Last week I mentioned the technology gadgets that we brought on our trip. This week, I wanted to tell you a little about what we didn’t bring, and why. We’re trying to travel light without carrying nothing; as this is our first trip of this kind, we feel we’ve done pretty well – we can walk with all our gear into different towns, and there hasn’t been much that we’ve missed. So here is what we didn’t bring:
- Laptop computer. They’re big, heavy, and expensive. Which means that they’re easy to see (making us thief targets), hard to carry, and EXTREMELY painful if lost or stolen. While they would make certain things easier (for us, uploading photos), it’s not worth the expense, heft, and effort. I have been intrigued by the netbooks recently, but have yet to take the plunge.
- Digital video camera. They’re very similar to laptops. I already get decent HD video from my digital camera, but I’m personally not interested in editing video while we travel (not my thing).
- Kindle (or any books, for that matter). We have a decent guidebook (Lonely Planet, the most popular one we´ve seen), but we left every other book at home. How does that help us? We’ve encountered some very good books on the road that we wouldn’t have read otherwise (since we would have been focused on the books we knew). Reading what we encounter on the road broadens our experience.
Not bringing these three things actually worked really well for us. It might not have worked as well for others, but we´re happy to discuss it!
