Are you a flashpacker?

Pam Mendel recently photographed her packing for Antarctica, perhaps inspired by the recent image of Frank Chimero’s daytime packing. It made me remember an article I read a while back, I wanna be a flashpacker by Amanda Kendle where she writes about how she changed from traditional backpacker into something called flashpacker.

Too much packing.

Some of the elements she describe sounded familiar to me, including (and especially) the Belgian chocolate gluttony. I usually never leave the country without my iPhone, iPod, digital camera, moleskin notebooks and a bunch of various adapters, cables and power chargers. When I travel on my own I would likely stuff a laptop into the bag as well.

Just the essentials on the Trans-Siberian.

I guess it all depends on where you’re going. Even though I thrive on large cities, I’ve also seen a fair amount of remote places where I felt the necessity to bring more practical equipment, but so far I’ve fortunately never been totally dependent on any of my gear.

So what’s in your backpack?