Packing List. Trans Siberian Railway.

A Richard Limoges porcelain box, a miniature suitcase, from Rochard.  This tiny thing is so beautiful!

Our Russia trip is just a few short weeks away and pretty much all the logistics (accommodations, train tickets, and tours) have been worked out.  Both Chantale and I got our Russia visas last week so we know for sure we are going to Russia!  We can now turn our focus to packing.  This is not an easy trip to pack for!

Packing List. China 2018.

Photo from Tropenmuseum, part of the National Museum of World Cultures
( Licensed under Creative Commons CC BY-SA 3.0 license)

Hard to believe but I leave for China in just a few short weeks.  I feel I just got back from India not that long ago and in fact, I've not even done all the blog postings for that trip!

Not to mention that I still have some planning tasks to wrap up for the China trip e.g., buying our train tickets from Beijing to Xi'an, handling whatever needs to be done for my two cousins as they go through the processes of getting their China visas from the UK (a nightmare for poor Sook Kwan) and Australia, put together my travel binder, and offline all my Google maps.

Packing List. India and Nepal.

Our suitcases are in those sacks!

On my first adventure trip, which was to Peru in 2006, I was traveling with a backpack. Fully packed, it weighed just under 8 kilos. By the time I went to Mali in Senegal in September 2010, I had decided to switch over to wheeled luggage so I bought an Eagle Creek wheeled duffle that I still use to day. I love that suitcase!  Considering how many countries I have dragged that thing through, it has last incredibly well.

Packing List. Chile, Argentina, & Uruguay.

From Disney

I was looking for a graphic image to open up this post and I found the gif of Mickey packing.  I laughed when I saw it because I had also just spoken with Bro who was complaining of how much stuff he will have to pack along for this trip.  Mind you Bro barely brings anything with him but his suitcase looks stuffed because he literally just throws his clothes into it....just as Mickey is doing in the gif.  Bro says he does fold his clothes but I don't think so because the contents of his suitcase are always in a mess. Thankfully, while it looks like a filled suitcase, it always weighs light as a feather.

We're just a few short weeks away from leaving for South America so I'm already beginning to think about my packing list for the trip.

Clothing wise, we are going to three climate areas. Our first destination is Santiago where daytime temps will average around 20.2 °C (68.36 °F) - very comfortable.  However this is a La Niña year so temps in the southern hemisphere could be warmer. Overnight temperatures are generally quite mild with an average low of 12 °C (53.6 °F).

Packing List. Korea and China.

Camels with a Howdah, by Émile Rouergue, 1855

I  may be going to the Silk Road but thankfully, I won't need a camel caravan to carry everything with me!

With trips to more countries than I can remember, I am now more than a seasoned traveler who knows how to pack a suitcase.   I have also done enough adventure travel to know how to pack really light.  At most, my suitcase now weighs in at no more than 13 kilos and that's if it's really, really, stuffed.  Typically, at the start of a trip, my faithful 22" Eagle Creek ORV Trunk suitcase tips the scale, fully packed, at under 12 kilos. 

Not bad as at that weight,  I can easily manage to hoist into the overhead compartment of the plane and I can easily carry it up and down stairs.  That suitcase has been with me since 2010 and despite all the beating and battering it has gone through, so far the only thing I've had to *repair* is a lost zipper pull.  A few more trips from now and I will likely have to replace the wheels.

Packing List. The Caucasus.

Advertisement for for Louis Vuitton July 1898.
From from Villanova Digital Library.
 Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

I wasn't planning on putting together my packing list for the Caucasus until I got home from my Thailand and Myanmar trip but now that I'm sidelined with a sprained ankle, I might as well use the time to come up with the list.

Pat and I are headed to the Caucasus pretty much around the same time that we went to Central Asia in 2015.  The one thing we learned from that trip was that we were not well prepared for the cold weather that faced us.  It was 23 degrees Fahrenheit the morning after we arrived into Tashkent!

With El Niño affecting weather world wide this year, it's going to be more difficult than usual to predict what the temperatures will be like when we are in the Caucasus.  I've been keeping watch and  even in February, there are days that the temps are unseasonably warm, some days unseasonably cold.  So, I think I will err on the side of cold than warm meaning packing in more long sleeve shirts than short, bringing along a down vest and my lightweight down jacket.  Good thing is that shirt wise, Pat and I are the same size so we can borrow clothing from each other if need be.

