Tag Archives: Packing

Know before you go

24 Jun

One day during the first of my trips to Goa last year, I found myself improvising a map of the world with a balloon and then drawing a map of India in the sand with a stick; I was trying to show some of the children at Rainbow House where Goa is in relation to other parts of India and also in relation to the rest of the world.

Renuka was both puzzled and fascinated as to how England could be so far away AND in a different time zone,  so we used a second balloon to show the sun, and how it moves around the world, making it dark in England when it’s sunny in India and so on.  By the time of my second trip,  I was far better prepared and arrived with a case full of far more useful things for the children: underwear, hairbands, hairbrushes – and an atlas and an inflatable globe.  
Here’s Jyoti, the sixteen year old girl sponsored by my friend Diane, pointing to California.

I’m already planning my return trip for later this year and am far more wised up as to what to take Renuka (anything red) and what she does and doesn’t like (for the latter: anything “girly”, pink or that requires her to sit still) and also what the El Shaddai team would find useful to have as donations.

So the arrival of TV presenter Kate Humble’s new venture,  a website called Stuff Your Rucksack , struck a definite chord with me.  Her mantra,  based on her travels in the developing world is “if only I’d known before I came away” and she says:

“I’ve done a lot of travelling in the developing world through my job and I’d get to a school or an orphanage and they wouldn’t have something very simple like maps or exercise books. I used to kick myself because invariably these were things lying around at home that I could easily have stuffed in my own rucksack.”

Kate has hit on the fact that many people,  like me,  visit places around the developing world and want to do, or bring, the right thing, but are hamstrung by their lack of local knowledge and wary of, as she puts it,  ”dumping unwanted gifts on local communities”.  So she has developed a website with a map where,  if you click on a specific country,  you can link to local projects and find a list of what the people who work on the ground would find most useful.

Here,  for a great and very personal example,  is a link to one of El Shaddai’s shelters, where we can see  that they’d find it useful to be gifted toiletries, books and educational DVDs.

Fabulous work, Kate – pack a bag,  change a life.

My Top 10 “useful in Goa” list

7 Dec

So I’m on my way home and am currently resident in the business lounge at Mumbai airport (again – a pronounced contrast to much of my life for the past four weeks), availing myself of their free wireless.  I’ve got so many topics about which I want to blog, not least about my time spent in Bangalore and with the children at Rainbow House,  but have been profoundly hampered by limited wi-fi access – but I’ll get to it as soon as I’m home.  Perhaps I can write off-line during my forthcoming ten hour flight …

Ahead of then, here’s my Top Ten list of things which have been really useful over the last month in Goa – in no particular order,  may I offer up:

  1. A universal bath plug: a traveller’s cliché, to be sure,  but it was very handy when doing the odd spot of hand washing – which leads me to:
  2. Laundry paper: a small plastic box of soap sheets which dissolve in either hot or cold water and are handy for freshening up swimsuits and the like; available from top kitchenware porn site, Lakeland;
  3. High factor suncream: mahogany’s the colour of a wooden table, not my skin and so I’ve been smothered in SPF 40 for the last 4 weeks. On the one hand,  I don’t have much of a tan (leading to pitying comments from other Brits – “You’ve not got much of a colour love,  have you just got here?” – last Friday …) ; on the other hand, my skin looks and feels really good.  On one occasion,  I dialled the SPF down to 25 and I burned,  which just goes to show how deceptively strong the sun can be in Goa. If you visit,  bring your own high SPF,  as I didn’t see anything stronger than SPF 15 for sale; I also saw many tourists using pure coconut oil,  but that’s a whole other post;
  4. As predicted – my own reading material. It had to be done – I saw many second-hand books for sale,  but nothing that I wanted to read (cf previous posts on Dan Brown et al);
  5. Clothes pegs: useful for so many things: clipping errant bedroom curtains together, securing my sunhat to an umbrella spoke whilst sunbathing – as well as their primary use;
  6. My laptop – say no more. As well as for blogging,  it’s also been a great conversation starter – what am I doing, why am I here, what am I writing etc.  Great way to meet people and make friends;
  7. Boots Protect & Perfect Beauty Serum: I’ve gone through two tubes of this stuff; fabulous on sun parched skin.
  8. Lots of pairs of dark-coloured flips-flops: there’s no point in wearing actual shoes,  because of the sand and dirt; and the soil here,  due to the iron ore,  is very red and it stains,  so black/dark brown/navy footwear is the only way to go. Get rubber ones rather than fabric so that you can rinse off the crap under the shower.
  9. Linen/cotton trousers (full length): they may help to deter insect bites in the evening. Perhaps.  And finally:
  10. Anti-bacterial handwash: for both your bathroom (none of my bathrooms over the past month have had soap provided,  so it was useful to bring my own)  and your bag. I use the dry type when I’m out and about (a tip for which I will always be grateful to Leisa) and I’m sure my rigorous, almost OCD-cum-Lady-Macbeth like sluicing of my hands a million times a day has kept me healthy whilst away.

There’ll be more about Goa once I’m home,  but for now – my Jet Airways flight is being called. Jaldi, jaldi!

Gender differences in packing for long-haul travel?

2 Nov

So, big reveal time: I’m going to India (Goa via Mumbai) on Sunday and will be out there, on my own, for four weeks.

Probably not-a-shocker at all: I’m going to take two suitcases with me.  One will be filled with contributions for the children’s home where I’ll be doing volunteer work for part of my time – primarily craft materials and pens – plus books for myself and a hell of a lot of very high factor sun cream.  The other will contain my clothes and all the other bits and pieces which I think I’ll need for a month away, bearing in mind that I’ve been to India before,  know what I tend to use and also what I can and cannot buy (immediate examples of the “not readily available” variety includes yes, high factor sun cream and books by anyone other than Dan Brown and Danielle Steel).  

Also probably not news to many: I’m preparing for the trip by producing and working from a variety of lists.  I’ve found some (not all,  because I’m not,  heavens forbid, actually,  you know, “back packing”) good ideas and helpful tips in this book, “High Heels and a Head Torch” by Chelsea Duke; and it’s thank to Chelsea that I do now own my very own head torch,  which is a small beam of light attached to a Pixie Lott-esque headband (“Are you going pot-holing while you’re away?” enquired TLS).  

High Heels and a Head Torch

It is apparently useful when walking home alone via unlit tracks or beaches or,  much more likely in my case,  sitting up in bed and reading.  So I have a head torch (and spare batteries for it,  because I’m Type A like that); I’m also now taking 500mg of Vitamin B1 a day in the hope that this will act as an insect deterrent and prevent me from being treated as the Dish of the Day by every mozzie on the Indian west coast. I will be using insect repellent too,  but Chelsea assures me that the B1 does make a difference and hopefully it will be useful in the event that I miss a bit when dowsing myself in Deet.

So,  given all of this reading, thinking, planning and pondering, imagine my chuckles when I received this blog alert on “minimalist travel” from Zen Habits in my in-box over the weekend. And, whilst I genuinely do try to avoid apportioning gender stereotypes, the idea of being away from home for 100 days with only 3 t-shirts to wear/sustain me and also using the same multi-purpose detergent liquid for washing one’s hair, body, clothes and even TEETH (!) can surely only have come from a man.  My eyes almost glazed over at the idea of having to do laundry every two days too,  in order to re-use one’s three t-shirts: how dull would that be?

So, sorry Karol  – but your minimalist approach is not for me in this instance.  I’m sticking with Chelsea,  as at least her packing list features such “frivolities” as makeup,  a bit of jewellery and a pair of sparkly flip-flops.

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