One Bag, Three Months

Well, packing is done and my flight is tomorrow morning at 10. It was a little tricky, but I've managed to get everything into one bag. This bag.

A Stowaway!

Even though the backpack is quite large (5300 cubic inches), it was still necessary to pack pretty efficiently. The best part of that was that I had to be fairly selective about what I brought. I can't speak for others, but I'm used to having so much stuff that it all just disappears into the background. I take much of it for granted. Packing was a good opportunity to try to just bring the essentials. I laid everything out for a picture before it all went into the bag.

I won't bore everyone by listing all the items in that photo, but I will mention some of the essentials.

• My netbook. A Toshiba NB305. This is what will make it possible to blog and generally stay in touch while abroad.
• Canon S90 Camera. Only the case is pictured for obvious reasons... This is the other crucial piece of technology for this whole blogging thing to work. Special thanks goes out to Ned Desmond, as it was a graduation present from him.
• Steripen. Water quality and especially water borne illness are serious issues in Nepal. Hopefully, this will keep me from contracting anything too brutal. It sterilizes 32 oz of water in 90 seconds. If that fails...
• ...a medikit (the filled ziplock bag, second from the left). There's some prescription antibiotics in there if I encounter something really ugly.
• LED flashlight. Kathmandu is on energy rationing, so power is completely shut off in various districts of the city at scheduled times. A battery powered light source is very necessary during those hours.
• Logitech M305 Travel Mouse. My new favorite piece of technology. It's a wireless mouse that runs off a single AA battery. The transmitter is tiny and can be stored behind a panel on the mouse. I've never liked laptop touchpads that much so thanks to this little guy I actually enjoy using my netbook again.
• Rain poncho. It's monsoon season right now so I'm sure this will get some use. That the entire poncho fits in a tiny bag is an added plus.

And finally, here's everything packed and on my back.

The backpack will be checked, but there's a small Adidas sack (for lack of a better term) inside that I will carry-on. Inside the sack: netbook, camera, headphones, a few books, basically my in-flight entertainment. In Kathmandu, the sack will serve as a daypack for excursions around the city.

And that's it. Departure is tomorrow morning. I'll be in Kathmandu about 20 hours later if everything goes according to plan. It's a real Byzantine flight path though. JFK to Hong Kong to Dhaka (Bangladesh) to Kathmandu. I might be able to get a blog post off during my layover in Hong Kong but it's more likely that the next update will be from Kathmandu!