Category: Equipments

Small details (things) always make life easy and cheap when put in packing list for backpacking, camping or road trip.

I suppose when you travel with a car, camper or caravan the life is more easy then cycling, motorcycle or backpacker to have electricity anytime, make a hot drink and safe food. We are on the motorcycle so maybe our life can be easier than cyclist and backpacker. 🙂

Some little things can make life easy and save a little money on the road as well.

Little solar panel

When we ride motorcycle we can charge a lot of things with our USB charger, which is nice but not when we camp. We bought one little panel to charge our electronics. I can’t charge my laptop but I can charge all others, which needs min. 12V. It was discount so we paid around 25 USD.

Let’s explain why we have;

Some camping site doesn’t have plug to use next to it, we need to walk the bar/restaurant but we don’t want to leave all our staff behind because off safety or monkeys/baboons …etc.

Some camping sites wants to money to use power. It is a little silly because I must pay 3-4 USD to charge my phone. They don’t give a different price how much camper needs power or how much I need. Must pay same price!

Sometimes, when we found a nice bush / wild camp spot we want to stay a couple of days. So, we need to charge phones, cameras, tablet to take photo or watch movie. 🙂

Some countries has electricity problem. We never know when they can have it and we can use it.

We also have a power bank. If we want to charge it we need to wait a couple of hours for it. So, we need plug for it or solar panel.

After all these experience we decided to have one. We like it. It is small and light, easy to carry. If you are backpacker, cyclist or rider and on long term travel or world trip like us we can recommend to you should have one small solar panel. Just make sure how much power / watt/ volt you need your electronics.

With a water boiler we don’t buy a coffee or tea

I don’t know how much you like to drink coffee or tea but we love it so much. When we camp we can boil water easy on the stove but we can’t open petrol stove when we stay in a hostel or hotel. At the same time, we are lazy to open the stove on the road just for coffee and then clean the stove.

We are always careful with our budget to spend money a lot. Looks like coffee or tea is cheap to buy but average taste cost you minimum one dollar. Two persons, two cups in a day means four dollars in a day. Of course, we never pay it!

We bought two water boilers; one is for motorcycle and other one is for plug. We paid three dollars two of them. And we bought one metal mug for them, which we paid five dollars. Total we spent 10 USD to make happy our self any time. 🙂

When we are on the road we use the water boiler with cigarette socket on the motorcycle. It is small therefore takes two minutes to have hot water.

When we are in hotel, hostel, camping site with power plug we use the other water boiler. We can have hot/boil water in a minute.

I suppose most vehicle traveller with a water cooker in the car because has power J they are small and saving money. When we found them I was thinking why I couldn’t find them when I was backpacker because I could save more money 🙂

Soft cooler sometimes work well

We didn’t have any cooler in the beginning because we didn’t need it in Norway. 🙂 When we came to Guinea Bissau we couldn’t keep continue without any cooler. We were riding on the sand under the 45 degrees. We bought ice water to drink cold. Never happened because they were going to coffee water in 1,5 hours. Therefore we bought 5 liters hard cooler. It was amazing the water so cold also we could carry some vegetables with us to keep fresh.

It was nice to have it but carry the hard cooler was taking a lot of space. When it was empty I can not get roll or small than put somewhere. Therefore we skipped it in South Africa but we had it soft 10 liters cooler. Soft cooler doesn’t well as hard cooler but enough for us. Buy ice or cold water and vegetables put in it. It can stay cold all day. We use it most of time when we were going like nowhere. 🙂 If you don’t like to drink hot water to feel fresh you should have something similar. Just make sure when you don’t use it; you can collect and get small.

They are little things but nice things to have to save time, space and money.

Also make your life to easy to carry water or make drinkable water.

Travel Collector Bag

A small travel collector bag can really help to put all your cables, plugs, earphones, charger in one bag and find easy.

In the beginning we didn’t have one because we were thinking we never ever need. But didn’t correct.. Sometimes we were taking out everything form our side-bags to find a little cable. We have been using collector bag more than six months now. Believe me we are so happy to have it.

They are small and can not take more space in your bags but can safe your money or make happy yourself if you don’t forget this king of things to add on packing list for backpacking, camping or road trip. 🙂

GS

We had some questions in our mind which was so important for us,  How to find water? , How to filter water in the wild? or How to carry water on motorcycle easily?

So, we have been traveling around the world by motorcycle when we were in Africa we passed from desert, sometimes we only find water from lake or underground. You can imagine that sometimes how can be hard to find drinkable water in there but we survived. 🙂

What is most important our body to be healthy: WATER! Do you think that easy to find drinkable water everywhere or just drink from the tap?  Unfortunately, you do not find it everywhere in the world.

