We've Traveled with Both Backpacks and Suitcases. One is Better.
The way you carry your stuff when you travel is a whole "thing." We've finally decided which is best for us.
When you travel, there are two ways to carry your stuff: backpacks or suitcases. When Brent and I started nomading at the end of 2017, we chose suitcases.
Big suitcases. The kind you see in movies with transatlantic cruises.
Back then, we thought we needed to be prepared for any occasion: semi-formal clothes for fancy nights out. Clothes for all kinds of weather — warm and cold. Enough of our favorite toiletry brands to last the year before returning to America.
By the start of the third year, we’d grown tired of feeling like our own porters. We also planned on doing more train travel and didn’t want to be lugging those suitcases up and down stairs and through narrow aisles.
So we switched to, yes, backpacks — specifically the Cotopaxi 42L — which, incidentally, we absolutely recommend. The quality is amazing.
On one hand, it was nice to no longer be dragging around huge suitcases — especially when our Athens cab driver mistakenly dropped us off in the wrong spot, forcing us to walk two kilometers through a mobbed farmer’s market to our Airbnb.
On the other hand, we’d taken to traveling with a second small backpack, which we used to carry electronics, prescriptions, and other valuables — all the things we didn’t want to check on a plane.
Problem is, we kept gravitating to bigger and bigger “carry-on” backpacks.
Before we knew it, we were both basically carrying two big backpacks.
Which was really awkward and difficult! And also — in retrospect — very stupid.
Then, last year, we took a trip through the mountains of Central Japan with some nomad friends, Howard and Whitney.
Instead of backpacks or huge suitcases, they traveled with one small suitcase and one small backpack each.
Emphasis on the word “small.”
We envied how easily they carried those bags around — and how seamlessly they all fit into our van.
Meanwhile, Brent and I were carrying those two big backpacks and breaking our backs.
So we ordered the exact same suitcases they were using: Travelpro Maxlite 5 Softside Expandable suitcases. And we got two genuinely small personal backpacks too.
Interestingly, the Travelpro suitcases and Cotopaxi backpacks have similar volumes — at least on paper. But the Travelpro’s sides are rigid, while Cotopaxi’s cloth sides have way more give. The Cotopaxi also has more packing compartments.
But this means you can cram way more stuff into the Cotopaxi.
And we definitely did, especially over time.
With Travelpro, we’ve been forced to pack smarter.
Here are all the lessons we have learned about the differences between backpacks and suitcases — and also all the ways you can pack smarter too, especially as a nomad or long-term traveler:
