Product Endorsements

It is not as hypocritical for an aspiring anti-materialist like me to be endorsing products as it initially seems. If you are going to own only a few things, they must be of very good quality so that they can last.

Here then are a few products that have really helped us in our travels, and I thought it might be worth recommending to others when they travel.

Teva footwear: This will be no big surprise to those who have owned Tevas before. These are open footwear with Velcro straps. Each pair lasts for years, and no traveler should be without one. (I wore mine daily for a full year in India, so much so that many people assumed I didn’t own any other footwear. I didn't want to wear my black shoes (too formal) or rubber flip-flops (too informal), so Teva it was.

REI Cargo Pants: Just before heading out to India, I happened to pick up two sets of cargo pants from the local REI store. These are ideal for travel, with lots of side zips and pockets to stash away tickets, passport and cash. It has lasted through numerous wash cycles, and only now is beginning to show signs of wear. I'd recommend buying one pair first to see if it works for you.

Kelty Backpacks: Ours is over a dozen years old. The credit for researching this before we made our purchase goes to my wife. Mine has gone on dozens of trips. Sometimes, I think I'd like to upgrade to a new backpack, but my current one still looks good.

Vacuum Storage Bags: We hesitated before buying these. It seemed a waste to pay around $20 for what was essentially a set of 3 big-sized Ziplock bags. But I am a convert now. We put our "good clothes" in one and stuffed our winter wear in another of these giant bags and then vacuumed the air out. For one whole year, the bags sat in storage, and the clothes are just as we left them. (Upon my return, when moving things around, one bag fell to the ground and instantly "exploded." So they should be handled carefully.)

Obviously, I am not affiliated with any of the products above. I am just a satisfied customer.

A Lesson on Materialism from Migrant Road Workers in Bhutan

For the 2001 Thanksgiving break, my wife and I went to Bhutan. We flew in to New Delhi and made our way by land, traversing the northeastern part of India before crossing into Bhutan. That was the only time that I flew all the way to India from the US, and yet didn't visit my parents or meet a single relative of mine. It was two months after 9/11 and we were seeking to get away to some place really remote for a few days.

I recall one image from our trip back from Thimpu, after we'd spent a few days there. We'd hired a long-distance taxi to take us from the capital Thimpu to Phuntsholing at the Indian border. Those who live in the US are the elite class by default in Bhutan. The locals travel mostly by bus.

The road to the Indian border, though it was the single most important road in the entire country, was in very bad shape. The mountainous, winding road had huge potholes and was no more than a dirt road for long stretches.

We'd sometimes drive past clusters of workers repairing the road.
“Indians. Road work people,” our driver said.
Their methods were very manual, and the equipment used to melt tar was antiquated. The workers had whole families there working, men, women and children. From their attire and features, I could see that the workers were unmistakably Indian. It looked like Bhutan was importing its labor from nearby India.

And sometimes, our taxi would overtake groups of these road workers who were on the move. In the merciless high-altitude sun, they simply walked to their next assignment. Presumably, they walked for miles and miles because we were in the mountains, in the middle of nowhere
I remember them vividly. Men in shirts and dhotis that had turned brown in the dirt. Women in saris, some with a child perched on their waist. Small kids running ahead, carrying plastic bottles with water for their journey.

The men and women walked while balancing one round cloth bundle on their heads. It was a bundle the size of a pillow, made by tying the opposite ends of a dhoti or a sari. It contained everything they owned.

My wife and I pride ourselves on traveling light. We'd each taken only as many things as would fit in our backpacks for the entire two week trip.

But the reason I still remember the image of these workers is because of the thought that crossed my mind as our taxi overtook the workers: my backpack in the trunk of the taxicab for this short trip was bigger than those bundles, and had far more things than the entire life possessions of any of these migrant workers.


Here's an earlier post on possessions: The evolution of tourist kitsch

The Evolution of Tourist Kitsch

Tourist souvenir shops know how to sell to the unwary. Selling is survival to them. In these stores, all manner of outlandish kitsch is carefully arranged so that they don’t seem the least bit incongruous.

A long while back, not realizing all that, we started to buy a lot of the junk. A face mask here, a laughing Buddha, a wooden sculpture, a miniature version of the leaning tower of Pisa -- we cluttered our walls and showcase with random assorted items. When we finally noticed how bad the collection looked in our living room, we swore off buying those forever.

As a next phase of tourist buying, we started picking up different kinds of sweat-shirts (hooded, with and without zips) and T-shirts. And these garments were priced to sell. (“Three for $10? Okay, I’ll take it.) I bought way more T-shirts than I’d ever need. Predictably soon, my wardrobe had lots of these cheap Tees that I couldn’t wear anywhere except inside the house. Eventually, I wizened up and stopping buying them.

Next, it was coffee mugs. We’d buy just one in each of our trips. They are all made in China, but there was a good variety and we could always find one we liked. These coffee mugs would remind me of some long-ago trip. But I am the only coffee drinker in the house, and any apartment needs only so many mugs, and we had long surpassed that number.

Looking for something smaller, we migrated to buying one refrigerator magnet per trip. These are inexpensive and very small, but pretty soon we had too many on our fridge. Also, they seemed a very crass way to initiate a conversation about our trips to our house guests. (“Oh, you’ve been to Greece?”)

So we then changed to buying picture postcards for ourselves. The theory being that they don’t take up volume, are very cheap and are professionally done. For several trips we’d just buy some postcards as reminders and buy nothing else.

One day, Rupal decided to make a collage of her postcards and bought a large black cardboard from an art store. When she started to arrange the postcards, less than 10% of our collection would fit. Soon after, we stopped buying even postcards.

And at long last, we migrated to taking digital photos and buying absolutely nothing. It finally put an end to buying anything touristy.

I have this idea for a poster titled “The Evolution of Tourist Kitsch” and you can easily visualize it, with pictures progressively decreasing in size: Wall hanging and paintings, T-Shirts, Coffee Mugs, Refrigerator magnets, postcards.

It took me a surprisingly long time to appreciate and adopt into practice the true traveler’s credo, because I was dismissing it as a cliché:

Shoot only pictures
Take only memories
Leave only footprints

First post in a series on possessions.