Packing is a hassle, often leaving you with a barely closable luggage and a messy room. When considering a long backpacking trip, you will need think and research what exactly to purchase. Then, after buying the needed materials, you will have to go through a couple packing rounds as packing lightly is a necessary but not easy task. The most important thing to ask yourself when packing is whether the item is practical and multipurpose.
Backpacks
We traveled using the Tortuga and Gregory Z-35 backpacks, together with an Oakley Sport daypack. Both backpacks opened fully, had multiple compartments, and good back and hip support. The Gregory backpack had aIn the end, we really liked the Tortuga Backpack, as its square shape allows for neat placement of the various packing cubes we bought. It is worth noting both backpacks can be carried on, even though the Z-35 is (theoretically) slightly to big, but this was often overlooked by airline staff.
Clothing
When it comes to clothes, things that don’t stand out, are simple, and easily combined with other clothing are your best bet. As everyone does, we started out with more clothes then we needed and although they were quite compact, we realized we needed to downgrade.
For Herta, two bras and seven pairs of underwear (of which two were special travel underwear is plenty as we mostly did laundry every other week. Further, we found that three pairs of long pants (comfy, jeans, and hiking pants) and two shorts as well as one simple short dress was good enough. We each brought two long sleeved shirts and about five short sleeved shirts, which was sufficient. Although rotating five outfits for six months doesn’t exactly put you on fashion weekly, it is all you really need.
For cold weather, we brought a hat and thin gloves. We had fantastic light rain jackets (Patagonia Torrentshell Plus and North Face RDT Rain Jacket), useful if you are changing seasons between countries. It may become necessary to buy something like a cheap, bulky, but warm jacket along the way, but it’s better than dragging a coat all the way around the world.
Shoes
As for shoes, one pair of hiking shoes, flip-flops, and regular walking shoes are all that is needed. Make sure the shoes fit well before leaving, as Herta’s Merrells hiking shoes started to break down in the first month. Mark had Keen Durand Mid WP hiking shoes, which are not very fashionable but very comfortable and have great grip.
Toiletries
Although a good deodorant and razor is more important than make-up, it’s nice to put something on occasionally. Double Wear makeup by Estée Lauder was quite nice foundation, in combination with MAC red lipstick, mascara, eyeliner, and eyeshadow is all you really need. Lengthy bus trips and all sort of weird facilities had us using two items quite often: antibacterial and refreshing body wipes. For trips to areas with mosquitos we recommend using Natrapel repellent, which works well and is way nicer on the skin than any DEET-based product. Be aware that some in countries, it is very hard to buy travel-sized toiletries.
Electronics
In the electronics department, we brought along a Macbook Pro, which was useful for making reservations, blogging, and watching a movie here and there. Because this is an expensive laptop, we sometimes opted to not flash it around and use a cased-iPhone 5 instead. Nevertheless; we insured both the Macbook and iPhone using Worth Ave Group.
One of the most important things is to have a proper power adapter. We bought the universal world wide travel charger adapter, but overlooked the fact that the voltage is different in the U.S., so sometimes our devices would not charge properly. As external battery, we had a small Anker battery, which we highly recommend. It holds over one iPhone or camera charge.
We brought an Olympus TG-830 iHS, which we used almost every day. After our trip, however, Mark decided to upgrade to an iPhone 6, and we decided to sell our camera, as the picture quality is very good, and our favorite future (GPS-tagging) is available for the iPhone as well.
Miscellaneous
We bought a number of small items that proved to be very useful: a spork, washing line, and set of locks are small and good to have with. The doorstop we bought, however, was not useful.
To protect our personal belongings, we had a travel wallet and money belt. For long journeys, we had an inflatable travel pillow, which allowed us to sleep a little better.
