Carry-On Only: How We Travel for Weeks From One Bag
I'm writing this from the road in West Africa, moving border to border, and everything I have is on my back in one bag. No checked luggage. No wheelie case bouncing down a dirt track. No second trip to a carousel that may or may not have my stuff on it. One 35-litre pack, and that's the whole operation.
People think travelling carry-on only for weeks is some hardcore minimalist flex. It isn't. Out here it's just the version that actually works, and once you've done it, going back to hauling a big case feels insane.
Why one bag, and why it's not about "packing light"
The one-bag thing gets sold as a lifestyle. For us it's pure practicality. When you're crossing borders, hopping tuk-tuks, jumping on the back of motos and filming as you go, a big case isn't luggage — it's a liability. It slows you down at exactly the moments you can't afford to be slow. It marks you out. It won't fit where you're going. And half the transport out here has no room for it anyway.
One bag on your back means your hands are free, you move fast, and you're never separated from your gear. That last one matters more than anything. Everything I need to keep the trip running, camera, documents, the essentials, is physically attached to me. It doesn't get lost, it doesn't get left, it doesn't ride in a different vehicle than I do.
A real day looks nothing like the packing videos
Here's the honest version, not the aesthetic one. You're up early. You cram everything back into the one bag, and because it's one bag, that takes two minutes, not twenty. You're on a tuk-tuk before you've properly woken up, filming out the side of it, bag on your lap or on your back the whole time. Then a shared taxi. Then a stretch on foot through a market where a wheelie case would be a joke. Then a border, where you want your documents fast and your hands free and absolutely nothing spilling onto the ground.
You do that day after day. The bag is on and off your back maybe a dozen times before lunch. That's the actual test of travel gear, not a studio, not a photoshoot, but a real day of getting on and off things in the heat with everything you own on your shoulders.
What the bag actually has to do
After weeks of this, it comes down to a short list of things that genuinely matter:
It has to open fast and close fast. At a border or a checkpoint you don't want to be wrestling zips while people wait. One clean opening, grab what you need, done.
It has to carry comfortably for real distances. Not "walk to the gate" comfortable "on your back through a market in the heat for twenty minutes" comfortable. That's a different bar entirely.
It has to take a beating and not care. It's going on floors, in tuk-tuks, under seats, in dust, in rain. If it can't handle that without falling apart, it's the wrong bag.
It has to not look like a target. Nothing flashy. Nothing that screams expensive. A bag that blends in is a bag that keeps your stuff.
Everything we built into the 35L travel pack came from exactly this, not a design brief in an office, but weeks of days like the one above, working out what actually holds up and what doesn't.
How the packing actually works
You're not fitting your life into 35 litres. You're deciding what your life actually needs, which turns out to be far less than you think. The rule that runs everything: if I haven't used it in a week, it shouldn't be in the bag. Clothes you can wash in a sink and dry overnight beat clothes you're carrying "just in case." One of most things, not three. The camera gear earns its space because it's the job; almost nothing else gets that pass.
The freedom isn't in owning less. It's in never once thinking about your luggage. You get off the tuk-tuk and you just walk. That's the whole payoff.
This is the one bag, and this is why it's the only one
We sell exactly one bag, and it's this one, because this is the one we've actually carried border to border, day after day, and would carry again tomorrow. Not a wall of forty products we've never used. One pack that earned it in the field, the same field you'd take it into.
Real travel. Not fake travel. No AI. No influencers. Just one bag, one back, and the road ahead. If that's the way you want to travel, this is where you start.
