What's in your pack?

From Gadling.com’s excellent recurring feature - What’s in your pack? - this time with travel writer David Farley:

“I’d much rather hand-wash my clothes than lug around a big bag. It’s also nice to get off the plane and just go,without having to wait around for my bag, which is inevitably the last one that comes around on the carousel. Sometimes when I see the way people over-pack-lugging around bags that a pachyderm could fit into-I almost laugh out loud in shock. One time, while waiting in the check-in line, I noticed the couple next to me each had two massive bags and two large carry-ons. I jokingly suggested that they must be moving out of the country with so much baggage, but they said they were just going to London for four days. In a way, it’s emblematic of how inefficient and solipsistic we are as a society; we stuff our bags with so many just-in-case items, forgetting that the outside world also uses shampoo, tampons, and soap, and that there are shops in the outside world that sell those things just in case you need them. In fact, being forced to go into a shop to buy something you need (but didn’t bring), may in some way heighten your travel experience. We like to wax on about how travel changes us, it opens our minds and expands our world view. But I’m not so sure this is always true.

Comments

[Noah M Kern]

couldn't agree more.