Luckily, with the exception of our time in Azerbaijan where we will be staying in hotels and guesthouses, our accommodations in Georgia and Armenia will be mainly Airbnb apartments, all of which are equipped with washers so we can do laundry.  This will lighten the load of the clothes we need to bring along with us.  Otherwise, I will pretty much follow my Central Asia packing list.

Packing List. Myanmar and Thailand.

Miniature suitcase made from an Altoids mints tin.  It's so cute!
Crafted by Julie McGufee. Photo taken from her blog - Life in the Craft Lane.

We don't leave for Thailand and Myanmar for several more weeks but for me, it's never too soon to put together the packing list.

Every trip I go on, I try to reduce the load but I'm afraid I've not been very successful.  On my first trip, to Peru in 2006, my suitcase weighed in at barely 8 kgs....that was including the 2 kgs that the suitcase weighed!  Now, my suitcase generally tips the scale around 13 kgs and really that's not all that bad considering I'm packing for at least 3-4 weeks travel.

This trip will be to the tropics so it's going to be a lot of lightweight clothing.  However, for visiting the temples, I will need to bring a long sleeve shirt and a pair of long pants that I can then also wear on our day long trek from Kalaw to Inle Lake in Myanmar.  Keeping the clothes thin will also be important.  Except for the first few days in an apartment in Bangkok, the rest of the trip, we will likely be doing our own laundry though I hope that by the time we arrive at the hotel in Mandalay, we can pay for a load to be done.

Packing List. Belgium & France.

Photo from stanford.edu.

W

e'll be leaving soon on this trip and so I decided it was time to work on the packing list.  I'm anticipating that after he arrives, Z will be missing a thing or two and that we'll have to hit the stores to pick up a few items so this will just be a starting list for us.

I did tell Z that we are traveling light which means we carry our luggage on board the plane so if he arrives with any bigger suitcase than that, I'll be downsizing him.  More importantly, Our trip will have us traveling by train between cities and I want to make sure we're not lugging heavy suitcases everywhere.  Not to mention that we're staying in apartments and none of the places have elevators so we need to keep things very light.  Of course, the nice thing about traveling with a strapping 20-something is that he can help carry things for me :-)

Packing List. Madagascar.

Just about the right size suitcase for this trip!  Image from outsidethebeltway.com

It has been a few months since I've posted anything on this blog.  I feel a bit bad about that as it makes it look like I don't care much about this trip but nothing could be further from the truthe.  I have a good excuse as I recently spent a month traveling in Central Asia followed pretty quickly by a three week trip to California to see my nephew graduate from college. As of today, I'm still working on finishing up the blog posts from my Central Asia trip. It's slow going as I'm not a good writer - I hope I can finish it before I leave for Madagascar!

Packing List. Central Asia.

Lucky I just have to pack things and not people as well!  (Photo from gapyear.com)

We've got just a few more weeks to go before we leave on our trip so now's the time to start thinking about packing.  Pat recently showed me her master packing list, developed over decades of travel, and it's remarkably very similar to mine...down to the items for doing laundry!  I take that as another sign that she is the perfect person to partner with me on this trip.

Packing List. Greece and Turkey.

Image from The Goddess of the Hunt

Planning for this trip has gone remarkably smooth - probably because I don't have work to get in the way :-)

Even though we're quite a lot of weeks away from departing, it's not to early to put together my packing list....at least, it's not early for an obsessive planner like me as I hate leaving packing to the last minute.

Packing List & Getting Ready. The Baltics.

I've not spent as much time planning this trip as I have all the others mainly because I've been distracted with a lot of other things - especially with my photo submissions to CNN iReport which have gotten a lot of recognition including my Tarn Taran iReport being featured on CNN International!  Every month, CNN has a half hour feature (that plays several times each month) covering what the producers feel are the highlights from the month.  My submission was covered under "Best Images of the Month".  Woohoo!!  My 20 seconds of fame :-)

Packing List. Israel.

