Packing Smart: Taking Your Creative Hobbies Abroad Without Overpacking

So, you’re hobbist about to embark on the vacation of a lifetime and leave normality behind. Scared, aren’t you? This isn’t meant to be a confrontational statement. Quite the opposite; it’s meant to help you. Help you realize that a) you aren’t alone, and b) that you have someone on your side to help you figure out what’s next. But leaving your hobbies behind is another thing!

Backpacking is the next big adventure for nearly 60 million hikers in the US, a number that climbs with every new adventure started. Each of these travellers faces a unique trip of their own making, but one best made by choices, for better or for worse. Here, we’ll address one of those choices – to hobby or not to hobby? – and answer with fervour. Yes, there is room to bring your hobby along with you while you find new horizons. And here’s how.

1. Identifying Travel-Friendly Creative Hobbies

That initial answer is something of a glib one, of course. If your hobby happens to be the reconstruction of ancient Viking longships, you’re less likely to be able to indulge that on an Alpine trek than you are on the shores of dear old Scandinavia. Here, I’m being facetious. Truly, most hobbies are portable.

Whether it’s writing, sketching, photography or journalling, there are ways and means of condensing your specialty down to brass tacks and bringing the whole deal along with you. All the better if you write; turns out you can do it with almost anything!

What hobbies can I take on my travels with me?

• Sketching
• Travel Journal
• Water colour painting
• Knitting
• Embroidery

2. Choosing Compact and Multi Use Equipment

This speaks to a practical reality for any hobbyist traveler. If you intend to travel with your hobby, then you need to be sure that you can pack that hobby down smaller than your sleeping pack. It’s hard enough carrying the basic means to live around, let alone the fripperies of a passion project!

As such, you need to take all the time you can, ahead of time, to select lightweight and multifunctional tools and materials that support your creativity without affecting airline limits or your own physical endurance limits. And, of course, you’ll need the right packing media with which to secure your supplies. 

What can I pack? tips to downsize

• A travel journal bag
• Wrap washi around plastic to take less
• Take a crochet kit with you rather than lots of surplus
• Choose small note books and mini watercolour palettes
• Try a small reusable travel pen such as a Mini Lumos

3. Adapting Creativity to the Journey Itself

This all might feel a little stifling, particularly if your travel plans required a certain level of creative freedom from you. That said, and as they say, sometimes structure is freedom. You can use your minimal palette to build strong creative pieces around your travel experiences, the landscapes at your disposal and even your daily routines! Do just a little bit a day and try not to leave it all to the last minute. Make notes of your day in a journal such as a Traveller’s notebook.

4. Packing Considerations for Walking and Pilgrimage Routes

There’s one final thing to bear in mind – at least, for travellers of a certain disposition. For travelers embarking on camino holidays – that is, Camino De Santiago pilgrimages – weight distribution is of paramount importance. Steps are hard when you’re dragging an easel. By considering a simpler form of visual artistry, such as daily journalling or drawing, one can complement the reflective nature of their pilgrimage without adding unnecessary weight.

Pack small! take the bare minimum!