I compare the small suitcase I travel with now to the luggage from the first time I went abroad and understand just how common it has become to go explore the world: my parents, poor things, prepared that week away from home as something epic and packed so many bundles that we could have passed as contemporaries of Lady Blessington, a writer friend of Byron who is said to have traveled through Europe in 1827 in a carriage equipped with mattresses, swan down bedding, toiletries, a dressing table, egg beaters, soufflé molds for the chef who accompanied her, and a small library. A few years later, when the low-cost airline boom began (on Mondays, in class, there was always a classmate who had spent the weekend in Bergamo), people still usually checked luggage no matter how short their trip was.
But flying abroad with just a carry-on suitcase soon became popular. It was a way to outsmart the system: packed tight, everything fit into those 40x30x20 centimeters that allowed one to travel to Dusseldorf, one of the most dull cities in Germany, without the 20 euros suddenly charged by those new companies for putting the suitcase in the hold shooting up the 3.99 euros of the ticket.
Now that airlines have tightened their policies and are extending them to carry-on luggage, the battle to avoid paying an extra cent has forced ingenuity to sharpen (airlines’ ingenuity has too: now the cheapest ticket doesn’t even include a cabin suitcase, just a backpack). Just take a look around TikTok or Instagram: videos of travelers ripping off suitcase wheels at the boarding gate so they fit in the sizer, tutorials to camouflage kilos of clothes in stuffed travel pillows, etc. However, traveling light is no longer just a stingy guerrilla war to save a few euros on vacation. Now traveling with just the essentials is also about being elegant.
An airplane influencer I met in Turkey, but didn’t meet up with until we crossed paths again in Kuala Lumpur (something a bit sad about traveling a lot is that these unexpected meetings stop feeling like a miracle, now we’re all everywhere even if we don’t dedicate ourselves to commenting on the space between Emirates seats on YouTube) tells me via Instagram chat that this novelty must be related to the pull of frugal chic; that is, the “buy well and cry only once” that has been increasingly fashionable: if elegance is restricting the wardrobe to a few impeccable basics, then it shouldn’t be too much effort to fit it into a small trolley. I also ask my poshest friend and she simply says she prefers not to check luggage so she can leave the airport as soon as possible. Also, she wants to make sure she won’t have to file a claim if her suitcase is lost, and certainly that she won’t be left without her things.
Another friend of mine, not posh but who loves to examine those who are like parrots in an aviary, considers that the image of Jeremy Strong calmly dragging his Rimowa cabin suitcase to the taxi has retired that of the Hollywood diva followed by a porter loaded with suitcases of the most improbable sizes: if that gentleman needs another sweater, he’ll buy another Loro Piana one upon arrival; and well, maybe he even has one of his residences there.
Among the perennial globetrotters, that renunciation of extravagant comforts and the tons of luggage with which 18th-century travelers undertook the Grand Tour happened much earlier. One responsible was Patrick Leigh Fermor, famous for having walked from Holland to Turkey in the 1930s, at only 18 years old, carrying a few changes of clothes, a volume of Horace, and his notebooks. The excellent book in which he narrated that adventure is titled The Time of Gifts and argues that those who travel with almost nothing end up discovering the hospitality of the world. One of his followers was Bruce Chatwin. In his book In Patagonia he also presents himself as an austere traveler, but in reality, he was a dandy. Nicholas Shakespeare, his biographer, revealed that he traveled with more than forty kilos of books, a typewriter, bottles of champagne, suits, and his favorite breakfast muesli, and that his famous leather backpack was custom-made by an English saddler modeled after that of actor Jean-Louis Barrault.
I started traveling (excessively, I say) after a breakup and I’m always going on about how part of the charm of going around like a pinball ball is that it’s a good way to train detachment. It’s like a postgraduate course in Buddhism: the hotel views, the fling who takes you for a drink at Adolf Loos’s bar in Vienna… all left behind, nothing can hurt you too much, and with this philosophy traveling light comes naturally. Here is, as a list, some things I can say on the subject:
1. There is a space that mass tourism has not yet conquered: the supermarket drugstore section. Unless you’re arriving at your destination at night, spend the first hour of your trip visiting the supermarket closest to your hotel and venture into the personal hygiene aisle in search of new and exciting brands of deodorant, razors, and shaving foam, and those essential over-the-counter pharmacy items (flavored paracetamol, cartoon band-aids, or stomach protectors) that outside Spain can usually be bought without visiting a pharmacy. It’s not just about saving space in your luggage. One could also argue that since smells are what remain most in memory, there’s no better way to fix a memory than associating a new scent with that unknown landscape. Prague, for me, has, for example, the red scent of Old Spice deodorant, which I used there for the first time (I buy it every time I return, but nowhere else) despite it being an American brand, and I can’t conceive of Bangkok without the boost of those Hong Thai herbal inhalers sold at 7-eleven.
