“A man should ever be ready booted to take his journey.”
Michel Eyquem De Montaigne
“Where’s your luggage?” she demanded.
“Just this.”
She looked up at my backpack. I was used to this line of ques-tioning.
“Where’s the rest of it?”
“That’s all I have.”
She eyed me with a suspicious yet familiar glare.
“And how long are you staying?”
“Two months.”
Just as it seems unfathomable to others that I travel for so long with such a small backpack, it seems equally insane to me that everyone else seems to have such huge backpacks. What in the world is in there?
The disbelief expands– in both directions—when we both realize that despite carrying a bag with less than half the standard back-packer capacity, I’m almost always better equipped.
I feel guilty when I call myself a minimalist. After all, I have a laptop, a camera, a video camera, and even a portable cot with silk sheets. If I were to truly get down to the bare necessities, I could probably travel out of a zip lock bag.
Twenty Eight Liters is All You Need
Twenty eight liters is a bit of a random number. If the Greatest Backpack of All Time was twenty nine liters, I’d instead be rav-ing about how that’s all you need (and I’d probably be carryrav-ing a down blanket to boot).
For reference, the typical backpack sold for middle schoolers is 34-37 liters1. If you have a vision of looking like one of those backpackers who seems to have a scale model missile silo on his back, erase it immediately. We’re talking about a seriously small bag here. Even fully loaded, you won’t stand out like a sore thumb.
If you get a larger pack I guarantee that you will find stuff to fill it with. Don’t give in to the temptation. I promise that I will have you traveling in style with just twenty eight liters.
Why Pack So Light?
There are many reasons to pack light. For one, it maximizes your versatility. A small backpack can be brought anywhere without
1 The Jansport “Big Student”, is 34.4L and the LL Bean Deluxe Book Pack (which is what I had in middle school) is 36.8 liters.
inconvenience to you. It can be packed or unpacked in a matter of twenty minutes, meaning that you can be ready for a trans-continental move in half an hour at most. That is freedom.
Checking bags at the airport is a killer. Not only will your stuff get lost at least once, you can’t use one of my more advanced methods to getting low fares. Because of this, carrying a bag that can’t be checked can nearly double your ticket price, and that’s not even including the fifteen or more dollar fee that the airline will charge you for it.
When all you have is a small backpack, packing for side trips, hikes, or daily adventures is simple. You just take what you think you might need, since you know it all fits in there anyway.
In a way, packing light is more respectful to local culture. You don’t stick out as yet another tourist or backpacker who is about to steamroll their culture. Instead you’ll probably just appear to be an expatriate. You can also take local trains and buses, rather than having to take a taxi to put your giant bag in.
If you bring something that is not making your trip better, it’s making your trip worse. That’s a fundamental law of traveling.
Extra items require care when packing. If they’re clothes they need to be laundered. They weigh your pack down. The less you can carry, the happier you’ll be. No one travels for a long period of time and wishes they had brought more. Think about that.
Yes, You Need a Backpack
I know that backpacks aren’t the most fashionable items. At best you look like an alpine explorer, and at worst you look like some sort of student or backpacker. No one is going to think that
you’re a businessman or king of the world.
A friend of mine was considering coming to Morocco with me. I told her that the one requirement is that she pack light so that we aren’t encumbered.
“Do I HAVE to get a backpack, though? They’re not chic at all.”
Yes, you do. I know they’re not chic, and the best advice I can give is to get over it. Backpacks make sense, and when you’re a nomad, form follows function. To offer an olive branch, what’s more chic than gallivanting around the world as you please?
The reasons for choosing a backpack are as numerous as they are obvious. Any terrain can be crossed, they compact when they’re less full, they don’t stick out, and they are designed to be water-proofed.
Detach your ego from what you own. Even if you’re reading this book to live vicariously and not because you actually intend to fly away, take this advice to heart.
“You’re not your job. You’re not how much money you have in the bank.
You’re not the car you drive. You’re not the contents of your wallet. You’re not your fucking khakis.”
Fight Club
The more I’ve gotten rid of, the more I’ve understood the truth in this idea. No one cares about what you have, but they do care about who you are, what you’ve done, and what you’re going to do. Your interactions change with materialistic people once you leave their ranks. They flaunt what they have with an air of des-peration to try to win your approval. I used to do that, too.
Become your actions and your principles. Stop trying to create a façade of who you are through buying things. Buying things is
easy, and everyone knows it. It can garner wonder or excitement, but never respect.
Think about people you look up to. Is it because of what they have, or who they are?
I used to think that being a minimalist was a sacrifice, but a wor-thy one. As I grew into it, I realized that it was actually an up-grade over rampant consumerism and materialism. I’m not some sort of peace pipe toting hippie, either. I like capitalism and love excellent products. I’ve just come to believe that best way to en-joy what this amazing world has to offer is through limited but high quality consumption.
