Material Consideration: 4 Things to Pack for Long-term Travel

When you live on the road, material considerations tend to take a backseat to experience. Why spend money on yet another goddamn gadget that you know you’ll just tire of and abandon in Lisbon or wherever? That money could have gone to airfare. The space in your bag freed for something you’d actually use. Or you could have spent it on booze or food, which offer obvious benefits in addition to requiring no space in your luggage at all.

But as any honed traveler knows, there are some items that can make the entire odyssey easier and more comfortable. And because the Road Life is not always easy, nor comfortable, if you can find some small material way of achieving either of those things, it can be well worth the expense, both financially and spatially.

I’m about to jet off on a travel binge that will go on for at least eight months, with no visits home to relax and resupply. Through much trial and error, I have discovered a number of items that will make the coming year move more smoothly, or rather, that will help as I move through it.

Here are four things that I no longer travel without, at least if I can help it.

The Must-Have: A Quality Bag

Over the years I’ve wrangled backpacks, suitcases, and bags of widely varying form and quality, and I have come to learn that there is perhaps no single travel item worth spending extra money on than the right piece of luggage.

The key word there is right, because different bags offer different benefits to different people.

At a certain point I outgrew the traditional backpack, mentally or perhaps socially, not physically. I’m a travel writer who lives on the road, not some college kid on a semester abroad, and there are certain assumptions that come with carrying a backpack. These demarcations matter.

For a while I switched to a typical wheeled suitcase, but this proved to be too rigid, too authoritarian for my needs. Eventually I discovered that my perfect bag falls somewhere between the two, and today I travel with an Osprey Ozone Convertible—a fairly durable bag that can be either towed on wheels or worn as a backpack, and that has a detachable day-pack zipped onto its max-carry-on sized frame. It looks pretty sharp, too.

(Note: this is in no way a paid endorsement. It’s just the bag I have. In fact I haven’t formed an opinion about it yet, and will share what I think in a few months once I’ve run it through the minefield.)

My point is that you should experiment and find the right bag for your needs. You want something strong enough that it won’t go all to pieces on you; something big enough to carry what you need but not so large that you bring along a bunch of extraneous garbage and tomfoolery; something you can maneuver comfortably, whether that means carrying it, wearing it, or wheeling it.

The Smart-Have: A Kindle

I am an unrelenting book nerd, and I can’t travel without a small library.

In the past, this meant filling up half my bag with anywhere from six to a dozen books, then lugging their ponderance all across creation. This is how a hefty volume of Proust once ended up flung into the Seine.

As a book nerd, I have a range of problems with the entire concept of a Kindle or ebook reader which I will not go into here. Suffice to say that reading one on the beach will never provide the same satisfaction as the real deal.

But having taken a Kindle on my last travel fling, I can report that I have been converted—at least as far as the travel convenience goes. With it, suddenly the physical library is left in my storage unit, and all of the books I need can be packed along in a format that eats up virtually zero real estate in my bag.

The Luxury: A Bluetooth Speaker

When you’re traveling for the long-haul, sometimes the little luxuries can go a long way toward making you feel like you’re traveling rather than just…homeless. That means bringing along some lifestyle item that makes wherever you go feel like home.

This is different for everyone. I’ve seen people who bring along a travel yoga mat. Or a particularly varied set of toiletries. Then there was the one guy who packed a garlic press–just in case!

For me, I find that it makes each new space truly my own if I can fill it with music. And not some tinny sound from my phone or computer. I like to have a quality speaker that will provide somewhat substantial volume whether I’m working out at home, having some people over, or want to enjoy some music outdoors.

Until recently I used this half-brick sized thing from Anker, and it was absolutely fantastic. Great sound, durable build, pretty good size (by good I mean small). But as I’m currently trying to carve out even more space in my bag, just today I ordered a tiny 2”x2”x2” speaker from Marsboy that is supposed to have excellent sound, and will give me another several square inches of space I didn’t have before.

The Lifesaver: Dayquil

Cheap, effective, and requiring virtually no room in your bag, I cannot recommend Dayquil (or some similar medicine) enough. Oh Dayquil, how I will sing thine praises.

This became a recent addition to my repertoire. Usually I avoid medicines (for no real reason at all), but when you wake up sick as hell in the middle of nowhere in Mexico and it’s the morning that you have to change locations and there’s nothing you can do about it, these little red buggers will keep you stitched together long enough to make it to your next resting place.

Bottom line—throw a sheet of Dayquil into your toiletry kit. Few things are worse than being sick while dealing with the manifold challenges of travel, but Dayquil or whatever will at least mask the nightmare until you’ve gotten someplace where you can put your head down again.