Leave the baggage behind

 

The original plan was to go uni-bag, take hand luggage only to avoid baggage handling hassles and waiting around. Okay, so I caved and ended up with two bags, but technically one of them counts as a handbag (BA allows a handbag or laptop bag up to 45cm x 36xm x 20cm in addition to carry-on hand luggage of 56cm x 45cm x 24cm).

My tesselation skills (which are astounding, nay almost magical in their application) resulted in a nicely pared down basic kit:

• Technical layer T-shirts, 4 of
• Technical layer polos, 2 of
• Trek trousers, 2 pairs
• Semi-smart T-shirts, 3 of
• Semi-smart trousers, 1 pair
• Assorted undercrackers
• Flip flops, 1 pair
• Fleece
• Rain coat
• Panasonic Lumix FT2 digital camera
• Kodak PlaySport Zx5 digital video camera
• Dell M101z mini-laptop
• Amazon Kindle (saves wasting baggage allowance/space on actual books)
• Apple iPod classic 160GB - Black for the playing of that which has been suggested.
• Assorted chargers, cables for the gadget menagerie

and that's it for the next 50 days. If I need more stuff I'll buy cheep and cheerful. If things are getting crusty, it's go find the nearest running water and swim it off or go meet the randoms in a laundromat.

There was also a certain something about not carrying around a suitcase full of "what ifs" and "maybe I'll need"s. Robert DeNiro's character in Michael Mann's superb movie Heat evangelises the 'have nothing in your life you can't leave in 30 seconds flat' philosophy. It's a pretty bleak existence he finds himself in (aside from the fact he's one of the most wanted thieves in America), but take away the crook chic and there is a core of a testing question; What really binds us to places?

What's the stuff that you really can't live without, the stuff you'd save before yourself if the house was on fire? Take it a step further and ask, what about the mental baggage we carry around, those real or imagined grudges, mis-remembered memories, the gossip and irrelevance it's all too easy to fill social space with. Give yourself a mental baggage allowance and feel the weight lift!