Anatomy of a bag. Next time I'll leave behind the tripod (it's in the black bag with the pocket marked "CT-3441," and extends the width of the suitcase) and bring our Speedlight flash unit instead. All that's missing from this picture are a few short sleeved shirts and a pair of pants folded over what you see here. I'd probably leave my sandals behind, too (in the tan-ish bag on the left). One pair of lightweight walking shoes proved to be enough for me. Underwear, socks and t-shirts are in the purple bag; toilet kit is the black bag on the right; the yellow bag holds my travel alarm, Petzl and silk sleeping sack; the grey/orange bag for electricals (battery charger, adapters, etc.); the red bag is first aid and medical; and the orange thing is my rain jacket, cannily packed for easy access when the bag is zipped up.

Not every bed has a reading light, and some destinations don't have electricity at all. We don't leave home without ours.

Our Nexto M1, which we we very happy to have carried. We took a *lot* of photos and a *lot* of videos (with Lyn's S5 IS) and would have run out of SD cards early in the trip if it hadn't been for this nifty little backup device.

My iPod Touch, of course: for movies, audiobooks, ebooks, music, games (the flight was 23 hours); it also gave me email, a currency converter, and maps; it held PDF versions of our travel docs-- a fine travel package. A pair of Shure in-ear earbuds helped block out airplane noise during the flights and allowed me to keep the volume down, which conserved battery life, too. Adding the APC Mobile Power Pack to the kit kept me going with battery life to spare.