The thing about travelling is that you just can’t get enough of it. Even if you have something close to unlimited resources you can pour into your travels, every arrival back home leaves you feeling like there’s just so much more you can have experienced. In the earlier days of my travels, before I decided that “coming back home” between every other trip was a bit of an inefficient way of seeing the world, the one thing which constantly left me unsatisfied was a combination of all the missed opportunities I had to interact more with the locals of each destination. Those were the rookie days of my travels however and now if you came along with me on any trip I might take, you’d swear I’d already been to every one of the destinations we hit.

Perhaps a more important lesson I learned with every subsequent trip however was the art of travelling light. I guess transitioning into a Nomad was somewhat inevitable, even if only for a good few years at best, but yeah it sort of doesn’t make any good sense to re-enter the UK between say a trip to Hong Kong followed very closely by Singapore, Thailand, the Philippines, etc. When the wanderlust is still fresh and the prospect of any form of travel abroad still makes for the major excitement of the week, then it’s still fulfilling just getting another stamp on your passport. When you’ve evolved into somewhat of a nomad however, practicality trumps just about everything else and you start seriously entertaining ideas such as mastering the art of travelling light. Here are a few lessons thereof I’ve learned:

All-Inclusive Accommodation

For the nomadic traveller, it’s always a bit of a mission striking that fine balance between costs and well everything else. The more “inclusive” your accommodation of choice becomes, the heavier it is on the pocket and this eats into some valuable capital reserves set aside for all the experiences surrounding each destination. So letting go of that extra zip-lining adventure so that you can stay in a place that’s inclusive of a laundry service might work out for the greater good of your trip as a whole. Better yet; all-inclusive accommodation with laundry facilities where you can do your own laundry is the type of trade-off which will probably work out a little cheaper, so that zip-lining trip may still be in the offing. The important factor in all of this is that with more chances to do or have your laundry done, the frequency with which you can have fresh, clean clothes means you can subsequently pack in fewer clothes and travel much lighter.

Warm Climates

Look during the midyear months it does get pleasantly warm here in Glasgow, but I don’t think I’m alone in wishing we had much better, warmer weather all-year round. It’s with this in mind that one can ensure they travel much lighter. Visiting destinations with warmer climates (even if it means doing the whole switch between the northern and southern hemispheres based on the season) simply means you don’t have to pack layers and layers of heavy winter clothes, but perhaps one set of warmer clothes will do, just so you’re prepared.

Grouping Your Destinations by Geo-Location

In addition to lodging at destinations with laundry facilities and hitting warmer places, grouping close-proximity destinations together aids the prospect of travelling light. I mean if you have Myanmar, Laos, Thailand and the Philippines all your itinerary, hitting those destinations in that order gives you more opportunity to freshen-up your sweaty attire than say jetting off to the Philippines after Myanmar, and then going to Thailand and finally returning to Laos.