big bag of pencils, rulers and all the normal stuff kids need.

I think denying the kids some favourite things would be incredibly mean, I’m happy to carry it for them. Even Boo’s bottle top collection, so yes, it’s essential

Winter Wardrobe and Cruise Upgrades

At the top of the page I said that we had hardly any clothes, well that’s not true any more.

We started out with just tropical gear and a couple of fleeces. We moved from Asia to the UK at Christmas and in the January Arctic Vortex we moved to New York and Canada. We had to buy a few things.

Our 2 Trans Atlantic cruises required a moderate level of tidiness, something beyond flip-flops and baggy fishermen’s pants, so we made a few more purchases.

To offset the new buys a lot of items have worn out, by some miracle, everything still fits in our backpacks.

Three Large Washbags

Everything in those washbags is essential, there’s nothing fancy, not much beyond dental stuff, shampoo miniatures, antiperspirants and shaving gear plus medical kit, supplements, sunblock and bug repellent. Not much takes up a lot of space.

The Problem with Travelling Light, You’re Not Prepared.

All this stuff takes up a lot of space and weighs a ton but for us it’s totally worth carrying, it’s all proved itself or we would have ditched it by now.

It’s absolutely true that whatever you need you can buy locally, but you usually find that you need something right now, not the next time you make it to the shops.

I don’t think it makes any sense to leave stuff at home if you have it already, maybe don’t rush out to buy a sleeping bag, but if you’ve got one, take it, you never know when you’ll need it.

I’m not talking short trips here, if you’ll only be away for a few weeks it’s easy to predict what you’ll need and pack accordingly, I’m talking RTW, long term, go-where-you-please travelling, our favourite sort.

We all have our own ways of doing things, I’m not saying our way is the only way, but it works for us.