Baggage-Free Travel

I have written before about the concept of travelling light (Travelling Light, Travelling Lighter, and my Guide to Packing Light), and I’ve tried to practice what I preach – with less than perfect results – but Rolf Potts has taken the concept to the extreme. He recently completed a round the world trip which saw him spend 42 days on the road covering 34,440 miles; 12 countries; 3 oceans; 12 flights; and 4 train journeys - all with no luggage what-so-ever. Not even a man-bag or fanny pack.

Rolf is a travel writer, and his trip was sponsored by ScotteVest, a manufacture of travel clothing, and the travel website Boots-n-All.

The No Baggage Challenge, as it came to be called, essentially required Rolf to carry everything in his pockets. I have spent several hours already catching up on Rolf’s blog posts (the trip is now over), and I have become very excited about the possibilities of travelling with the absolute minimum of luggage (I don’t think I’m quite up to travelling with no baggage at all).

Here he is introducing the trip.

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If you are interested in the concept of travelling light, I highly recommend you spend some time reading Rolf’s blog. Having no luggage was clearly very liberating, for him, but obviously it is not for everyone.

Round The World Travel

~ Discovered a very interesting item on the Round The World Ticket website today that I thought I’d share and comment on.

Titled, 8 Not-So-Obvious Reasons To Go On A Round The World Trip, the writer talks about breaking routines; reinforcing your world view or re-examining your own culture and habits; making new friends and maybe even discovering a new home; the chance to reinvent yourself; and learning to appreciate your home (it may not be quite as dull – or dangerous – as you thought it was).

However, the writer’s second reason, Lose your desire for materialism really caught my attention. The concept of travelling light has been touched on before on this blog (Jim's Guide to Travelling Light). But the chance to declutter your life has not, and this is as good a place to mention it. But first, let me quote the full passage from the above article.

2 – Lose your desire for materialism
People who are preparing to embark on long-term travel are often forced to liquidate many of their possessions before they go out of necessity, but even those who aren’t will likely take on a new relationship with the material world. There is something about living out of a backpack for months or years on end, that tends to make people wonder how valuable their DVD collection or 10+ pairs of formal shoes really are. It doesn’t happen to every long-term traveller, but it seems that quite a few who survive with but 10 kilograms of possessions for an extended period will change their ways upon return to society at large.

Especially if you’ve gotten rid of most of your stuff before you left, you’ll think twice about nearly every new purchase when you get home, and this will likely save you quite a bit of money, though you’ll probably just use the extra dosh toward more travel anyway, so it’s not like you’ll get rich as a result.

When you live out of a backpack for a long time you realise that you need amazingly few things on a daily basis, and each new thing that you might add to this begins to just feel like extra cargo that you’ll have to sell, give away, throw away, or store again one day.

That last paragraph really struck a chord with me. On my seven month 2008 trip, I sent several boxes of ‘stuff’ (memorabilia, books, CDs and DVDs, clothes, etc) at considerable expense back to Australia. Eighteen months later apart from the books, CDs and DVDs, and a couple of items of clothing, almost everything else has been thrown away! And even those books and multimedia items I’ve kept have not been read or re-read, and neither have the CDs and DVDs received much replay since my return.

So why did I buy them in the first place? Mostly because I wanted to remember some of the more significant events of the trip. I think I was afraid I would forget the most interesting and exciting parts of the journey, and thought if I kept permanent reminders, then I could keep those memories alive. All of this makes perfectly good sense of course, but then it has occurred to me since that in fact, as travellers the things we do ultimately remember are precisely the most interesting, and exciting events we experience during our travels.

Maybe those details we eventually forget, are not quite the life changing events we thought they were.

Mind you, as technological innovations continue to change and miniaturise, keeping those memories alive is becoming easier and easier. Small digital cameras, and cameras on virtually every mobile phone now allow us to record everything from skyscrapers to hotel receipts; the meals we eat and the rooms we stay in; our methods of transport and much more besides.

Hopefully, the next time I travel, I will not feel the need to accumulate more baggage and ‘stuff’ than I absolutely need to help me enjoy the travel experience to the full.

Read the full article here…

Jim’s Guide to Packing Light

~ In a couple of days I head off to Melbourne to house sit for four weeks, and I am as ready as I will ever be.

The image illustrating this post shows the entire contents of my small suitcase. On top of what I am packing I will of course be wearing a full set of clothing (I dare you to visualise me driving 500 miles naked. Go on – I double-dare you!).

The amazing thing is – there is still space in my bag for more items of clothing. However, I am resisting the urge to fill it with things that are not essential to my Melbourne stay. Besides, if I want to do a spot of shopping in Melbourne, a little bit of extra space will come in handy.

