Traveling Light (One Bag Travel and a Comparison Review of Peak Design and Pakt’s Travel Backpacks)
On the heels of my last post talking about the importance of time off and travel, I wanted to delve a bit more into my thoughts around travel and how my approach stems from changes in my lifestyle. With that in mind, I also want to share more on my strategy and do a full breakdown of my approach to travel, including a review and comparison of travel backpacks. That means a quick overview of some changes in my life as well as my relationship to “stuff” and how emotions are often entangled in the things we buy and carry with us.
For me, when I went through a separation and ultimately a divorce, I found that my relationship to “things” as in purchases, started to change. For quite some time I had sought a sense of fulfillment or joy from buying things and was using it as more of a crutch for the fulfillment and joy I lacked in other areas of my life, including that relationship. Doing therapy and exploring my relationship to things, I started to downsize what I had. The more I did that, the more a sense of freedom and peace I found. I still have tons of nerdy collectibles and will always be a sucker for a graphic t or a pair of kicks that catches my eyes, but I began to be much more intentional about the things I would buy. There are tenets of minimalism that spoke to me, but I have never, and will never, be someone whose entire life can be maintained on their back. But I downsized the books I kept on my shelves and got rid of tons of DVD’s and CD’s and explored clothing items I had kept as well as sentimental items that I had, like old concert tickets and even stubs from movies I had seen. As I read more about minimalism and consumed more content online, I discovered the idea of “one bag travel” and fell in love with the idea of traveling with one bag. I was always an over-packer, and the meme online about “packing so much underwear like you planned on shitting yourself every day” made me laugh both out of the humor but also because that had been my packing strategy. I had at least moved on from traveling with a checked bag all the time to traveling with a carry-on and a backpack as my personal item, but those would often be pretty full too. So, the idea of one bag travel began to not only be appealing in the sense of being more intentional, but also as a challenge to myself.
My first “travel backpack” (for the uninitiated, some backpacks are made with the notion of primarily being used for travel, rather than a daypack or a hiking backpack) was the Pakt travel backpack, which also was my first ever campaign backing a product online. I was so excited for the bag to come in and when it arrived, I began practicing loading it for trips, even though it was in the period of COVID when not a whole lot of travel was happening. I first traveled using it in the latter part of 2020 and found that I loved traveling with just a backpack full of stuff. It meant I did not have to worry about juggling food or coffee with rolling a bag and it made things so much more streamlined. However, it also made it exceptionally heavy on my back because I was still struggling with my packing. The bag itself was a heavier bag, and the loading I did for several weeks of travel in cooler weather meant that it was cumbersome at times, and I HATED having to get something out of the bag because inevitably it would take an effort to close it again. My next trip with it, I did better at my packing but also utilized a sling bag for some of my more essential items like a passport. That made the process much easier. By the time I got to my third and fourth trips with it, I was much more adept at packing and had even found clothing that helped me travel lighter and be more cognizant of how I packed. But I began to feel limitations with this specific bag to the point that I was contemplating other bags I saw.
Fast forward to almost a year to the day after my last one bag trip (two trips happened between but because or purchases and needing to pack a suit and extra shoes I resorted to a roller carry on and backpack) and I was strongly eyeing and considering the Peak Design travel backpack. I backed their Micro-Clutch and had a discount for any item in their shop that was not part of the add-ones preselected for the launch. They offered two different sizes and I eventually opted for the smaller pack, which is more inline, size-wise, to the Pakt backpack, in an effort to truly give a good comparison. I have now done two trips in a month with the Peak Design pack and feel like I have a good handle on it and can effectively compare the two. The TL: DR here is I prefer the Peak Design bag, but there are two caveats. For starters, I do wish there was maybe one more external pocket so there could be an admin pocket as well as one other maybe as a stash pocket to dump things in. The other part is how it opens at the back. That really only became a true issue for me when using it on a trip to Disneyland and attempting to use the bag as my everyday carry (EDC) bag for three days in the park carrying water for my daughter and I, my camera, my tech stuff, a first aid kit and also every single thing that we bought during the day. It being a bucket means there is less organization, which for travel itself is not at all a bad thing, but when trying to use as an EDC bag the lack of organization can be cumbersome. While the Pakt bag has more organization, and the clamshell opening feels more like a traditional suitcase, I found it did not handle the amount of packing that I did quite as well without getting to a point of being too cumbersome. The Peak Design bag is lighter and looks sleeker but also has the ability to expand adding more room, which comes in handy if you packed heavily and wound up with some more items on the trip.
For me being intentional has been so crucial to making strides towards living the life that works best for me. That means choosing products that help me reach that goal, whether that is clothing, packing tools, or the actual bag I use to travel. Packing lighter can be intimidating at times, but I also know that the choices I make before the trip begins will set me up for success. Planning ahead and knowing I have all the things I need can give me peace of mind, I just have to remind myself of that. I have a pattern and a routine for my packing and keep my tech kit well organized so I can travel without too much worry. Of course, the more I hone the skills for both one bag travel and even applying a lot of those tenets to traveling with a slightly larger kit makes the process go more smoothly as well. It also frees me up more to focus on truly enjoying and appreciating my destination since I am not hung up on having too much or trying to juggle too much.