After hiking the Camino with between 6-7 kg in my backpack, I decided that I wanted to travel light to Indonesia. I would only pack the bare essentials because I had just realized how nice it was to only bring the most important things. I didn’t need a sleeping bag or warm clothes, so it turned out to be surprisingly easy to pack everything into my 30-liter backpack. When I checked it in at the airport, the weight was 6.5 kg – it was perfect.
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Tips for packing light:
- I encourage you to choose a few pieces of clothing. This probably means you should halve the amount of clothes you would normally pack. Often, some items become favorites, and the rest never get used.
- Toiletries can take up quite a bit of space for me, but on recent trips, I decided to leave many of my styling and cleansing products at home and instead only pack shampoo, conditioner, face cream, sunscreen, deodorant, and toothpaste. For me, these are the most essential products, which I put into small containers so I can carry them in my hand luggage.
- Last but not least, I highly recommend bringing a travel clothesline and laundry sheets* on your trip, so it’s easy to do laundry along the way. Laundry sheets take up little space and are easy to divide into smaller pieces. This makes it quick to rinse a few pieces of clothing by hand, which can dry by the next day.
*Laundry sheets are detergent compressed into small sheets that can either go in the washing machine or be used for hand washing.
Also read 5 days on Karimunjawa in Indonesia, Accommodations on the Camino, and Camino thoughts.