I will also take a separate bag with essential technological aids (iPhone, laptop computer, camera’s and associated battery chargers and cables, etc). I should point out that a small toiletries pack will also go in the suitcase, but in terms of clothing, what you see is what I will be restricting myself to. As the four weeks progress, I hope to get back to making regular updates to this blog, and I will report back on how easy or hard it is to travel with this minimum set of clothing.

The whole point of this being, that when I head off on my major travels in May, I will have a better understanding of my real packing needs. Hopefully, I will never feel the need to travel with an over-packed and overweight suitcase again.

So, that’s it then.

Another year done and dusted.

I hope the past year has been all you wished it to be, and that 2010 will be even more interesting, exciting, and adventurous.

"Our destination is never a place, but rather, a new way of looking at things." Henry Miller

Travelling Lighter

~ Yesterday, I bought a new piece of luggage in preparation for my travels next year (see image).

It is a 54cm ‘Jet Stream’ bag from Tosca. That’s right, folks, 54cm. That is less than two feet high for those of you still using Imperial weights and measures. Anything smaller, and I would be restricting myself to carry-on luggage only!

I have written before on this blog about the concept of travelling light, and next year I hope to put my own advice into practise. As I said in an early post on House Sitting, I will be looking after a house for six weeks in Melbourne early in the new year, and I am using it as a practise run for my packing skills before I fly out to Europe in April or May.

I figure if can pack light enough to survive six weeks in Melbourne, I won’t need to pack anything extra for my European trip.

I should point out that I will also have a small carry-on backpack which will hold all my non-wearable gear such as camera, laptop computer, battery chargers, and other associated paraphernalia. I will also have a small ‘man bag’ – actually an old laptop computer bag for those extra items one always needs on long haul flights (water, ear plugs, reading material, etc).

Last year I used the 71cm version of the bag you see illustrating this post – as well as the backpack, and let me tell you, folks, a full 71cm bag is a pain in the back (not to mention the @ss) to drag around London, New York, Athens and the Greek islands!

I vowed that never again would I take such a large bag with me on my travels, and so the baby of the set, the 54cm piece will hopefully do the job for me. I say, ‘hopefully’, because I honestly don’t know if it will be enough, but then, one of the benefits of my six week house sitting gig is that it gives me the opportunity to fine tune my packing before I depart for Greece and beyond.

When I do eventually head off to Melbourne, I will post a complete packing list on this blog just so you can see what I have selected. Once the house sit is over, I will again post an entry letting you know what worked and what didn’t.

Cutting The Ties That Bind

I know next to nothing about Buddhism. Nothing at all about the spiritual beliefs of Native Americans, of Hinduism, Judaism, or the beliefs of a host of other religions - but as I try to divest myself of the baggage I have accumulated over a lifetime of collecting, I can appreciate more and more the concept of 'travelling light'.

I'm thinking - and writing - about this today, having just completed a very successful sale of most of my vinyl record collection. At 61, I have been buying and collecting records since my early teens. To be honest, I probably haven't bought more than a dozen vinyl albums over the past ten years, so the bulk of my 700 plus record collection was acquired over a period of 30 years.

I don't know if scientists mapping the human genome have discovered the gene responsible for the human habit of collecting, but I'm sure it's there somewhere, because I can personally attest to its power.

Since I sold my home in May 2007, I have had a storage shed full of stuff that at the time, I simply found impossible to part with. Two years later, and a couple of thousand dollars poorer, I have finally begun the process of letting this stuff go.

Apart from some household goods, the bulk of this stuff consists of books, vinyl records, CDs, and DVDs. Those four categories alone would collectively add up to several thousand items. Add to this, magazine collections, personal documents, photo albums, and who knows what else, and it's not hard to see why a large storage shed was needed to house them.

And so the process of passing these things on to others has begun. Slowly at first - but as my plans for future travel draw closer - now faster, and faster, I am reselling books I will never get around to reading, and vinyl albums I will rarely sit down and listen to. At least the CDs and DVDs take up much less space, and are lighter to move around, but even these will eventually go to other homes.

I don't know where all this is leading, except that I want to cut these ties that bind, and try and reach a mental and physical state where I can move more freely from one location to another; one country to another, without feeling the pull - the constant drag - of stuff.

The upside of all this selling is that so far I have raised $2,500 which will go towards my forthcoming travel costs, and that makes the whole process just that little bit easier.
　
IMAGE: Alzheimer's Art Quilt Initiative Quilt - The Ties that Bind, © AmyB
Read more about this quilt here...