Choosing Gear
Your gear matters. A lot. When you have only twenty eight liters to pack in, each liter matters. Most products are designed with no regard for how much space they take up, especially a lot of “travel products”. This seems shocking once object volume becomes an issue for you, but price is more important than space for most people.
Because of this, the stuff you leave with will probably be com-pletely different stuff than you have now. There’s just not much everyday stuff that works well for traveling. Don’t try to force it to – get rid of items that aren’t serving you well, and treat your-self right. You’ll have few things, so make sure that they’re all ex-cellent.
Even before becoming a nomad, one of my passions was seeking out excellent products. At one point I had a three hundred dol-lar toaster that was used by not only the best restaurants, but also the Queen of England. I’ve gotten rid of the toaster, but my quest
for the best has continued even as I’ve become a minimalist. I can virtually guarantee you that every product I recommend is the absolute best in its class; if it wasn’t, I wouldn’t be using it. If you do find something better, though, or something I never thought of, let me know!
Clothes
“The difference between a man of sense and a fop is that the fop values him-self upon his dress; and the man of sense laughs at it, at the same time he knows he must not neglect it.”
Lord Chesterfield
“If men can run the world, why can’t they stop wearing neckties? How intel-ligent is it to start the day by tying a little noose around your neck?”
Linda Ellerbee
Two weeks earlier I had arrived back in Texas for a surprise vis-it. Since then I’d spent nearly every day hanging out with my friends, including my friend Hayden. Inspired by the shedding of my worldly possessions, he started to probe.
“How many pants do you have?”
“One pair, and they zip off to become shorts too.”
“But what about the other pants you’ve been wearing?”
“What do you mean?”
“Like, which pants did you wear when we were hanging out yes-terday?”
“These. They’re my only pants.”
“Wait. You mean to tell me that every time we’ve hung out since you’ve gotten back, you’ve been wearing the same pants?”
Unless you’re dressed outlandishly, no one knows what you’re wearing. Don’t believe me? Think of who you had lunch with yes-terday. What was he wearing?
Most people are so focused on what they’re wearing and how oth-ers will perceive it that they never even stop to soak in what any-one else is wearing. And that’s okay. Clothes, in terms of form, don’t really matter.
As far as function in concerned, on the other hand, clothes may be the most important thing you pack. Sticking with our mini-malist nomad philosophy, here’s the clothing packing list:
• Two pairs of socks
• Two pairs of underwear
• One pair of convertible pants
• One bathing suit
• Three shirts
• One bra (if you’re a woman, or a crossdresser)
That’s it. We’ll get to outerwear in a little while. Before I get into individual selections for each item and justifications for such low numbers, I’m going to take a second to address the issue of fabric.
When it comes to retail clothes, cotton is king. Most of what you own and wear is probably cotton. And why shouldn’t it be?
Well, a lot of reasons, as it turns out. In fact, there is probably no worse textile for the traveler. The biggest problem is its wet
performance. When you’re wet you want your shirt, for example, to dry off as soon as possible. When it’s hot you want it to wick sweat away from your body. And, when it’s cold, you want your shirt to keep you warm, not give you hypothermia.
Cotton fails on every count. It’s notoriously slow drying, does not wick sweat away, and is actually dangerous if it’s wet in cold weather. We wear cotton for two reasons: it’s cheap and it feels nice.
Synthetic materials like polyester are better in most ways, and worse in a couple. They dry fast, wick sweat away, and don’t freeze you if it’s cold. But they don’t keep you very warm, and they smell bad faster than any other material.
The answer to all of our problems is wool. Wool does an amazing job wicking sweat away, dries quickly, keeps us warm even when wet, and smells great. I used to wash my wool shirts every time I wore them, but some experimentation has lead me to realize that just airing them out in between uses lets me wear them four or five times each before washing.
As if it needed another party trick, wool can absorb one third of its weight before it feels wet to the touch. This makes a big differ-ence when putting on socks after swimming.
Most people associate wool with those terrible scratchy sweat-ers your grandmother used to make you wear as a child. Luckily, that’s not the current state of affairs. Fabric makers have learned to use the finest fibers and weave them so tightly that the wool feels a lot more like cotton than the wool you’re used to. No itch-ing, just pure, smooth, magic fabric.
Getting back to our list, two pairs of socks is all you need. Wash one while you wear the other. Wool can be washed with soap or
shampoo, so just do your daily laundry in the shower. It’s also nice to have two pairs of socks because in a real pinch you can use the second pair as mittens. The best brand to buy socks from is Smart Wool, although if you follow my shoe recommendation and need to buy toe socks, Injinji is the only known manufactur-er of wool toe socks. They aren’t nearly as wondmanufactur-erful as the Smart Wools, but they hold their own.
Don’t be tempted to get more pairs of socks. As you get more, it’s more difficult to decide which are clean and which are dirty, and washing a ton of clothes in the shower is a pain. Two is easier than three.
