One-bag travel has a tiresome culture around it and an extremely practical core. The tiresome part is the competition about weight. The practical part is that a bag you can carry up three flights, put in an overhead locker and walk forty minutes with removes about half the friction from a trip.
The number that matters is not litres. It is how many times a day you have to decide what to do with it.
The cube system, which is the only organisational thing that has survived. Photo: Vlada Karpovich.
The four items doing the work
- A merino layer. Worn four days running without becoming a problem, which is the entire mechanism by which two weeks fits in one bag.
- A shell that packs to nothing and is honestly waterproof. Not shower-proof.
- One pair of shoes you can walk 20km in and wear to dinner. This is the hardest item on the list and it is worth spending money on.
- A flat washbag that hangs, because the failure mode of small bathrooms is surface area.
Everything else is replaceable at the destination, usually within an hour, usually for less than the cost of checking a bag.
What always gets over-packed
Trousers, and books. Two pairs of trousers is enough for fourteen days and nobody has ever finished three books on a trip that involved actually going anywhere. Take one, and accept that you will buy another in an airport against your better judgement.
