I’ve gotten some questions about flashpacking and it seems people want to know a bit more of the specifics of what I had with me on the road:
- Kodak z740 digital camera with two 1GB memory cards for it. I could have gone more upmarket but in general the camera did what I needed it to do. The optical zoom was clearly the selling point for me (the digital zoom got a little fuzzy) and it also had enough manual controls like shutter delay to keep me happy.
- An Ericsson T39m GSM cell phone. I picked up a SIM card (and service) from Airtel when I got to India.
My “laptop” – an AlphaSmart Neo. (This is what I’m typing on in the picture.) Not fancy but perfect for what I needed. Light, durable and compact, and the best part: it goes for weeks on a single set of three plain old AA batteries with no recharging.- 1 GB Sony MicroVault USB memory drive
- Then I had all of the supporting gear – a few sets of rechargeable batteries and chargers as well as the charger for my phone and then cables for the camera and Neo, a US-to-India plug adaptor and a few CD-RWs to back up my photos from my camera cards.
- This service behind this web site, SiteKreator was a great help because of its very easy and intuitive interface. Remember I was often using some very basic computers at cyber cafes (including the dreaded Windows 98 os) and the prospect of downloading content and fiddling with it in Dreamweaver was just not realistic.
- Also, I should note that the auto-save function in Gmail was great for the many times when my computer froze up or the power went out when I was writing an e-mail. I also used Google’s e-mail interface to write my blog entries before posting them for the same reason – we all know how annoying it is to get halfway through something and then have it disappear.
- GoToMyPc.com – I used this to connect to my laptop which I left on at home. It’s hardly a new development but it’s funny to be sitting in a little dingy backroom in India and fiddling with my files on the other side of the world.
What are you packing on the road?