We drink minimum 2 liters in a day and need 1,5 liters for coffee and cook. So we need to find daily total 5,5-6 liters water. If we look for a challenge and go somewhere like nowhere we must carry minimum 15 liters with us.

We always ask first the water is drinkable or not. If we can’t we can look markets to find water. But some places, we couldn’t find in Africa. We are on the motorcycle so must be easy to carry 5 liters bottle each. Sometimes not easy to put top of our bags or hang on them when we were fighting with sand or mud.

How to find water?

It is good question how to find water in a desert? We knew that we were going some roads, which pass in the desert and we would be there a couple of days. When we told people, who passed there before us they said that no chance to find. So, we couldn’t get risk for it because if we could have any accident or something wrong it could be so hard to find water. We could drink less to survive if we have it. 🙂

Therefore, we have two water bags;  4 liters and 6 liters MSR dromedary bag , with us. If we don’t carry water we can roll them, they don’t take space which is good for motorcycle trip. So, easy to carry 10 liters also we have two camel bag to carry water, which is each 2 liters. Most of the time, we carry them full because we never know what can happen in Africa.

(Sometimes we use one of them to have a shower. If we go to bush/wild camp for couple of days with humanity weather we love to have a shower of course. 🙂  The MSR dromedary water bag works fine for it. )

Yes, they are a little expensive. When we were buying we were complaining about it as well… First we bought 4 liters bag and used a year. After that we bought 6 liters MSR bag and that time we didn’t think about money. 🙂

How to filter water in the wild?

We have tablets and a straw with us to filter water and safe our life. 🙂

Water tablets: One box of tablet has a hundred pills in it. We bought two of them. We can have 200 liters water with that. If we don’t trust the water is drinkable we use a tablet. Just need to wait 30 minutes before drink. To be honest, I don’t like the pills because of water taste but if we have to we do that.

Filter life straw: I like filter stick more than pills.  One life straw is for 1000 liters, which is a good deal. Most of the time, I use it with river or lake water. He likes more to use pills.

If you are travel with a car or camper you can carry 20 liters jerry can with filter but that doesn’t work for us on the motorcycle. If you are backpacker, rider or biker/cyclist you can have easily tablets, filter stick or one liter bottle with filter. They never take space. 🙂 Our opinion you should have at least one of them if you plan to travel Africa.

Also, you can check what we add in our packing list which are so small but so helpful on the road.

GS

If you will do what we are doing now (living in a tent) I suppose we know what do you need for camping? 🙂 Not only a tent an other important thing is comfortable table and chair.

Travel around the world takes 5-6 years. We will be on the road, sit all day on the motorcycle and sleep in the tent. We must make happy our self in the journey.

I suppose that we never think to have comfortable chairs if we would be on the road a couple of months and then turn back a house.

In the beginning we had Outad chairs. We were looking comfort when we sit, also price to find something cheap. Other important thing it must be light and take less space when you collect it. It wasn’t so small to fit one of our motorcycle bags but we were ok to carry them on the back sit. 🙂

Can watch our video to set up the tent and enjoy to live in a tent: ALL AROUND THE WORLD TRAVEL CAMP

Outad chairs are comfortable but not for long term so not for us because we use them a lot. In the morning for breakfast, on the road for long break, in the night to stretch our legs and have dinner, stay at a camping spot more than a few days means you use almost all day a chair. So, the chair had a problem in three months. After six months later it was broken from where we can set up the sticks to sit.

We also buy a table from Gran Canyon brand, which is cheap, light and can use long time. It has only one problem, so low. When we sit on the ground fine but not when sitting on the chair.

End of the day, we paid less money for them but we couldn’t use long time. We wanted to have similar chairs again. This moment we were looking for quality and brand’s help center/customer service. Because after pay a lot of money if something happened we want to connect easily with the company. We bought Helinox chair and tables.

Our chairs are Helinox Zeros. It is so light and pack size is small. Also, they are comfortable. We have been using them for the last 5 months and we are happy to have it.

Our table is again from Helinox. We bought Helinox hard top table. We use our laptop sometimes on it so, nice to have hardtop. We don’t have problem to put mugs on it but could be great if they have mug holder. The table is high enough to eat but when use laptop I can say sometimes “why does is it not high five cm. more?” 🙂

After five moths, we are happy to have them and still they look like new even if we used every day a few hours. Some days 15 hours 🙂

What do you need camping? Other important thing is a tent.

GS

We are travel around the world by motorcycles, sometimes go to hiking or trekking and living in a tent, so definitely we need a tent for hiking, backpacking and motorcycle camping which must ultralight also so much comfortable; Big Agnes, Copper Spur HV UL3 “mtnGLO” tent is our choose for all.

