What to bring on a world trip: our packing list

It’s not easy to do a world trip and pack lightly. There are so many things to think of. But as you travel more often, you will slowly get the hang of it. I remember my first time packing for a six month trip through Asia. Here I was stuffing all these crafty so-called “travel-essentials”, such as a spork and other outdoor gadgets, in my already heavily bulging backpack. I was packing my bag as if I was going full Bear Grylls, surviving merely on plants and sleeping in caves deep in the Vietnam rain forest. Obviously, this wasn’t the case. I returned home, unpacked my bags and, to my surprise, found many items that I hadn’t even seen or touched in my time in Asia. So to spare you the trouble of lifting extra weight (you can do this in the gym), here’s a list of things we packed for our world trip.

ESSENTIALS

• Passport
• Vaccine passport (‘gele boekje’ in Dutch)
• Visa(s) - printed if required
• Drivers license + International driving license
• Health insurance (card or proof of policy)
• Bankcard + credit card
• Wallet
  

BAGS

• 50-70 litre backpack (ours our one 55+15-litre Lowe Alpine and one 60-litre Nomad backpack).

• 25-30 litre cabin luggage (we have a 28-litre Pacsafe bag and a 30-litre Thule bag that we also use as camera bag)

GADGETS

• Camera + 2 lenses + extra battery (we carry a Nikon D750 + one 50mm portrait lens and one 24-120mm all-round lens)
• Laptop (Lenovo Yoga i7 and MacBook Air)
• GoPro (the Hero 7 black we have is pretty sweet in capturing smooth footage)
• International power plug (preferably a world plug adapter)
• Speaker (JBL GO 2 is our favourite; waterproof, compact and lightweight)
• Smartphones (Google Pixel 2 for good snapshots)
• Headphones (wireless are really easy to travel with)
• External hard disk (for backup)
• E-reader (the Kobo e-reader we have is perfect to travel with and can store hundred of books)
• Power bank (any power bank that will charge your device at least twice is good enough)
  

CLOTHING

• A week worth on undies & socks
• Two shorts
• Two long pants
• Three t-shirts
• Two sweaters
• Two dress shirts / two dresses
• A thin windbreaker jacket
• A set of workout clothes
• Hiking t-shirt + long sleeve
• Hiking boots
• Hiking socks
• Running shoes
• Flip-flops
• A pair of sneakers
• Gloves
• Beanie

UTILITIES

• Toiletries
• Emergency kit
• Repellent
• Sun lotion
• Sun glasses
• Tripod for our camera
• Skipping rope (sport)
• Elastics (sport)
• Padlock (preferably with number-lock)

Note: while this list is A LOT more compact than we used to pack before, we are still struggling with packing as light as we possibly can. We experience this as an ongoing process and it will take some time to adjust the list exactly to our (ever-changing) needs. Perhaps the biggest challenge for us is how we can cut down even more before leaving on our adventure next year. The ultimate goal is to ‘only’ travel with our carry on bags.