My travels: Rolf Potts goes round the world with no luggage
The travel blogger relates the physical, and pyschological, challenges of travelling with only the clothes you stand in
- The Guardian, Saturday 6 November 2010
- Article history
Don't mess with my tuk tuk … Rolf Potts travels light in Bangkok. Photograph: Justin GlowEarlier this year, I set off on a journey that took me around the world without any luggage. For six weeks I made my way through England, France, Spain, Morocco, Egypt, South Africa, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, New Zealand and the US without carrying so much as a man-purse or a bum-bag. The few items I did bring (including a toothbrush, an iPod, and a few extra items of clothing) were tucked away in my pockets. Along the way I learned a thing or two about improvisation, hygiene, and what is and isn't necessary when travelling the world.
When I announced my intention to circumnavigate the globe without luggage, the common (and admittedly reasonable) reaction from friends and family was: why? I usually answered that I'd always liked to travel light, and that going without any bags at all sounded like a fun challenge. But beyond the stunt-like nature of the trip, I wanted to know how travelling ultra-light would affect my time on the road. At the heart of my whimsical journey was an experiment that would test out a more philosophical idea: that what we experience in life is more important than what we bring with us.
In order to document this experiment, I travelled with a cameraman, my friend Justin Glow, who shot and edited three webisodes each week for my No Baggage Challenge blog. Justin brought a bag for his camera equipment and his stuff, though according to the rules I set up for the trip, I wasn't allowed to borrow any of his items, or store any of my items with him. These rules also stipulated that I couldn't mail things to myself along the route – though I could buy items along the way (such as a mineral-salt deodorant I picked up in Fez), and I could borrow items from locals or other travellers (an option I only used once – borrowing a sweater and stocking cap to keep warm in New Zealand).
Naturally, my packing list had to be simple. In addition to the clothes on my back (cargo pants, boots, socks/underwear, T-shirt) I brought a toothbrush and a small tube of toothpaste, a small deodorant stick, two small bottles of concentrated liquid soap, sunglasses, a small tube of sunscreen, an iPod touch and foldable Bluetooth keyboard, a small digital camera, a small flashlight, a credit/cash card, and my passport. All of these items fitted, along with a change of socks, underwear, and T-shirt, into the inner pockets of a jacket/vest. All told, my total kit weighed less than two kilos.
In the early days of my journey, when I left New York for London and made my way overland into France and Spain, my biggest challenges weren't logistical so much as psychological. It took me nearly a week to get past the nagging, instinctive fear that I had forgotten my bag someplace – and on more than one occasion I found myself looking around under bus seats or in my hotel room for luggage that did not exist.
Since even my friends had insisted that my no-baggage strategy would leave me (and my clothing) smelling horrible after a few days, I immediately got into the habit of showering twice a day, and washing my clothes each night before I went to bed. For the first two days this felt like a slight hassle, but in time it became a part of my daily routine, as instinctive as brushing my teeth.
The advantages of travelling without luggage became apparent on the first day of the journey, during a four-hour layover in London. Had I been carrying bags, I probably would have gone straight from Heathrow to St Pancras and waited for my Paris-bound train – but without luggage I was able to storm into the heart of London and get a three-hour taste of the city before moving on. Just over a week later, I ended up going to the wrong Moroccan city (I'd mispronounced Chefchaouen to my taxi driver, and he took me to the town of Tétouan) on the day Berber merchants had come in from the mountains to sell their wares. Without baggage, I was able to spontaneously explore the colourful medina for an entire afternoon – and still make it to Chefchaouen before sundown.
By the time I left Morocco it was apparent that not having luggage wasn't going to add a lot of drama or complication to my day-to-day activities. Luggage – or lack thereof – ceased to be much of an issue; I just threw myself into enjoying the adventure. In Egypt I had an elaborate shave with a cutthroat razor in a back-alley barbershop and explored the quirky tout-culture surrounding the pyramids at Giza; in South Africa I spotted lions, rhinos and giraffes in Kruger national park, and I sampled bush tea made from elephant poo in Welgevonden game reserve.
In Bangkok I went out on the town and was tickled to find that I could get into some of that city's most exclusive nightclubs, in the clothes I'd worn for 25 days in a row. In Thailand I discarded a few items I hadn't been using (camera, flashlight, one bottle of liquid soap), and continued on to Malaysia, Singapore and New Zealand even lighter than before. After six weeks on the road I arrived back in New York craving a little fashion variety – but for the most part my no-baggage challenge was less of a challenge than I'd anticipated.
Does this mean I'll spend the rest of my life travelling without bags? Probably not. Bags do serve a purpose: they make some aspects of a journey easier, and one can still travel ultra-light while carrying a small bag. In the end, then, my no-baggage experiment was less a test of extremes than a simple illustration of what you do and don't need on the road. All too often, I think, we pack a bunch of "just in case" items when packing for a journey (be it around the world or a weekend away), and most all of these "just in case" items are either available on the road, or not necessary in the first place.
We also tend to pack unnecessary things because certain items feed into our psychic bubble of comfort – a kind of half-hearted attempt to bring home with us – when in fact not much is required, in the material sense, to enjoy a great time on the road.
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