Packing to Travel
I’ve sent a lot of travel recommendations to friends gearing up for their own voyages. I’m compiling them in one place with tips and tricks to lessen your load while you plan … and perhaps to convince you of traveling to a new place you wouldn’t have considered! But before we deep dive, let me highlight the most important thing to pack when you travel…
I planned a lot of itineraries this year to cities and countries I never imagined possible. In fact, I probably travelled more during this gap year than I have my entire life. But before you assume I am amazing at making itineraries, I want to be honest with you: I am terrible at planning travel.
Now that I can fully reflect on the preparation process for all my trips, I recognize patterns in my cycles of anxiety. I trace it back to what I call a “fear of partiality” I first perceived in high school. I started to really appreciate the literature we read in English class starting sophomore year (not just the Gossip Girl I read in middle school. Try to shame me.) My class was reading The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. One paragraph of the book struck me dead:
“He knew that when he kissed this girl, and forever wed his unutterable visions to her perishable breath, his mind would never romp again like the mind of God.”
(Read the full paragraph starting page 118 and tell me your thoughts).
The first time I read this quote, I could only sit and slowly re-read. I became frenetic because the more I annotated and dug into the heart of the prose, the more overwhelmed I felt, not only because of its genius, but because of the infinite possibilities and implications of these strings of words within these strings of sentences. Suddenly, I felt the weight of defeat; I, a 10th grade girl in Massachusetts, the sole individual I was, could not perceive and articulate all the possible intentions of F. Scott Fitzgerald in this book, even in this single passage. I could only cling to fragments of symbols.
Once this fear of partiality blossomed, I began coping by intensely scrutinizing one sentence at a time as I read, accumulating these pebbles through which I hoped the greater meaning might be magnified. This is a terrible way to get through high school English class.
My fear dangerously extended to travel. This is usually how it started: I would debate between continents and countries for a few weeks until finally deciding on a city. But then, I avoided booking tickets for fear that the trip would become real (learn from me and book your tickets early! These guys say 3-4 months for international travel, but I think you’re ok until around 2 months before). Once I finally committed to the full trip, I would waste more time, squandering hours flipping through Lonely Planet guides in the book store (not a bad idea in moderation!), falling down the rabbit hole of “10 Best Places Only Locals Visit!” websites, and obsessing over every detail. I wanted every day to have a morning, afternoon, and night activity; I wanted copious 5-star restaurant recommendations; I wanted my transportation ironed out from start to finish.
Manley Beach, Australia
Some nights I stressed out so much, I would find myself still scrolling at 2 AM, feeling defeated rather than excited. I felt pressure to pack as many destinations and museums and hikes as possible in one trip, and stressed even more when it was logistically too much.
Some nights I felt so overwhelmed by the weight of my solo - travel undertaking, I felt paralyzed to move. Some nights I thought to myself, “It would be so much better if I just didn’t leave.”
In those moments, I don’t want to be honest with myself. But deep inside, I know the best environment for growth is discomfort and challenge. Sometimes the hardest part is fighting the urge to let all of the logistical things - planning the accommodation, trying to understand the airport, figuring out a SIM card, exchanging money - obscure the real joy of travel. (NYT also calls this F.O.B.O., fear of better options).
My decision to solo travel could have been any other major choice we make in our lifetime: whether to study abroad, move to a new city, foray into a new friend group etc. In those moments, sometimes we hold ourselves back because we don’t know how to compare the value of our comfort and familiarity with that which we do not know. It’s frightening to make the leap into unknown.
This is what Hamlet alludes to in his “To Be or Not to Be” soliloquy: we should not fear death just because death is an “undiscovered country”.
“Who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscovere’d country, from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pitch and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry
And lose the name of action.
Hamlet (3.1.77-89)”
Shanghai, China
Though not upon the same themes of death and human folly, I reflect on this thought as applied to my travels when I feel that creeping paralysis, yes those nights when I scroll through Instagram photos and crave pictures of my own in wanderlust places. Those nights when I need to prove (to who? and how?) that I should “do” a place well and my travels should be worth more than just staying home.
