What a solo lady traveller really needs

I was looking online for some royalty free photo ‘talking’ about travels.
I came across some travel blogs with tips and handbooks on how to do ‘things’.
The fate led me ….
[no, it’s not true, nothing on google counts less than the destiny. Rephrase …]
A complicated series of algorithms that allows the network to spy on me and sell me what I could be ineterst in (and they are always right), took me about an article titled The 10 Commandments for Girls with Long-term Travel Plans.

Please note, we are talking about real commandments for girls who plan a long term trip (six months or a year). The topic is serious, many months ‘elsewhere’ are able to put a lot of people, men and women, in a state of anxiety. Often faced with the choice of skimming, fraying, reducing, choosing aspects of our lives too heavy to carry around. The luggage is but a metaphorical contraction of this psychological phenomenon.

How not to read the ‘commandments’ of Mishana Khot on the Blog Vagabondish (one of the best about travel issues)?
In reading the entries in the list (shown below in short, with a hypertext reference to the extended version), I was amused by the fact that 7 ‘Commandments’ out of ten concern the clothing.

Put it this way, it is a set of guidelines made to help the ‘first level’ single woman travellers, because since the second dan onwards, between capsular wardrobe and positive thinking like ‘all I need more, I can buy it there’, a compulsive traveler cares about other things, because she knows that there will be other problems to face.
So, here is my personal supplement to the  decalogue, for travelers from the third level up.

capsule wardrobe

1 – Dress code:
I would say that is enough for me to wear one ‘commandment’. The Capsule Wardrobe.

2 – Mooncup:
The blogger Khot warns that in some countries it is more difficult to find tampons, Ob and the like. I confirm! In Serbia you’ll find then in 1 out of 10 pharmacyies and I couldn’t find them at the Supermarket.  Even in Malta in 2007 I had some difficulties.
The answer is not the stock of Ob that would fill a sixth of luggage but the Mooncup. Anyone who tries will automatically become the spokesperson and advocate. A woman knows what it’s like to have to deal with internal and external absorbent for years, and feels immediately compelled to bring all the other women in turn in this real breakthrough, not only in travel time. Even from a practical, economical and environmentally friendly point of view (and then also with regard to the chapter about dermatitis, irritation, etc.).

mooncup

3 – A set of screwdrivers and allen.
Other than shoes. If you go to live in a house, in another country, it can happen (it WILL happen) you don’t know and can’t find the contact with a plumber, carpenter or plasterer etc.. The net is full of tutorials that explain how to fix a sink. Having done so, as after having fixed a bed or a hole in the wall, you’ll feel pervaded by a sense of omnipotence. After the first time, you will go around for a couple of days with a screwdriver in your bag, ready to pull it out at every occasion,  screaming ‘Expecto Patronum!!’.

4 – A set of cutting and sewing.
You can find easily very small and practical ones. Sooner or later, one button will jump down off your skirt, yes, that skirt that you’d never renouce to.

5 – A key that connects to the internet with a roaming contract for the first few days abroad (if you go abroad), to be used while waiting to see which local card is more convenient to stay connected.

woman-on-laptop

6 – Notebook.
We can be full of tablets, smartphones, laptops, ultra-light pc (not my case), but there will be a time when none of them will light up in time to take a note on the spur of the moment. Or to write a number, an address, the name of an aromatic root to ask in an herbalist’s shop. Moleskine is not necessary. A 3 euros notebook can do more than enough.

7 – Patches (to put behind the heel for the running of all the must-see shoes that your horizons will show you)

8 – Condom and anti-birth control pills.
I hope I do not need a handbook of a blog  to remind you of the importance of living every adventure and every trip with caution. And I’m dazzled by the fact that I’ve not found yet any reference to condoms or pills brands existing abroad, and who to ask and how, on any travel blog, unless the subject was sex. I’ll work at it.

9 – universal power socket.
I can imagine scenes of panic of those who have put an entire wardrobe in the suitcasebut arriving at their destination late in the evening, find the mobile phone low battery and can’t recharge it. We bet, first sleepless night.


I miss one, but I am so proud (read tired) of my almost-Decalogue in Sex & the Travel style that I don’t want to contaminate it with  things written to fill the space.
Read the decalogue that inspired this article: 

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