The Wandering Chicken

Traveling Without Baggage | The Technium

The Technium poses a simple question:

Can you seriously travel with no luggage at all?

The answer is equally simple:

Yes, you can.

I love the idea of traveling with nothing more than the shirt on my back, the essence of Total Nada, one of “the four modes of no-baggage travel.”*

In this mode you take your passport, a toothbrush, some cash, a cell phone, the clothes you are wearing, and that’s it. It’s pretty radical. You have to be in a certain zen state to enjoy this, but like many things, once you jump in it is not hard to do. This mode is great if you are drifting, going with the flow, and not trying to do anything else. If your travel entails producing something, you’ll need tools (keyboard, or cameras, or books, or maps, or hand tools), which takes you out of this mode.

But a number of folks sail off this way every year. For one example, Jonathan Yevin travelled for a month in Latin America in Total Nada mode. He wrote of his adventures in Budget Travel.

I said I love this idea, but I must confess I’m not sure I’ve got it in me. I like to think I do, but I also recognize my limitations. A month would almost certainly be out of the question for me, but a long weekend? A week? I’d like to give it a go.

* The four modes according to The Technium are: Total Nada, Just Pockets, Day Baggers and Minimalist Borrowers.