With this process, I know what to answer when this controlling, self-perpetuating, insidious fear whispers “If you attempt, you will fail, so don’t even walk out the door. You’re safe where you are and there’s nothing more out there,” when the fear drives home the question “What is it all worth anyway?”
Now, I know what my travels are worth: they are incalculable. All my journeys have been infinitely valuable, justifiable, and precious. At school, I could never have anticipated the value of small, serendipitous moments abroad, brimming with golden joy.
The moments when I tasted the flavor of a dish I’d only just learned the name of, reveling in the revolutionary combination of new spices.
The moments laughing late into the night with a group of girls I had just met at the hostel, and then in the morning laughing more over banana pancakes and milk tea.
The moment when I am sad on the beach because it is my last day and the sky is overcast, but staying on my plastic orange beach chair anyway, to run the fine white sand through my fingers a little longer. Then looking up to see the clouds reflecting the last fading light so the whole sky is pink.
Sunset on Tel Aviv beach, Israel
The most important thing to pack?
“An open attitude.”
Be whimsical to the twists and turns and surprises of travel that lead you off-script. Get off google maps and wander. Pencil in only one or two activities per day and fill in the blanks. Plan time for unexpected moments and don’t sweat the small stuff.
(And if you don’t want to plan ANYTHING and have your entire vacation be a surprise, there are companies that can help you with that too.) But trust me, travel doesn’t have to be stressful or lonely.
Being whimsical in Sydney, Australia
So, I hope these personal images from my own travels have made you a little bit more excited about your trip. And wherever it is, I’m so proud of you, and happy you’re taking the leap. Because I think whenever you travel, you are taking a leap.
Being smug in Xiamen, China
Because in a way, travel is like moving meditation, in the same way good travel is the goal of all good art. By its nature, we should feel a little uncomfortable when we travel. We should feel aware of ourselves as outsiders: maybe we dress differently or we don’t speak the same language or we fumble with the brightly colored bills and strange coins.
This is my last point about an open attitude: I encourage you to sit in this discomfort.
I know personally, this meant reckoning with my American centrism - that I wasn’t even aware I possessed. I realized the way I spoke, acted, and expected others to speak and act was shaped by the culture and social practices codes of a very specific place in the world: Western Massachusetts, USA.
I committed the worst crime of travel.
“I traveled to a new place, but I took with me the place I came from.”
I bore with me comparisons of how streets should be arranged to China. I carried judgements of how people should cook food to Nepal.
I urge you not to make the same mistakes I did: when we travel and only eat food that we know is comfortable, not attempt to learn any of the native language, close ourselves off, and worst of all - though often subconsciously - carry an attitude of comparison and superiority, we commit the worst crime of travel.
Montaigne in his essay “Of Cannibals” spearheads my point:
“Now, to return to my subject, I find that there is nothing barbarous and savage in this nation (of cannibals), by anything that I can gather, excepting, that every one gives the title of barbarism to everything that is not in use in his own country. As, indeed, we have no other level of truth and reason than the example and idea of the opinions and customs of the place wherein we live: there is always the perfect religion, there the perfect government, there the most exact and accomplished usage of all things.”
Yes, this is a political charged quote. A lot of travel in circles around me is done by more privileged people (by fact that they can travel) going to places of concertedly less privilege, often third world countries that offer much cheaper cost of living. This is not admonishment but advice: be aware of yourself and how you interact with a local community. Attempt the difficult, potentially impossible task of being a conscientious tourist. In all endeavors, strive to do the least amount of harm – even if it’s just a spring break trip. (I’m talking about voluntourism of which I am guilty.).
Sydney, Australia
All in all, my best advice is to travel with open arms and an open mind to the sites and people and cultures you meet. I may not travel with same style as you, but I want to be an assuaging voice reminding you it’s OK not to pack a crazy itinerary every day. This is permission to hold your gaze when the tour groups are whizzing by, linger in the back-alleys and cobblestone streets, try a restaurant without looking at it’s Yelp review, and go a day without taking a photo. “Come as you are but leave changed.” Now, I think, you’re ready.
“You take delight not in a city’s seven or seventy wonders, but in the answer it gives to a question of yours.”
