Pack your backpack

The Art of Packing:

Nearly everyone packed a valise, troly or backpack before. It is nothing insurmountable, everyone can do it, everyone does it. But nevertheless, a lot fewer people master it. A litlle bit of patience, respecting some basic rules and an appropriate amount of ahead thinking can help you a great deal and it might enhance your backpacking experience and overall comfort considerably.

For me, travelling is for a great part about a feeling of freedom. Properties and valuable items may become a source of worry and therefore might limit your freedom and might depreciate your backpacking experience. Therefore, my basic principle is "less stuff, less worries, more freedom". When backpacking, I only want to worry about three, maximum four items: my wallet (with money, credit and debit cards), my passport and to a lesser extent my mobile phone and travelling notes. For me, these are the primary items and the only things I allow myself to seriously worry about. For others it might include a camera, a laptop or other personal and/or valuable things. But besides these crucial items there are a lot of secondary items to pack. These secondary items are things you also need often or even on a daily basis, but don't hold a lot of personal or financial value. If you lose or forget them, you can mostly just buy them again. These include a towel, clothes, shoes, mosquito net, a knife,... If you limit the amount and weight of the primary and secondary items, you can bring some tertiary items. These items in general are included for reasons of convenience, comfort, entertaiment, hobbies...

Backpack capacity

Before you can start packing, you'll need a decent backpack. Just like defining what will go in the backpack, this will highly depend on several factors like the travelling context, the climate, your own height and whether or not you have back problems, the length of your hikes and the kind and quantity of accomodations you'll encounter on those hikes. In winter you'll need more packing space than in spring or fall. In summer you'll need even less space. The same goes for longer versus shorter hikes.
There has already a lot been written about this and there are a bunch of (over) detailled tables and charts about it. For me the following works fine:

< 5 day hikes*: 45 - 65 l (summer), 60 - 75 l (spring/ fall),65 - 85 l (winter)
> 5 day hikes*: 65 - 75 l (summer), 80 - 85 l (spring/ fall), 85 - 90 l (winter)

Keep in mind that these are guidlines and no absolute rules. For sure you can go more detailled, but that might also mean, you need 3 to 5 different backpacks when doing different kind of hikes.

Five steps to pack your backpack

1. Research

Do some research on your countries of destination. Learn about the culture, the climate and even the economics. Obviously the content of your backpack may vary highly with varying climates, but it may also vary with differing cultural habits and economic situations. Recently, I left with a 9 kg backpack to Bangkok and soon, I realised I could easily have left with 5 or 6 kg. A low-weight backpack like that is only possible when you don't need any camping gear and when you plan to buy some clothes over there. If you cross cities like Bangkok and Phnom pehn, you can find almost everything and it will probably be (a lot) cheaper than back home. Some questions that might lead your research could be: what will the temperatures be like? will it cool-down a lot at night? will it rain/snow regularly? what kind of activities will I do? are there any cultural/ religious dress-code prescriptions? will I hike a lot? In what type of accomodations will I stay? how frequently will I have acces to wifi? will I be able to use my mobile phone (with or without local sim-card)? will I wash my clothes myself? will I cook myself?

2. Make a list

After some reading and some consulting, make a list. Make sure this list is complete and mark the crucial things (if you want you can work with the three categories: primary, secondary and tertiary items). But equally important: don't make the list to elaborate. Remember, this pack will go on your back and it might stay there for a while some days. For most people this means: make a list, make it shorter and lower the quantities, make it even more shorter and lower the quantities even more and maybe you should even then still make it shorter and lower the quantities again. It might be tempting to just go and buy a bigger or extra backpack, but some discipline here will pay off later.

3. Collect

Collect the things you already have, buy the necessary or loan them from family or friends if you can. Low-budget travelling starts at the very beginning. Before you buy items, ask yourself if you really need them. And if you need them, you can still think about alternatives or ask a friend to loan it to you. On the other hand, some things you might want to buy yourself, because you might worry about damaging or losing loaned stuff or simply because you'ld like to possess it yourself. An other thing to consider before rushing to the shop is whether the things you need are more beneficial to buy at your destination or back home.  This will depend on the price, the quality, the supply and likelyhood and timing of need.

Before you start packing, bring everything together. I personnaly like to spread it all over the floor or on my bed. Just make sure you have an overview to be able to: double check if everything on your list is there, to start packing in a structured way, to not forget anything.