Image from Travel Philippines | Entertainment

Who says you can't cram a lot into a backpack? :-)

As with my past few trips, the backpack is staying at home and I'm taking my Eagle Creek wheelie with me. It's a soft sided suitcase, small enough that I can put it in the overhead compartment. The trick is to not to pack in so much stuff that the suitcase is too heavy for me to lift, above my head, into the compartment.

Since I'm only going to one country and the weather will not change much from one location to another, I should be able to keep things light.

The plan will be to bring mainly lightweight clothing that I can wash and dry overnight.....the usual travel gear for me.  

I will need some good walking shoes though as I'm hoping to make a side trip to the Judean desert and that will entail doing some walking on unpaved ground.

The weather won't be terribly cold in either Jerusalem or Tel Aviv though nights will be chilly.  I think a thick cotton sweather and my lightweight winter coat should do the trick.  Worse comes to worse, I will have to buy some warm clothing.

Packing list. Sri Lanka.

It would be nice to imagine that all I need to take with me, on this vacation, is a pair of flip flops but that would be dreaming.   On the other hand, I'm actually a relatively light traveler though I don't hold a candle to my brother who can go on three week trip with a bag smaller than what most people take to the gym.  Yes, he does a lot of clothes washing when he travels which isn't a bad thing because that usually means he has relatively few dirty items of clothing in his bag at any one time.

Packing list. Morocco.

Another trip, another packing list. This has become old hat for me by now. In fact, when I come back from a trip, the clothes go into the washer and when they come out of the dryer, they're folded and put in plastic containers that hold just my travel clothes. So, when I pack, I just have to sift through the contents of the containers and pick out what I need. I have gotten this down to a fine art :-)

Since this is a winter trip, I will definitely need a warm jacket.  I have a feeling it will come into handy for our overnight trip in the desert.

Packing. Mexico.

For this trip I thought I would whip out my old leather suitcase and take it on one last trip before it heads for the trash can. A bit of nostalgia. Only kidding!! I've not traveled with a suitcase, except for when I go away on business, for years and I don't have any intention of starting now.

Over these past few years of travel, since my trip to Peru in the summer of 2006, I've traveled with a backpack and I've traveled light. I still travel light but now the backpack comes with wheels as well so I can roll my luggage in places that allow for that.

Clothing wise, I've accumulated a small collection of lightweight travel clothes and until they become threadbare, I will continue to wear them.  Everything scrunches down so clothing takes up little space.  In fact, I can probably fit in all my shirts in the same amount of space that my shoes take up!

Working out the details. A Big Checklist!

With my travel itinerary finally nailed down, I can now shift my focus to working out all the other trip details and with two back-to-back trips to plan for, there are a LOT of details! 

I really hate to be unprepared and I don't want to forget anything important so I can't live without a checklst of some sort.

This posting serves as the checklist of things I need to do for both the trip to Mali and Senegal and the one to India and Bhutan.

The packing list.

P

acking for this trip will be relatively easy - not much climate change and no real cultural restrictions like must keep shoulders covered, no shorts, etc. Even so, I'm going for six weeks and the last 2+ weeks in Mongolia will require me to be prepared for travel to some really remote locations though no sleeping bag or trekking gear will be required. Lei tells me that Shanghai will be sweltering hot while it looks like nights in the Gobi will be cool so I have to bring along a mix of clothing that I can layer on. Most importantly, I will be bringing along a good medical kit - I don't see quick easy access to medical facilities in the Mongolian countryside.

The packing begins....

O

nce again, my "suitcase" will be my trusty Eagle Creek backpack - small and lightweight which makes it manageable for me to carry. This will be important as most of our travel within both Turkey and Croatia will be by bus. I can't imaging lugging along a 26" pullman suitcase around as we schlep back and forth between pensions/hotels and various bus stations.

I have grown to really love my backpack. Only problem is that deciding what to take with me is always a challenge since space and keeping the weight down are major considerations.

The packing list. India, Nepal & Tibet.

I must admit, I've never worried about running out of suitcase or backpack space - I've always been a very light traveller but not so this time. I'm actually wondering whether or not I'll be able to fit everything into my backpack. So what's different about this trip from the others?