Let me show you, what I currently own. These are the things, that I feel, I need and consider mine. In these suitcases is everything except the camera, that takes the pictures and clothes that I am wearing.

I’ve always been a light packer. The amount of things people want to take with them to traveling is dictated by how much they own. I don’t own much, at least not anymore, but it was slow and painful progress, changing the mentality and then to go trough all the years of collected stuff and then not giving, not storing, but throwing them away. Throwing away the idea, “I might need this thing in a year”. This has also helped drastically cut new unnecessary purchases to almost zero.

So it shouldn’t come as surprise, that I’ve been playing with the idea of going to Africa, only with hand luggage. So far, everyone who have heard this idea, have dissuaded it. For me, it gives me mobility, being careless with things, in the end, I wont be using half the things anyway. Let me explain why it might not be so bad idea.

Being without luggage, or overall without things, gives this incomparable feeling of freedom. My home is where is my body and my ten things are. With these things, everything I want to do, is possible. There is no case of “I will draw or edit photos when I get back home” or “damn I am not sure where is something I might need”. Everything owned is carefully chosen and known. This feeling, not having to split my life into being away and being home, is the feeling of freedom. Of course I feel more homely in some spaces and whatnot, but I almost never feel away anymore. My home is where is everything I need and everything that are needed are always with me.

Only time when I have exceeded luggage restrictions, or even had luggage as far as I can remember, was when I came back from Istanbul, from living there for five months. And it was over the limit, only because I tried to take everything what was mine back. While succeeding in packing everything in to the bag, it was too much for the airline. This included blanket, that found it sad ending in the trashcan, logitech speakers and backgammon board game. My obsession of being luggage free, is so big, that I even know that if the blade of the knife is shorter than 6cm, I can take it on board.

So, hand luggage for three months?