On the brink

Obviously I ended up hitting the road for 7 months of travel  - somewhat over-ambitiously, from both a geographical and financial perspective, aiming to take in some 8 countries - with no clean underwear packed. At all.  Because, you know, that's the real difference between 20-something and 30-something backpacking. You're so much more prepared. No - the real difference is, while once you just had to save up a few months for a cheap ticket, then pack up your (student/home/early flat-share) room before jacking in your temp or part-time job, by this stage you've accumulated some serious stuff: grown-up jobs; flats and mortgages; more direct debits than you're able at look in the face; untold amounts of kitchenware; mango-wood coffee tables requiring much more careful handling than the philistine jostling into a storage unit, precariously balanced between squash bags of duvets and HBO boxsets, than they inevitably receive...

You get the picture. But please don't get me wrong, we're not out to cast off the materialistic shackles of our smug first world woes (if anything happens to that coffee table I will go APE) and we're definitely not off to Find Ourselves, god knows what horrors would lie in store. But we have been far too settled for a while now, very tied to the 9-5 and not very satisfactorily so for either of us. So we're on some adventures for a bit, that's all. To hike up mountains, watch unfamiliar suns rise and fall, ride endless trains and buses, meet weird and wonderful characters we'd never otherwise have stumbled across and drink untold cups of chais, lassis, pisco sours and whatever else the journey throws at us.

So... the best way to hit the ground running was clearly to plan a manic fortnight of packing up our flat, organising its rental. storage drop-offs, farewell drinks, plant-relocations, etc, whilst working the day-jobs right up to the last minute and cramming in a whistle-stop 5 days up north for more goodbyes and assurances of our absolute trustworthiness on matters of Not Getting Killed/Maimed/Kidnapped. Anyway – no underwear. And half of my painfully-culled rucksack ‘capsule wardrobe’ (who am I kidding?) was similarly dirty when we eventually dragged ourselves under-slept (for reasons of varying legitimacy re. travel/work/excessive wine and Southern Comfort consumption) and generally feeling a bit under-prepared to Healthrow at 6am last Thursday.

So what made the cut? Well, in some respects the whole palava is unspeakably more sophisticated and organised than when I first tottered off to India 14 years ago, carrying half my world on my back but somehow no guidebook or email account. Bin bags, for instance. I now carry bin bags EVERYWHERE because they’re useful for EVERYTHING. And there’s a plastic wallet stuffed with plasters, bandages, purification tablets and every other pill known to man (no, not those ones). 

Broadly:

- sleeping bags for cold hills and the like

- hiking books for same

- clothes – varied but streamlined (in my head): couple of warm tops, 3 trousers, one skirt, t-shirts and vests, few scarves for making myself look a bit like a Proper Lady rather than a scuzzy hobo.

- medicinal kits with the usual from  painkillers and plasters to Immodium and  rehydration sachets

- various other sundry from which I’ll spare you. Do ask me if you have a penchant for a list or a timetable. My lists have sub-lists.

Finally, not just binbags for the arrested development 30-something backpacker, oh no! I have also brought some jewellery with which to adorn myself , a travel watercolour set (thanks nfp!) and  - I kid you not – a small bottle of Chanel Chance. I am not a women who wears much make-up or who successfully negotiates a heel without a wedding being involved; I never keep receipts or have much clue what’s happening in my bank account, and I have spent most of the last decade trying to pass off Can’t be Naffed hair styling as Purposefully Unkempt. But I will take my Chanel backpacking and I will not be ashamed. And T has brought proper button-up shirts, a Kindle and bare-foot running shoes. So we are on it, kids. ON IT!