2. In general, if something can be obtained for less than twenty euros and barely half an hour, it doesn’t go in the suitcase. Carrying the “just in case” is nothing but a lack of faith.
3. My luggage for a long trip to China: two shirts, three t-shirts, a pair of pants, five pairs of underwear, four pairs of socks, two plastic bags, and a very thin black raincoat that I also use as a jacket. In the backpack: passport, laptop, cables, two books, and a fabric toiletry bag with my toothbrush and blister plasters (hard to get there). I flew with another short-sleeved t-shirt, my favorite sweater, sunglasses (I use them as an eye mask on night flights), and very comfortable black cotton pants which, since I always wear them when boarding, I attribute the magic of keeping the plane from crashing.
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4. Self-service laundromats are a good office to answer messages, catch up reading the newspaper, or check Instagram or X while having coffee and a bun lulled by the spin cycle. In our neighborhoods, we usually don’t pay attention to them, but when needed, there’s always one near the hotel.
5. The worst thing about traveling with just the right luggage is not having space for souvenirs. Of course, you could hire a courier service to send your purchases home, but I came to the solution of replacing typical souvenirs with clothes I can wear on the trip itself. I especially like caps. From Greek islands, national parks, museums… Wearing caps from places is like going around flying the flag of a country where you have been happy (the one I use most this year is from the Tamayo Museum in CDMX).
6. Phuket Airport, 2024. The Spring Airlines flight attendant ignores my pleas and reiterates that my cabin suitcase will definitely stay on the ground: it’s a couple of centimeters wider than the company allows and there’s no possibility to check it in anymore, because at the boarding gate they don’t accept card payments and past security there are no ATMs to withdraw cash. In the end, a colorful nylon bag like those Thais use for shopping that I had bought as a souvenir in Bangkok saves my life. I dumped all my clothes into it and left the suitcase abandoned at the boarding gate. Since then, I carry it everywhere. It’s useful and sturdy; and no matter how full a suitcase is, there’s always room for a good plastic bag.
7. Even so, I feel prepared to lose my things. Manuel Astur recounts in his book The Dawn When It Rises that, from time to time, the Sicilian police find clothes and shoes abandoned on the top of Etna. They are supposed to belong to imitators of Empedocles (according to legend, he committed suicide by throwing himself into the volcano’s mouth to be reborn as a deity) but apparently most of those hikers only intend to stage leaving behind a stage of their lives. Since I read it, it seems like a good way to end a trip, at least if, as Kavafis wrote, it has been a long one full of adventures and experiences.
8. I read novels, and I hope to keep doing so always, but when traveling I prefer diaries and memoirs. I’ll explain why. Many times when I’ve recommended someone travel alone at least once in their life, they say they’re terrified to start hearing that little inner voice that echoes tremendously when there’s no one around and discover they can’t stand it (that they can’t stand themselves). That little voice can be annoying for many, of course, but anyone who has traveled alone for a long time knows that there comes a point when the brain starts projecting other voices: a friend’s, a crush’s, or your mother commenting with you on the visits or answering in your head any nonsense you come across on the street with her usual jokes. Either way, if at that ventriloquism extreme one wants a bit of company and can’t find it, a book is the closest thing to a human being, especially if it’s one where the author tells their life. To recommend two written by female travelers and that don’t weigh much: The Lotus Seekers by Charmian Clift; and Come, Tell Me How You Live by Agatha Christie.
9. Pajamas seem the most dispensable item in luggage. Surely in old inns it was quite cold, but now that the Nordics dominate the world’s beds (it’s annoying to arrive at a Turkish hotel and find the ubiquitous Nordic duvet waiting for you, where are the sheets in this century), it’s normal to be roasting.
10. Dressing in layers to avoid heavy coats and choosing a color range where any garment matches the others are two tips usually given and that I find very sensible to follow.
11. There is another very widespread tip I disagree with: “take your most worn and worst clothes, after all, who knows you in Buenos Aires.” Ah, how nice. So the Porteños are so guilty of not knowing you that they deserve to see you on Avenida Santa Fe with a t-shirt with holes in the shoulder seams and yellowing under the arms.
12. In general: don’t embarrass your ancestors. You’re lucky to be able to know more places than all of them.
