Part I — Packing South

Almaty in October is a slightly ridiculous place from which to pack for Rajasthan and Java.

Outside, autumn has arrived properly. The mornings are cool, the mountains are whitening and a jacket feels entirely reasonable. The forecast in Jodhpur, meanwhile, suggests that the same jacket will become dead weight approximately ten minutes after leaving Delhi airport. Beyond India lies Java: hot again, but this time humid, green and moving into the rains.

Packing well isn't the same as packing light.

I have never quite understood the competitive enthusiasm for travelling halfway around the world with three T-shirts and a toothbrush. Nor do I want to drag a wardrobe behind me. There is a sensible point somewhere between the two.

For a journey like this I take a good soft-sided wheeled duffel of around 75 litres and a small cabin bag. The main bag should leave Almaty perhaps a quarter empty. That space is deliberate. I am travelling through Jaipur and Jodhpur before spending time with furniture makers in Indonesia. It would be optimistic to assume that nothing will be coming back with me.

The cabin bag contains the things I would actually mind losing. Passport and documents, telephone, tablet, chargers, power bank, notebook and two good pens. A change of clothes is useful when a checked bag decides to take a different holiday from you.

The wardrobe is equally straightforward.

Four shirts rather than eight, but good ones: linen and lightweight cotton. White, pale blue and perhaps one neutral. Three good T-shirts or polos. Three pairs of trousers, none of them heavy denim. One pair slightly smarter than the others. An unstructured jacket, a fine merino layer for Almaty, aircraft cabins and overenthusiastic air-conditioning, swimming shorts and underwear for a week.

Laundry is considerably easier to find than enthusiasm for carrying dirty clothes around Asia.

Two pairs of shoes are enough. Comfortable trainers that have already covered some miles, and a pair of soft loafers or slip-ons which can manage a meeting or dinner without requiring any particular attention. A long journey is not the place to discover that a beautiful new pair of shoes eats your heels.

Nothing needs to match perfectly, but everything needs to work together.

More importantly, the clothes have to survive Delhi traffic, Jaipur markets, a hot furniture workshop in Jodhpur, dinner afterwards, an airport in Kuala Lumpur and eventually the humidity and rain of Java without requiring an entourage to maintain them.

Natural cloth earns its keep here. Linen creases, of course. It is supposed to. Good cotton softens. Both become more comfortable as the day progresses. There is little pleasure in wrapping yourself in plastic when it is thirty-five degrees outside.

Then come the less glamorous essentials.

A small pharmacy. Electrolytes. Insect repellent. Sun cream. Sunglasses. A compact umbrella. Universal adaptor. A few cables rather than the usual archaeological dig of redundant electronics.

And a five-metre tape measure.

That last item will prove considerably more useful than the jacket.

What gets left behind matters almost as much.

Heavy denim stays in Almaty. Boots stay. The second jacket stays. The enormous wash bag stays. Anything delicate stays. Anything being packed because perhaps I might need it receives another look.

India has shops.

Indonesia has shops.

The objective is not to leave home equipped to survive every conceivable inconvenience. It is to carry enough good things that the ordinary inconveniences don't matter.

There is also another reason for leaving space.

A journey through places that make things has a habit of producing objects. A piece of cloth in Jaipur. A small piece of metalwork. A timber sample from a workshop. Something found rather than sought.

You don't necessarily know what it will be when you leave.

The bag closes easily.

That is important.

We are leaving Almaty with considerably less than we intend to return with.