Picking your Travel Pack

Never leave your hostel without a day pack!  N purchasing fruit from a vendour at a market in Beijing

So many straps and zippers!

Selecting the perfect backpack for your trip can be overwhelming. 

A hiking pack is different from a travel pack, and bigger is almost never better.

Buying bags is my favourite! I even enjoy watching the video tutorials on them. A pack is an investment you are buying something that you do not plan to replace ideally in your lifetime.

In Edmonton (where we live) our best option for gear is Mountain Equipment Coop. They have consistently knowledgeable and helpful staff, in addition to a great selection of travel packs.

Our pack situation:

1.  DEUTER FUTURA 28 DAYPACK (UNISEX) – this is a carry-on size.

What I love about it:

-    mesh backing that keeps it off your back and reduces sweating

-    side opening

-    separate compartment at the bottom

2. They no longer sell the larger of our large pack, we got it in 2011 to got to Africa, but the MEC SUPERCONTINENT 65 TRAVEL PACK is a very similar model. And there is a plus that these come in colours

What I love about it:

-    attachable day pack

-    completely side opening (the whole top flips down – it’s basically like a suitcase with clip straps to hold your clothes down)

-    separate compartment at the bottom

-    adjustable torso length

3. Our third pack was my Dad’s old pack (from the 80s) but it’s great! It is just canvas bag, top opening

What I love about it:

-    it rolls up small so it can be carry on size. If it is full it holds tons, so we have often ended up checking it at the end of the trip.

-    Old school look

4. Also discontinued this one is a top opening thin plastic shell with padded straps. You can still find similar ones. It rolls up very small, so I like to pack it empty and then fill it as we go—who doesn’t like to shop on trips?

MEC day pack rolls of up to 8" around

MEC collapsable day pack

(We don’t take all for packs on every trip. We pick depending on space and time frame. Although we have never been overseas without Dad’s old canvas pack.)

MUST HAVE FEATURES:

Side Opening 

If you’re carrying a pack instead of a suitcase, it is because you are moving a lot and not sleeping in the same hotel every night. Top opening is super annoying for clothes because you have to take everything out to get at them. Side opening means you can see everything you packed.

Separate Sections 

When you are doing a lot of walking in a hot country some stuff needs to be in a whole separate compartment fully sectioned off for odour control. It’s also ideal for shoes.

Day Pack Option 

This is why I love my roll-up pack because it is packed empty it does not need to be unpacked of other things to just throw in the camera and a water bottle. The attachable daypack with the MEC bag is also good if you are bringing more stuff for the day. We like to travel very light for the day if we have a secure place to leave our other stuff though. 

Adjustable Torso length

This is important for bigger packs and shorter people. I’m 5”1 many full-size packs are enormous on me and very uncomfortable to carry. They do have packs made for women but then N is very resistant to carrying it if we need to swap or are only using one bag.

I would always recommend physically going into the store and wearing the pack before buying it. Don’t be tempted by the great prices online you will be wearing this bag for days at a time. 

Great GoNOMAD article on Cappadocia

We will be in Turkey in just over a month and I am getting incredibly excited!

Photo from Trover by Ana Patrascu
http://www.trover.com/d/a0YM?st=adpdnd1

It is my birthday two weeks before we arrive. For my birthday we plan on taking a hot air balloon ride in Cappadocia. Taking a hot air balloon ride has been on my bucket list for the past seven years. And ever since I got Pinterest I could think of no better place to experience that than surrounded by other balloons floating over the valleys in Cappadocia. I can't wait to capture images like the ones I've pinned!

I thought I would share this article I read this morning from GoNOMAD ezine on touring Cappadocia: GoNOMAD Travel || Blown Away in Cappadocia

Tips for Picking your Guide Book

Whenever we decide on our next destination (or often even before we have) my first reaction is to head to the bookstore and buy a nice fat travel guide. Resist the urge!

TIP #1: HIT UP YOUR LOCAL LIBRARY
Get your hands on every guide book available on your desired location. Don't waste your time reading them all cover to cover. Ain't nobody got time for that! Skim through a few different guide books to get a feel for the one you like best: writing style, maps, layout. Truth be told (don't rat us out to the library) if the trip is not going to be that long sometimes we just take the library copy along with us and renew it a few times. You can't highlight, write or fold the corners down that way though.

Some books are better for preplanning your trip while others are ideal for getting you around day to day. The book, you also choose, depends on how you plan on using it. Some books will be better for preplanning (booking hotels and activities before you go), while others cater to being carried along with you and doing things more spontaneously when you arrive.

I also like to take out a few books on the local culture. I am mainly interested in the art so I like to read up on significant works done in the region and track them down if they are still in local museums or galleries. (Many works of Asian art, for example, on display in North America or Europe.)

THINGS TO WATCH FOR WHEN YOU DO BUY:

TIP #2 - SIZE/WIEGHT
A key feature, to pay attention to, is its mass. If you are going to be on a long trip with limited luggage space you, don't want your guide book hogging all the room. Buy one for a specific region or city if you can. Many guide books also offer PDF version that you can put on your phone or tablet. I liked this when we travelled through eight different Asian countries last spring. We didn't need a different book for each country and city.

TIP #3 -  MULTIPLE COUNTRIES IN ONE
If you are crossing borders on the same continent look for a book that specializes in that. Many of them will have tips on the best ways to cross borders or suggest good stops in multiple places. We liked Lonely Planet's South East Asia on a Shoe String, which helped us navigate currency exchange and border crossing. Some of our travel companions lost over $500, when they ignored the advice we shared with them from the LP.

TIP #4 - TRAVEL YOUR WAY, ON YOUR BUDGET
Lonely Planet is aimed at a younger backpacker audience while Frodor's targets at a bigger budget and more luxury-style travel.

Our personal favourite travel guide is Lonely Planet. I would never go on a trip without one.  It recommends the type of travel we enjoy most. I like a mix of the sights and off the beaten track. We also usually travel out of backpacks and on a budget.
More recently I've discovered "Top 10" is an intimidating place to first start.

TIP #5 - CURRENT
Often when you go on a trip someone you know will be excited that they were there ten years earlier. How convenient that they have saved their old travel guide all these years. Why don't you take it and save yourself thirty dollars? Travel guides can be pricey. Do not travel with a book even one edition out of date—it is entirely useless. An up to date edition is especially important in rapidly developing countries. For example, we found even some of the information in our current edition books was already out of date in India.

TIP #6 - DON'T BRING IT HOME
Some people like to keep their guide books on their shelves like little awards or pins on a map, which is a kind of a cool way to remember your trips. Some people consider books sacred and would never cut them up but for us though travelling light always takes priority over sentimentally, on this one. We cut out the sections of the guidebook that we needed for our trip to India and left behind the sections on provinces and cities we were not planning to see. As we leave a region we, leave that section of the guidebook too. I'd rather bring home something I bought there than an outdated book.


In case you can't tell from my mountain of library books we are off on another adventure again! We leave in a month to return to South Africa and on the layover home we are spending just over two weeks in Turkey.