Whenever adventure calls you should just go. Where is not important, what matters is how. Your mind has to be ready, more than how trained your body is, there’s time to get improve it. But your mind needs to be present.
Start by acknowledging what you’ll be going through in your adventure. How many hours are you planning to hike or cycle every day? What you’ll do if it rains? Are you going to camp or you’ll always being staying in hotel? How much difference this will make on your load?
Think about all these carefully as the stuff you decide to bring with you will dictate your trip. It happened to me many times I’ve decided to carry technical gears as a drone and a camera but once on the road I didn’t used them much. The main reason is I didn’t want to stop, take them out and film as that would means breaking the flow of what I was experiencing. Just having the option of stopping for filming was adding an extra thought on my head, and that’s not really what I wanted to have when I first decided to go for a solo trip in the wilderness.
I’ll write a more detailed articles for both hiking packing and cycling touring but for now I want to keep it open and give you some general advice of why you should think of just what’s essential for the trip.
Living most of your day (if not all) outside means you are going to be expose to different weather conditions and temperatures.
Make sure you have:
- water bottle
- warm waterproof jacket
- a change of clothes if you get wet (either from sweating in the heat or from the rain)
- hat
- extra socks
- power bank (to charge your phone)
If you are planning to camp:
- tent
- sleeping bag
- mat
- small torch
- extra bottle for water
- book
Remember: you don’t have to plan in advance which exact route to take or where to camp but just know the land you want to explore, how much the temperature drops at night? Are there trees under which you could pitch your tent? Is going to be a thunderstorm in those days?
If you are prepared before living you’ll adapt quickly to any situation and that’s actually where the fun hides.
