Gadgets You Backpack Around the World With?

ryrw writes "I'm planning to spend a year backpacking around the world and the hardest question I have to answer is: What technology do I take with me? Aside from the obvious (digital camera, ipod, et. al.) what technological devices would you you take? Specifically, I wonder if I should bring my nice and shiny MacBook Pro. I can think of lots of uses for it (offloading pix, updating weblog, email, etc.), but I'm worried it will be lost or stolen along the way. Does anyone have experience with travel while toting technology?"

Comments

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[Anaphilius]

Do yourself a favor and leave the electronics at home. What an opportunity this will be! You'll be in interesting places, meeting new people ... why filter the experience through an assortment of electronic nonsense. You'll have plenty of time to carry that crap around during your entire career when you get home.

This might be your last opportunity to live relatively low-tech. Embrace it.

Re:Travel as light as you possibly can

[Gr8Apes]

Well said.

However, if you're truly going backpacking, don't bring a notebook of any type. You won't use it. I went for a 30 day trip through just Europe a while back (pre digital camera days) and brought 35mm camera with a couple of lenses and a medium sized lightweight tripod. Got great pictures, but that rig sure got heavy.

Went on another much later with a small digital camera and a super small tripod, took about twice as many pictures, got some relatively decent ones considering it was a point and shoot on a 4" tripod :) and in general had a great time. The tripod/camera combo was pocketable, used xD cards so carrying a 1000 pictures worth of memory was no problem. I enjoyed that vacation more because taking pictures was quick and easy, without having to lug what seemed like tons of crap.

It really depends upon what the purpose of your trip is. The time frame of 1 year also adds to it. If you're frequently going to places where power in unreliable or unavailable, look for something to take that runs on easy to get batteries.

I'm also going to guess you're going to be carrying some sort of cell phone, since you were considering a notebook. Maybe look at getting a phone that doubles as some or most of the functionality of the notebook that you needed will suffice?

Most importantly, remember you're going to see stuff, not your gear (you can do that @ home) unless you're writing a travel book or something like it.