Packing

• What sort of pack should I carry?
• How much clothes should I bring?
• What else should I bring?
• What about toiletries?

What sort of pack should I carry?

You'll obviously want to carefully choose some type of backpack. Most people choose a proper hiking/camping-style pack, but there is another category of packs that are designed more like a soft suitcase and have zip-away straps as well. These probably aren't comfortable enough for 4 days on the Inca Trail, but if you are mostly doing cities and beaches and planes and trains they can work well.

This is a huge subject and your choice will have a large impact on your trip so you want to think about this very carefully. If you happen to already own a pack that might work you should still consider other options. If this trip is going to end up costing $15,000 or more, then spending $300 or even more on this essential item makes a lot of sense.

There are endless threads written by experts and long-time users on our message boards and we strongly suggest you take your time and consider all your options on this subject. If you start out with a pack that is too small or uncomfortable or too heavy, swapping it out on the road is not easy.

How much clothes should I bring?

This is another huge subject, but unlike the backpack issue you can actually make adjustments on the road without much problem. In fact, swapping out certain items while on the road is a pretty common strategy for many experienced travelers. In short, you already know you should try to bring as little as you can get away with instead of as much as you can carry.

There is that old cliche that says you should pack first and then get rid of half your clothes and double the amount of money you planned to bring. That might help a novice traveler heading out on a 2-week trip, but packing for a RTW requires major strategy.

You already know that, whether you are European or not, you'll be adopting the Euro strategy of wearing certain things more than once between washings. So part of the equation is figuring out how much underwear you'll be bringing and that will become the base by which you'll figure out your washing cycle. Most people plan on washing their clothes (one way or another) every week or so.

We can't cover all the fine points of selecting clothes and packing here, but there are a couple of things we'll point out that may not be immediately obvious. Certainly you want to look for clothes that take up as little space as possible, but you also really want to select items that will dry quickly, especially for when you do those in-between loads in a hotel bathroom.

So big and fluffy mountain climbing socks might be comfortable, but they take up a lot of room and can take forever to dry. You should go to a camping store and check out some of the new advanced items that are comfortable, warm, and fast drying. And you pretty much want to forget about bringing jeans for this same reason. Many of us wear them every day at home, but try getting them wet and then hanging them in your bathroom to dry and you'll see why they just don't work on the road.

And as mentioned at the outset of this section, part of your strategy should include buying or replacing some items on the road. T-shirts in particular are available almost everywhere and are quite cheap in most places. Many people have been known to start their trip with, say, 5 or 6 older t-shirts and then throw them away as new souvenir t-shirts are obtained. You really don't want to buy many knick knack-type souvenirs on the road so buying a useful item like a t-shirt can be a fun way of bringing new items with you without taking up any extra space.

Doing the same thing with underwear is also common. Washing your undies every week or so, and sometimes harshly doing it by hand, can really give them a beating. Starting with some older ones and then discarding them along the way can save you a bit of time and money on their final wash and leave you with some interesting items when you get home.

If you are a bigger or taller traveler you need to give this a bit more thought. In some souvenir markets in places like Southeast Asia they do carry some clothes meant for larger Western travelers, but in general it can be very difficult to find things like XXL or XLT t-shirts in many places. Scandinavia and Australia have tall citizens and therefore larger clothes, but in most of the world they mainly carry items that are meant for their own citizens.

What else should I bring?

You already know that you should bring as little as possible, but there are some small or light or really handy items you might consider adding to your list of basics:

• A small flashlight/torch - Get one small enough to fit in your pocket easily, like a quality Maglite. These come in handy when in a dorm room and the lights are out, as well as while exploring caves and loads of other places.
• A Sharpie pen with some duct tape wrapped around it - This takes up almost no space and one or both of them will come in handy at some point.
• A Frisbee - These are light, take up little room, and can act as a travel plate (like for when you are making a sandwich in your room) or various other things.

What about toiletries?

Obviously, you want to avoid bringing huge bottles of shampoo and so forth, even if you are partial to one particular brand. You'll be roughing it to some degree so it's best to take small bottles of everything that will last you at least a few weeks and then refill them or buy new small bottles as you go. Shampoo and shaving cream and all that are available everywhere and the prices tend to reflect the overall prices of a place. In other words, in northern Europe prices tend to be as high or higher than the US, while in a place like Vietnam they tend to be less, although not too much less.

Unless you really insist on some specific things then it's just not worth all the extra bulk and weight to bring large containers. You can either go to a grocery store and look for small sample sizes of the things you need, or head to a camping store and buy some empty bottles and fill those up at home. If you stay in hotels that are anything but the bottom shelf you'll probably be able to swipe future supplies from those rooms.

It's not a bad idea to start with a bar of soap in your bathroom kit because you'll need one eventually, although mini soap bars are obviously easy to find at any hotel. You might have heard that many long-term travelers bring a roll of toilet paper with them. It's true that you'll probably eventually be glad you have your own quality bathroom tissue with you, but this isn't as critical as it was a couple of decades ago. Nearly everywhere will have something available so bringing a full roll from home is probably overkill.

If you are heading into a region where you think you might need it you can easily pick up a roll the day before you get there. And a small stack of soft napkins inside a ziplock bag will probably be all you need for a long time, and it's much smaller that way and they'll stay dry.

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