What should you pack for great travel?

If you’re interested in packing the right gear for truly great travel, here’s my advice to you.

Go pack a toothbrush

We’ve been running San Vicente mountain tours for many decades now so I believe I have a good authority to address this question. If you’re interested in packing the right gear for truly great travel, here’s my advice to you. Just pack a toothbrush.

If you really want to break internal and external boundaries, pack a toothbrush. Everything else will take care of itself. As long as you have your wallet with your credit cards in a safe place and you have your wits about you, one of the best things you could do is to drop into a place that’s very far away from you live and essentially become a native. You get to see the world from their perspective. You get to move around based on the resources, capacities and capabilities that they have available.

Instead of simply going to a place because you’ve seen it in an Instagram photo or Facebook or some sort of postcard, you put yourself in a situation to actually be there. You’re not just occupying the same geographic and physical space. Instead, you’re occupying the same emotional and cultural space. This is how real interactions happen.

The best part is you’re not going to be viewed as a foreigner because you’re not there with the stereotypical Hawaiian shirt and shorts with a camera draped around your neck. Instead, since you only packed a toothbrush, you’re going to go to local stores, buy yourself an affordable outfit and look like everybody else there. This is the first step because when people perceive you as both foreign and familiar at the same time, a lot of walls are broken. Compare this with somebody who’s just obviously not a local. You can tell immediately that people will treat you differently. How they present reality to you would be different.

A lot of travellers are okay with this because they’re tourists. But if you’re looking to travel in such a way that you get to confront a lot of your internal walls, you want to be part of the scene. You get led into a series of local secrets regarding the place you’re visiting. It’s kind of like entering a room with many different chambers. Part of the excitement is when door after door opens as you explore each new room.

Do yourself a big favor. To really experience great travel, travel as light as possible. I would suggest drawing the line on the toothbrush, in fact, it shouldn’t even stop there. You could just go to the place you’re travelling to and pick up a toothbrush and also enjoy the distinct local taste of the toothpaste there. Start there.Ultimately, real travel is not about what’s going on outside of you. Instead, it’s really all internal.

Prepare your mind instead of worrying about what to pack and what to wear. Ultimately, if your mind is in the right place, everything will fall into place. One of the best ways to sabotage your trip is to obsess about possessions. People do this all the time and they wonder why their trip was not as meaningful or sublime as they had hoped. They only have themselves to blame. Their minds were not ready. Don’t make this mistake.