Things No One Tells You to Pack for Travel

But are extremely useful and people should tell you

There are tons of articles out there about essential packing for travel. But what if they left out something awfully important? Always good to read just this one article to make sure you pack everything :)

Medicine Kit

This seems like such an obvious thing. Yet, the number of folks who show up on trips without basic medication…<face palm moment>.

There are several important things to note about packing medicines.

The first thing is — pack them!

Next — make sure you have the ailment and relevant medication written down somewhere. If you are like me, you may have all the meds, but when you come down with something, you cannot recall which one to take. So it helps to have it written down somewhere.

Third, and most important — keep the medicine pouch in a place where it is always accessible.

We used to safely pack the medicine pouch in our check-in baggage until we needed some medicine mid-air. There was no way to crawl to the luggage hold and retrieve the carefully packed medicines.

Since then, I always carry the medicine pouch in my hand luggage.

Packs of tissues

You may be of the opinion that tissues are available everywhere. That is an assumption that can go wrong. Especially if you are caught in a thatched-roof toilet on the lonely beaches of Goa. I was lucky I had a couple of travel-friendly packets of tissues in my pocket.

Also, what if you are in some faraway land, and you are caught in the middle of a global shortage of toilet rolls?

So, piece of advice, carry several packs of tissues. Try not to use them, lest they run out. But keep them handy!

Toothbrushes and tubes of toothpaste

Think you caught an error, did you? No! The title is plural on purpose.

I am telling you that you must carry a spare toothbrush and toothpaste set.

Sometimes journeys have multiple stops.

Sometimes you forget to pack the toothbrush and paste back in after the first stop.

You arrive at the second destination minus your tooth care kit. What do you do?

Not every town is designed in a way where you can saunter down and pick up a tooth care set with ease.

As a tourist in a foreign land, you have an important job. You are the ambassador for the place you hail from. Now, it won’t do for the ambassador to talk to the locals with bad breath and spinach in their teeth, will it?

So, pack spare sets of toothbrushes and tubes of toothpaste. Note the plural.

Amruthanjan and Vicks Vaporub

These two items are pure gold. Nobody will tell you about them. And you won’t know about them unless you have had a granny who lived up to 103 years of age!

I recently read an article that talked about Meghan Markle’s travel tips. Apparently she never leaves home without her little bottle of tea tree oil. Well, I am not Meghan Markle, and Amruthanjan is my answer to her tea tree oil.

To be clear there are no affiliate links in this post. The makers of Amruthanjan or Vicks Vaporub don’t know me from Adam…or Eve.

But I will swear by both of them.

Amruthanjan for cuts, headaches, rashes, insect nips, and so on. Vicks Vaporub is already known the world over as a great way to clear clogged nasal passages. So these two tiny tubs of gold are always in my travel medicine pouch and always handy.

Find them, import them, steal them, do something, but make sure you add these two to your travel must-haves.

My grandma used them both effectively for all kinds of troubles and lived a very healthy life. Of course, she also led a very disciplined life and had all kinds of good habits, but let’s focus on Amruthanjan being essential for now.

Nail cutter

Kid you not, a nail cutter comes in handy. See, again something no one tells you.

Important tip — don’t pack this in your carry on luggage. It can be mistaken for a weapon. So far we have never faced an emergency where we needed a nail cutter inflight. So pack it in your check-in luggage and retrieve it after you land.

During a trip to Finland, my little girl managed to crash her finger against something and part of her nail broke. The leftover piece was sharp and needed to be cut. We were out sightseeing and there was little chance of finding a nail cutter.

But…

Since my husband always packs a nail cutter, he had it handy. So while we waited for our bus at a bus shelter somewhere near Tampere, Finland, he fished out the nail cutter and chopped off the remaining piece of nail. Problem solved!

Therefore, always pack a nail cutter!

Safety pins

I am telling you these tiny things are lifesavers and dignity savers!

One time, I had gone on a two-day trip. I had carried exactly 2 shirts. We may argue about why I did not pack one more just to be safe. But as it were, I had packed only two.

On day two, I took out the second shirt, wore it, and figured a crucial button had broken free and escaped.

I did not have to bat an eyelid. I always carry a few safety pins for situations like this. I fastened the shirt with a safety pin and went my way.

There are enough episodes like this where you suddenly find a rip in a strange place or some such thing. You can hardly sit down and start stitching when all you want to do is go out and enjoy the place. Safety pins come in extremely handy.

Always keep a handful ready.

And the most important one — A towel

I suspect no other piece of advice would have told you about the importance of packing a towel. See? Right there is the reason you should follow my advice.

Here is what the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy has to say about towels:

“A towel, [The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy] says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. Partly it has great practical value. You can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapors; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a miniraft down the slow heavy River Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (such a mind-boggingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can’t see it, it can’t see you); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.”

You may not be going away on interstellar travel every day, but what if you do? In any case, you could replace all those place names with your earthly favorites, and the towel will still serve all the purposes listed.

It also serves to swat away mosquitos if you have forgotten to take the insect repellent cream.

And if you are on a road trip in a car that does not have sun film on the windows, a towel comes in handy. Roll down the window a wee bit, drape the towel over the window, roll up the window again. Tada! A beautiful curtain to keep the sun out of your skin!

My advice — always pack a towel, or two!