8 Months of Suitcases

One of the most frequent questions we are asked when we talk about the trip is: what kind of luggage will you bring for eight months?! We are allowed the traditional, as in pre-Ryanair, 20kg per person, so that's the max. We have to take into account though that we can't expect the girls to drag their own 2okg share, so Brendan and I will be the Sherpas. We have therefore decreased the allowance to two 20kg suitcases and two rucksacks, by definition lighter than the first, at least mine for sure!How to fill them up? There are things that we just have to bring with us: medicines, travel guides for all the places we'll visit and the girl's schoolbooks. Already 6kg gone, maybe even more.

We had to get into a particular frame of mind: for the next eight months clothes will be something we'll use to cover ourselves, not to dress, which for an Italian girl is particularly hard to accept, but there are no alternatives. Once accepted that we realized that we didn't need much, just a couple of changes for winter and something more for summer. In the end we always tend to use always the same things even with a full wardrobe, the rest becomes just a frame for our favourite items of clothing, a reserve that gives a sense of security but is for the biggest part useless. In our case we'll just have to identify very carefully our favourite bits, the most useful, and do the laundry often.

For the winter we have invested in trekking gear: fleeces, waterproof trousers with fleece lining and thermal vests, two changes each. We'll then pack one, maybe two changes of normal clothes. For the summer it's easier, less bulky: swimming suit, T-shirts, shorts and two pairs of trousers. As soon as we finish with something, like the summer stuff and the school books some time in NZ, we'll send it back home. It will make space for whatever we'll inevitably acquire along the way.

As fare as reading books is concerned, we'll just have to get used to read one a t the time rather than having a pile on the bedside table and once finished we'll have to "free" them into the wild, something that hopefully will help my Bookcrossing stats.