One Bag One Year - Are You Kidding?

I sat last night and really thought about what I am going to take with me on my trip.

I’m going for 14 months.  One backpack, one day backpack and a travel satchel.  Doesn’t sound like much right?

The condensing of one’s life belongings has been made a little easier, as I have had to pack my whole house into a shipping container, which is now sitting somewhere in Brisbane waiting for my eventual return.  So already I had to decide what I would and wouldn’t need for my last 5 months in Oz.  Amazing how much ‘stuff’ one doesn’t really need.

I will have a day backpack that will carry the stuff that is too important to put in the BIG backpack.  You know the stuff you can’t live without – the charges for all the appliances, personal diary, memory cards, notebook the large camera that sort of thing.

My day to day bag will carry the smaller but just as important stuff.  The Ipod, the point and shoot camera’s, the phone, passport, my bloggie, more memory cards, money matters etc…….

Then the Pièce de résistance – THE BACKPACK.  This will house the clothes, the toiletries my 3 pairs of shoes and all my purchased the knick knacks until I can get to a post office to send them.  Okay when I say it all like that – how much room do I need?  Surely I could fit all that in a 55L backpack?

I have never been a backpacker as such.  I can count on one hand the amount of times that I have travelled with a backpack in my travelling life.  All but ONE I would call successful stories.

The very first time was a 28 day Contiki European tour 10 years ago.  I was a lot younger, so backpack was the obvious choice.  It was a 4 week tour with an additional 6 weeks added for good measure in Turkey, Egypt and Africa.  I borrowed the bag from my Aunty Beth, who sang it’s praises and had used it extensively on her travels stating it was the best bag in the world.  Well for the younger folk, it was one of the old fashioned backpacks which you could only load from the top.  So if you needed something you had to pull everything out to get to the bottom and repack the whole bloody thing.  NOT SUCCESSFUL.

I travelled on a Contiki tour of Scandinavia and surrounds in 2007.  It was a ‘Concept Tour’ meaning we were going to be staying in hostels and cabins.  No tents – but not really the type of tour one would take a suitcase.  So after some homework and not wanting to go without all the nessessities, I bought a 80L backpack.  Well have you ever filled an 80L backpack before?  It was MASSIVE and it was cumbersome.  Once it was on my back, I did okay – the main factor was not to fall over and look like an upside down turtle OR trying hard to not knock some-one over on my turning circle.  I  always needed some-one to help me heft the bloody thing on my back. NOT SUCCESSFUL.

Europe was also done the same year with the same said backpack.  This was an Intrepid Tour from Berlin to Venice – solely only using the public train and bus system for 3 weeks.  I thought Scandinavia was bad and we had a coach – public transport was a nightmare carrying this sucker, just ask anyone on this tour stories of me and my backpack.  I do recall ‘bag lady’ was one of my nicknames. LESSON NOT LEARNT.

2009 I travelled for 4 weeks on a Tucan trip of Central America, Cuba and Panama.  Now I had learnt my lessons from previous trips and purchased a much smaller backpack at 55L.  Now this was the way to travel.  I also trialled the packing cubes and they were brilliant!  It was a great bag – I didn’t end up taking as much and it was much more easier to handle ( shock horror ) and no help required getting that onto my back.  This trip was also solely using chicken buses and the sort and I wondered WHAT was I thinking with the 80L MONSTER all those years ago?

So now I embark on my 14 month trip with my backpack in tow.  Stay tuned for the pre-pack dramas on what I WANT to take and what I CAN actually fit.  That will be a whole entry on it's own.

Let the packing the backpack games begin???

PS: Any hot packing / travelling tips are welcome.