Technical Clothing while Traveling: Real Utility?

When it's time to pack your bags, choosing the clothes to take quickly becomes a real headache. If you're packing a backpack for a long journey, the choice becomes strategic: everything needs to fit in the bag while leaving room for the essentials. So, how should you dress while traveling?

Your bag will contain several categories of items:

clothes

medications

tools: knife, earplugs, compass...

technology: camera, phone, laptop, music player...

documents: passports, permits, travel guides, books...

essentials: water bottle, snacks for the day trip...

And all of this must fit into a fairly small space!

For our first long trip, we opted for large backpacks over 60L. And a big bag means a lot of unnecessary clutter that you take for the ride. As a side note, while we planned to stay in hotels or with locals, we took a double duvet cover that weighed more than a kilogram. We abandoned it in a hotel after a month.

For clothes, we packed the equivalent of three outfits per person. One was worn (as we avoid walking around naked in the streets!), and the other two were in the bags. We chose them based on our destination and its weather: South America in the summer.

Each of us had the following clothes in our bag:

None of these pieces were brand name or technical gear, as we weren't sure what we would encounter there and thought that if we needed something, we could always buy it locally. In the end, only one pair of jeans needed to be replaced, and a pair of shorts was bought for Amandine. Oh yes, we also splurged on two hats. But now, we switched to baseball caps, which are much more discreet and easier to pack in the bag.

Up until our last trip to Sicily, we always packed this way for clothes, the bare minimum; sometimes, Amandine adds a dress when the climate allows.

For the trip to Sicily, we traded our large worn-out bags for new, much smaller ones (32L and 33L, which is half the capacity!). We had to make choices, gain space (and weight, good news!). We tried technical clothing from Eider, without being fully convinced of its usefulness.

This time, our bags were composed as follows:

Basically, that's one less pair of shorts and one t-shirt for each (Amandine also packed her pretty red dress, which was a hit among the Sicilian gentlemen). The trick is that the technical pant could be converted to three-quarter length or changed into shorts with zippers. These pants were made from very lightweight fabric, took up much less space than regular pants, dried much faster, and surprisingly kept us warm.

My best memory is from a scooter ride where we were in shorts, and we were caught by a sudden downpour. Without a second thought, we zipped up the pants and took off in no time. Once we reached our destination and found shelter, it took less than 10 minutes for them to dry.

Technical clothing is not a must; we traveled for years without it and could definitely do without. As often, it all depends on individual utility, similar to graphic designers who predominantly use Macs, although they could be on Windows.

These clothes only have one drawback: their price. However, their comfort, durability (which justifies the price in my humble opinion), their weight and size make them a strong ally for us who want to travel light. Over the years, we have gone from bags weighing 10kg to 7kg. My back is thanking me!

It should be noted that in Sicily, we went for a week and not for a long trip, but the experience was such a success that the packing composition for our next adventures shouldn't vary much.

There are all kinds of technical clothing; I haven't talked about jackets, sweaters, underwear, or shoes (which alone merit a whole article)... We will discuss this soon.

And you, do you prefer classic or technical clothing?

To continue reading:

Traveling in the Cold... and Surviving! (for the Cold-averse)