4. Deliberately pack

There are a few important principals to keep in mind when packing your backpack:

a) weight distribution

Generally, we try to keep the heaviest weights close to our body center of gravity. The further a weight is placed from your body center, the harder it will pull you in directions you preferably don't want to be pulled.

Take this seriously. When walking uphill in the boiling heat, feeling hangry and tired you will thank God you for having packed your pack wisely. Moreover, your body joints are not so much replaceable and therefore something to treat with great care. Not overloading your bag and respecting the principles of weight distribution are crucial first of all for your back and in extention for your neck, shoulders, hips, knees, ankles and feet. You might impress some people by carrying a 30kg and two-meter-high backpack, but it may also be the last time you ever impress someone with physical abilities.

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tip: Avoid attaching gear externally. If you have the right backpack size and you pack it properly, there shouldn't be the need of attaching much at the outside. However, if not everything fits in, make sure to balance the weights and tighten the objecs well so they don't swing. Otherwise it might lead to a lot of energy-loss and eventually cause injuries.

b) Accessibility

Take into account which things need to be easy accessible. For example; a sleeping bag usually goes in the bottom of your bag making it easily accessible without disrespecting the weight distribution rules. There are side, front and top pockets where you can put other stuff you might want to use frequently, e.g. a map, passport, a knife, a camera, ...

Keep into account, it can be even more handy and safe to keep some of these things in a seperate bag that you wear around your hips or around your neck.

c) Fill empty spaces

Look for some efficiency: fill the empty spaces in pots and pans, take things out of their packaging, put some socks in your shoes (not the ones you wear), use odd-shaped things to create a congruent whole. Yes, packing your back really is an art! You can even take your medicines out of their clothing and store them all together in a tiny bag. Don't forget to keep the leaflets and make sure you know which pills are meant for what.

While filling your backpack, put some gentle pressure on it pressing your stuff down (preferably without squizing bananas or breaking your precious jewelry) and pushing it towards the corners. Optimize... This can make a tremendous difference.

d) Organization

Organize your stuff, cluster similar small items in zip locks or suff bags.

Put liquids in plastic bag.

Organize your clothes in 2 or 3 plastic bags: Put types of clothes together as you like. I usually put socks, boxers and swimming shorts in one bag and t-shirts, fleece, shorts and long pance in another bag. Dirty clothes go in yet another one. In case your backpack gets soaked by the rain this can save your clothes from getting soaked aswell. Moreover, the bags will avoid the smell of used and dirty clothes to spread. When travelling for months, a backpack usually doesn't smell that great anymore inside. Again packing your clothes in light plastic bags will avoid them to absorb the unpleasant odors.

5. Check again

Go through your checklist again. Did you pack everything? No more stuff littering?
Then, you're done. You can relax and leave with peace of mind and zero stress.

CONTENT:

Here is an example of what I packed going to south-east Asia for a couple of months (hot and humid climate).

Backpack 65 liters

• wallet with some money, credit and debit cards
• passport and visa
• plane tickets
• notebook
• copies of passport, visa, credit card, debit card
• info & contact of my first hostel, info & contact of the airlines with which I flew and emergency
• numbers, info & contact of my insurance company
• 6 passport photos
• mobile phone & charger
• small camera & charger
• usb stick
• ear plugs
• pocket knife
• musquito net
• needle & thread
• some robe
• washing powder (never used)
• flashlight
• sleeping back
• 2 coth diapers as an alternative for a towel
• clothes: 
• 3 T-shirts (fast-drying, preferrably anti-sweat, and at least one with longe sleeve
• 1 long pants (light, a lot of pockets and concertable to shorts)
• 2 shorts
• 1 fleece
• 3 pair of socks
• 5 boxers
• 1 raincoat (that can also cover my backpack)
• 1 scarf (that I also use as headprotection)
• 1 pair of slippers
• 1 pair of comfortable walking shoes
• (swimming shorts and some more T-shirts I bought over there) 
• sunscreen & sunglasses
• anti-musquito spray
• toiletbag with medicines, thermometer
• first-aid kit
• small backpack     
• a book
• spare batteries (which I could aswell have bought overthere)     
• a closable box (which proved very convenient e.g. to keep left-over food for a couple of hours)