Underwear falls in basically the same category. Get two pair and wash them every day in the shower. If you miss a day, it doesn’t really matter. Wool is antimicrobial so it feels clean and smells fine even if you wear it twice in a row. The best wool underwear is made by Icebreaker, my personal preference being the Beast Briefs. They’re tiny, which makes them easy to pack, and they look great. At the risk of sharing more with you than you wish to receive, the pouch on them is quite flattering.
I’ll admit that convertible pants are stretching the fashion enve-lope a bit. They do have full-width horizontal seams right across the knees. Still, what they lack in fashion (and truthfully, they’re fine in practice) they make up for in form.
Being able to change into shorts, in public no less, just by zipping off the legs, can be a godsend. Having only one set of pockets is also convenient – leave your passport in a side pocket and never worry about whether or not you have it with you.
I have yet to see wool convertible pants, and given the alternative, I don’t really care if I ever see them. Brushed nylon is an
excel-lent choice. It’s extremely durable (I’ve tipped over and rolled a 4 wheeler in the rocky Qatar desert without so much as a scuff or rip), it dries quickly, and is comfortable in all temperatures.
While synthetic shirts smell terrible quickly, synthetic pants don’t seem to. I wash mine once every week or two.
My favorite brand for these is Cloudveil, but they are only avail-able seasonably and my favorite color (dark grey) is now discon-tinued. Many outdoor-oriented pants are so baggy that they look ridiculous, so my best advice is to try on as many pairs as you can before choosing one. Most outdoor gear stores have fantastic return policies, so do what I do: buy every pair in your size and return all but one.
Pay attention to the pockets on your pants. I like having as many zippable pockets as possible. They thwart pickpockets and keep things in your pocket when you’re reclined in a train or doing strange acrobatic maneuvers in the jungle.
It’s possible to get away without a bathing suit, but it’s nice to have something dry to change into if you go swimming, and it’s also good to be able to wear your bathing suit when you do a load of laundry. I went with a square cut belted Speedo because it looks hilarious, dries quickly, and is tiny. If you went for a differ-ent bathing suit, I wouldn’t hold it against you. Keep it small and fast drying.
I pack three shirts, which occasionally feels like one too many.
Wool is, of course, the fabric of choice, and there is one brand that stands head and shoulders above the competition: Icebreaker.
Go for their lightest weight shirts, the 140gm / cm and 150gm/
cm. With appropriate layering, which I’ll discuss in a minute, they’ll keep you warm enough for sub freezing weather and cool enough for the Middle Eastern desert.
If you’re a girl, you’re probably going to bring a bra. I’ve heard the fierce opinions girls have over their bras, so I won’t touch the subject. Take a look at Icebreaker’s offerings, though.
I know how crazy it sounds to have so few clothes, but believe me, you get used to it and fall in love with it fast. I have the sneaking suspicion that by the time this book is released, I’ll be down to two shirts.
Outdoor Gear
Your basic clothes kit will keep you comfortable when it’s warm and dry, but what about when it’s rainy, cold, snowy, muddy, windy or all of the above? This is where things get exciting, pro-vided you’re a gear geek like I am. If you’re not, you probably will be soon.
My current setup was put to the test recently in the middle of winter in Toronto, Canada. I had worn most of the gear in cold climates, but this was to be the first time I would be in a serious winter environment.
For the week I was there the winds gusted to almost forty miles an hour, the high temperature for the day was sometimes below twenty degrees Fahrenheit, and at one point dropped as low as five degrees. It was cold.
I’ll admit that I wasn’t the warmest I’ve ever been in my life, but I was comfortable enough that many nights I chose to walk through the snow rather than take the subway. It may seem in-conceivable that you can store, in such a small bag, enough cold weather to stay warm and dry in such an environment. The key is in the layering of cutting edge fabrics.
The standard formula is this: a layer with an ultra high warmth to weight ratio covered in the thinnest wind and waterproof layer you can find. It’s a simple method, but its beauty is twofold:
1. Maximum efficiency. All of the warming is left to a sub-stance that is chosen only for its high warmth to weight ratio.
The waterproof and windproof layer merely holds the heat in.
2. Maximum versatility. Both layers can be worn separately, depending on the level of warmth and dryness desired.
I have experimented superficially with wool as a warmth layer for the chest, but it seems that the current king of warmth to weight in terms of a jacket is synthetic fleece. Which company you buy from doesn’t matter particularly, as long as you get the highest warmth possible without a wind blocker. Wind blocking adds weight and is redundant.
In particular, you want to look for a jacket with Polartec Thermal Pro high loft fleece. I wear an Arc’teryx Delta SV, which is one of
In particular, you want to look for a jacket with Polartec Thermal Pro high loft fleece. I wear an Arc’teryx Delta SV, which is one of