Remember when your parents sent you away to college and insisted you bring a sewing kit or toolbox, maybe it was a book on decorating a dorm room, or how to live with a roommate?

You probably never used any of those things. I can see using the sewing kit, maybe the toolbox, but please don’t admit to reading either of those books. When you live in a dorm you’re in a group and you have to learn how to adapt to other people and how to rely on their skills and strengths, the same goes for travel.

Danner in Mumbai

Be practical.

If you’re going to a city, you don’t need to bring insane hiking boots or pants that can also be shorts. Pack jeans. Don’t worry about packing everything you could possibly use, talk to friends who have been there, read some stuff on the interweb thingy, and fill in the rest when you get there.

Travel is about adaptation, that’s where you get your awesome travel stories. Checking off tourist sights is not a story, being stranded at 3 a.m. in the dodgy part of Mumbai when you have a plane to catch in a few hours is a story. Be open to the possibility of getting lost, find your own way, make your own story, and pack accordingly. Don’t pack for the apocalypse, pack for the party.

I’m gunna go find some room in my backpack for my disco ball. Peace.

Chris Danner