[Short of time? Read the Haiku review instead] If you’ve never lain in a shower stall ejecting vile liquids from both ends of your digestive tract, you’ve not lived! Precede that with eight hours of vomiting out of a Nepalese night bus window and you’ve got a great anecdote for your friends back home/prospective partner/criminally underrated blog. I for one would never have given up those few days of discomfort for an unsoiled memory – every facet of travel contributes to the glorious palette from which one’s trip is coloured, even that of haemorrhaging diarrhoea, and try spelling that after two days of experiencing it. Imagine a journey constructed entirely of happy, well-organised scenes l
[Short of time? Read the Haiku review instead] Admittedly, an inflatable sleeping mat falls further into the category of camping equipment than travelling equipment, but I always take one on long trips because you just never know where you might end up for the night: bus stations; train stations; hard wooden shelves masquerading as beds; the rough decks of cargo ferries traversing Lake Malawi, among sacks of cement, iron girders and piles of snoring African children. In addition, they're handy to have if you do go hiking along the way, and they're compact enough now that their usefulness outweighs the pack volume they consume. Therm-a-rest used to be the Kings of sleepage with their patented
