Three things from my backpack

A long, long time ago Florian of Flocblog threw me the Blogstöckchen. I’ve been a bit lazy writing the blog in the past weeks but finally I got round to writing this:

The idea of the Blogstöckchen is to present the three things that you always take with you when you go travelling:

1. My Passport

Outside of the Schengen Area embassies and border officials love to stick visas and stamp stamps into passports. So it’s very satisfying for you and them to have one.

2. My Credit Card

The best things in live are free but some good things like food do cost money. And if you don’t want to carry all your cash around a credit card is very handy.

3. My Rucksack

As I usually carry at least three more items with me and I hate carrying things in my hands a backpack is a must.

While it’s true that I carry these three things on all my travels I’m guessing 99.5% of travellers do the same so if we’d all actually named the three items we always carry the Blogstöckchen would be very dull and boring. The point is of course to present things that you think come in very handy and that you want to present to others.
So here are the three things that I always carry in the sense of the Blogstöckchen:

1. My Steripen

In 90 seconds the Steripen makes 1 litre of water potable. Using UV light it destroys the DNA of 99.999% of all pathogenic organisms rendering them harmless. After 8000 uses the bulb has to be replaced.

The one I have, uses normal AA (recharcheable) batteries.
The new version has a build in lithium ion battery and can by charged via USB.
The advantages are obvious:

• Independence: Having to buy water in the evening? Getting ripped of buying too expensive water at touristy places? Carrying loads of bottles while trekking? No longer necessary. Once you start looking there are a lot of possibilities to fill up your bottle and clean the water. It even comes with a filter in case the water isn’t too clean you’re taking water from nature.
• Trash: If you drink two liters of water (probably more in tropical areas) you’ll save around 700 bottles of water or 28 kg / 62 lb (!) of plastic waste.
• Saving Money: With the Steripen one litre of water costs (8000 uses ÷ US$80 $) US$0,01 or 0.70 Indian Rupees; 0.38 Thai Baht; 0.03 Peruvian Soles; 0.09 Egyptian Pounds; 0.06 Argentinian Pesos.
  You can calculate yourself how much you’ll save from 700 litres.

I used it successfully in several countries: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Latvia, India, Sri Lanka, Ghana.
There are other versions of the Steripen but most of them have a shorter life cycle of the bulb (only 3000 uses).

2. My Towel

A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. Partly it has great practical value — you can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapours; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a mini raft down the slow heavy river Moth; wet it for use in hand-tohand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or to avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (a mindboggingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can’t see it, it can’t see you — daft as a bush, but very ravenous); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.

More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a strag (strag: non-hitchhiker) discovers that a hitchhiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, face flannel, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet weather gear, space suit etc., etc. Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitchhiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitchhiker might accidentally have “lost”. What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is is clearly a man to be reckoned with.

Hence a phrase which has passed into hitch hiking slang, as in “Hey, you sass that hoopy Ford Prefect? There’s a frood who really knows where his towel is.” (Sass: know, be aware of, meet, have sex with; hoopy: really together guy; frood: really amazingly together guy.)

Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

3. My Mobile Phone

Three years ago I wouldn’t touch one of those. And while I’m still sceptical of there usefulness in a non-travelling environment I find them quite useful on the road:

• Walkman. Audio plays and music in a very handy format, with speaker and headphones. A must.
• Internet Access. There are SIM cards with data packets almost everywhere now and you can easily access the internet even in very remote areas of some countries.
• Pictuers of familie, friends, home. Many locals like to see images form your home country and without carrying around a physical album you can show them.
• Availability. A lot of Couchsurfing host tell you to call them when you arrive. While there are still many payphones this is a plus.
• Maps. I’m extremly bad at orientation. A GPS and a maps showing me where I am is bliss sometimes. Also Google Maps uses public transport data in some countries (e.g. China) so you can easily get to your hostel.
• There are also several applications for currency and unit conversion, calculator, news, torch (flashlight), blogging…

So these are my three.

I’m passing the Blogstöckchen to:
Antje. My favourite travel companion. Bonereisen
Eireen, Michael and Lucia of EiMiLu.de, who just finished there two year cycle tour around the world.
Günay and Werner of Abwesenheitsnotiz.net, who have just left Mongolia and are now in China.