I was using a Big Agnes Fly Creek HV UL2 tent more than three years and still was good.  The problem,  the tent was  two persons tent because I was solo women backpacker why could I buy a tent bigger than this? 🙂

Now, We have large size mattress and we want to put our motorcycle gears inside to tent as well. How can we fit in? We like Big Agnes so, we didn’t search any other companies, just we focus the Big Agnes website to find a tent which can be a good match for our journey.

We decided to have Copper Spur HV UL3 after our tent experience on the road because;

-Two persons traveling and the tent have one exit; never work! Because we always disturb each other when we were going out or in. We must have two exits to make life easy.

-We like to go hiking and trekking for a couple of days. So we are backpackers at that moment. We like to have light back. We must have ultra light tent for hiking and backpacking to be happy. 🙂

-We love to be on the beach but we can’t carry an umbrella. Freestanding tent can help for it. Just use outside and have a shadow.

-We are on the road all the time. Sometimes we hit the rain for a long time and no place to go around. Again we use freestanding to sit under and wait a little till the shower stops. 🙂

-For a while, we don’t need a tent to use in the wintertime where we will ride. More we need to be happy when sleep 30-35 degrees. Of course, we need a good rain protection so we don’t wake up in a lake with all our stuff. So we need to have a three-season tent for a long time.

-What we have in our tent when we go to sleep? Our L size mattress, sleeping bags, pillows, electronics, helmets, some clothes, sometimes our motorcycles gears and of course two people in it. Great idea to have 3-persons tent right!

-Sometimes we can spend all day in the tent because of cold or rain. We need to sit inside, read a book, watch movie etc. if the tent is a little high it can help a lot. And if it gives a feeling that we have space around us it can be so great.

-Another important thing for us how many pockets the tent has inside and easily we can use a tent collector. When we put little things in one pocket we must dig middle of the night what we look for.

-This was extra, more a luxury thing; “mtnGLO” 🙂 It is our home so we can have a light in it. When we were looking on the Big Agnes page where we saw GLO system, which has light. We always hang on our head light top of the tent. Most of the time, it was falling down because of the wind. We knew that have a light system in the tent it cost us more money. On the other hand we have been living in tent and mostly likely we will keep continuing this for a while so we use it many years. We stay 98% of our travel in a tent so nice to have more comfort.

And we bought Copper Spur HV UL3 “mtnGLO” on the end of July 2017. We were in South Africa at the moment. It was rain, wind and cold because of wintertime. Not that much tourist around therefore rent a studio; entertainment house from “airbnb “ was 20 USD per day. Good opportunity for us to stay a little in a house after one year. 🙂

We have started to use tent in September. We slept in our new tent until now, 100 days in four months. The temperature was around 12 to 35 degrees. We had bad time with wind also with rain. (The rain is crazy in Africa, especially in the rain season. Like a shower and doesn’t stop when start.) We are really happy what we choose to live. We got use to our new house very fast. 🙂

GS

Another hard choose for camping to have a correct sleeping bag. Maybe it it’s not important what we have if we go to camping only for a weekend or sometimes for just fun. But for a long journey, we need to find best sleeping for ourself. Unfortunately, we are still looking for it. If you have any opinion you should tell us. We would like to hear about it.

We have a hammock with us as well but believe me not just for fun….

Sleeping Bag

Still we have been looking to buy sleeping bag. 2.5 years ago, I bought my sleeping bag in US from REI.  It is so light and three season sleeping bag. I don’t remember the model but writing on it is “Travel Pack”. It was a discount and I didn’t know that much things about a sleeping bag. It was good opportunity for me to buy 90 USD. I have no idea why but I bought two. 🙂

We decided to start  our trip with them and when we find something what we need we can buy it. Almost pass a year and still we have been looking to find correct one. The sleeping bag is so small and also light, we don’t need to think about space. 🙂 But around 18 degrees we can already feel cold. When you are alone it doesn’t matter female or male sleeping bag. When you are couple you need them like that because you zip it together and you can use like one sleeping bag.

Hammock

We have a hammock. In the beginning, I didn’t want to have one. But Ferry wanted to enjoy. After a little search we choose ‘Eno DoubleNest’ which is small, light and 70 Euro. Maybe, we couldn’t use a lot in the camp but we have been using a lot on the road. We are in Africa now and it is so hot. We don’t want to ride motorcycles middle of the day. We can find a shadow, open the hammock and get rest. 🙂 I wasn’t thinking in the beginning it can be so much useful like that.

GS