Mr & Mrs Jones
We all want to travel light – but those ‘essentials’ soon add up. Here are my top three…
Before lockdown mania, I spent months making television in far-off places: a nice hit series for the Australians in the first half of 2019, and another straightaway, across New Zealand, which is meant to be on ITV some time but appears to be stuck up the Orinoco. These long TV engagements become like proper 19th-century explorer expeditions. They need a lot of spare trousers, especially in Africa.
It’s an unexpected headache. David Attenborough has a “uniform”. Chinos and blue shirts. Always. Wherever he is. Same kit. I tried that and got letters pointing out how smelly I must be. So, these days I lug two of several sets of identical trousers, two of four different shirts, two pairs of boots, two natty sun hats, two orange Albam waxed parkas that attract every smut and smudge.
Why two? Because one gets filthy on the first take (when I jump in the mud hole to wrestle the hippo) and we never stay long enough in any place to fill in those exhausting hotel laundry lists. They would never return it before we were off to the next mud hole anyway.
But for six weeks I need essentials as well. Obviously, I want to travel light (we all do) so over the years I have investigated the best, the lightest and the most useful extra kit ever made (and subsequently lost). But let me share.
Much of it has to do with sleep. All those new excitements: the ludicrous jet lag, the noisy birds, the unexpected porn on TV. They keep you awake at night. I have “next day” anxieties, too. The crew, my hat, the breakfast – what will they be like? Will the new director cope with being made to sit in the car while I do their job? (I’m joking, David.) Occasionally, and very rarely, I even worry about the script.
But sometimes we rough it. It’s the game. So, here’s a tip: take a collapsible pillow. Not a blow-up one; you can’t sleep on a beach ball. Find a camping pillow that squashes down, after six hours of wrestling, to a mini-pillow, half its size. It’s still a lot of pillow to pack, but, I tell you, this is the third most useful of all things a traveller really needs.
The others? Obviously, you have to keep the bugs off; so sprays and things. I take one of those coils and a few nets and a crop-dusting biplane. But after killing all moving things in the room, the most worrying element of any strange, new, cheap accommodation is whether the curtains draw – if you are lucky enough to have curtains. A good “sleep mask” is essential. This is Best Travel Thing Ever – Number Two. Don’t rely on the one you get free from the airline, but invest in a “Magma sleep mask”. Take my word. It works. It has soft, felt slabs that lift the blinker off the eyelids and close out the entire world. Bliss. It will guarantee that you sleep through all early alarm calls.
Having said that, my worst nights have been where the bed smells. You think presenters are feather-bedded? Try kipping in Port Sudan. I think some poor soul had recently died in the bed I was given. The best advice I ever got for far-out travel was to take a tiny, silk sleeping-bag liner. Not the whole bag. (It is usually hot in the tropics and you would expire in a goose-feather sack.) A sleeping bag liner is the cat’s pyjamas. It separates you from whatever might have been in the bed, especially naked cats. This fully portable accessory is my Number One Essential Travel Kit Ever.
Mind you, I am a bugger for other minimal must-haves. They include running shoes made of foam plastic, a waterproof jacket that rolls into the size of my fist, a portable spoon, a spare rucksack that packs down to the size of my other fist, a Kindle, battery charging equipment, a head-torch… you can see where this is going. My ultra-lightweight cache of important stuff now far outweighs my old suitcase. Bin the lot. If you are going up country, you need only the three essentials detailed and an assistant called Paul. Don’t forget that sleeping bag liner. And your passport.
Find a camping pillow that squashes down, after six hours of wrestling, to a mini-pillow