Can we travel across the world with only 7kg baggage?

I remember it well. I was 23, and I had just returned home from my first-ever backpacking trip. I'd spent 2 months meandering through Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand and Laos as a solo traveller who wanted to see the world.

The moment I walked in my mother's front door, I ceremoniously dumped my oversized, bulging, 30kg pack on the floor.

"I'm never taking anything that big overseas ever again."

Yet, I loved that bag. I had collected patches from each country I went to. I'd done connecting flights through KL, so I had a flag for Malaysia. I'd crossed the border into Myanmar (Burma) upon advice in a tiny text box in the Lonely Planet guide I'd lugged around with me the entire time, so the Burmese flag was on there too. They were in good company with their South East Asian neighbours, whose flags were sewn onto my very robust (albeit far too big) bag.

I wish I still had a photo to show you.

It was far bigger and more colourful than this. And rough around the edges from all the bangs it got while travelling!

I can see it clearly in my mind. Despite its gigantic proportions, I loved it dearly. In the years to follow, I used it often. Not to travel overseas - I never travelled that heavy ever again - but rather to move house.

I moved a lot in my adult life. No doubt it was a repetition of the pattern I'd had in childhood that saw us move every handful of years. But unlike my early years, where we had an entire houseful of stuff to move, I could usually put all my stuff in the back of a car as a moving adult.

I never stayed anywhere long enough to own anything big.

I think I bought a bed at one point. But I lived smack bang in the middle of the Australian desert. Since it's thousands of kilometres to get to any other big city in our country, there was no way I was going to take it with me when it was time to move on.

During my 20s and 30s I travelled overseas a small handful of times. While I didn't always take carry-on only, I did travel much lighter than the maximum weight limit. I knew how much it hampered my enjoyment of exploring places when I had to carry or drag around something that was approaching half my body weight.

Stuff was just not that important.

I had this minimalistic way of travelling dialled in by the time I moved to Bali in late 2014. I took the largest backpack that would squeeze into the carry-on limits, knowing that almost anything I could possibly want, I'd likely be able to get on this beautiful, well-touristed island in Indonesia.

One familiar view from Bali

When I returned to Australia 16 months later to meet my brand new baby niece, I came home with the same strong, moderately sized, really not very heavy pack.

Travelling light just felt normal by that stage, despite others thinking I was mad.

Since meeting @new.things in early 2019, I've travelled overseas even more. Back to Bali, twice. Once as a standalone destination, the other as part of a 'South East Asia' loop that included Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand.

We jumped 'over the ditch' to New Zealand on a different trip. And to Japan to do parkruns and go skiing on yet another trip.

But our biggest trip to date was the one about six weeks ago where we went to - literally - the other side of the world. With carry-on only, squeezing in just under (on??) the 7kg weight limit, we flew to Copenhagen (Denmark) via Dubai.

Over 23 days, we jumped (flew) from Copenhagen to Bristol (England/UK), from Manchester (England/UK) to Amsterdam (Netherlands) to Oslo (Norway) back to Copenhagen and home to Brisbane via Dubai once again.

If you ever want motivation to travel light, just think about doing an itinerary with that many jumps. 😂

While it took time to ponder (items that would make it in), play (with how we could get everything we really needed in) and plan (to buy some strategic items - like more merino clothing that can be worn again and again before washing), it was 100% worth it.

Unlike when I used to hike into the bush (woods/forest) with groups of school children and we had to carry everything on our backs, where there were no shops and if we forgot something, we had to go without...

Photo credit

...a trip to the well-resourced countries we visited meant that, as long as we had our passports and a way to access money, anything we forgot or found we needed on the road was always somewhere within reach.

Would I change anything about the way I packed on a future overseas trip? Do I think I need more stuff? Heck no.

Would I change any of the things I believe about myself and the world before the next overseas trip? Heck yes. There's a helluva lot of mental and emotional baggage I want to ditch before flying to another country again.

Why? Because I know that doing so would make that trip and all future trips that much more enjoyable.