Travelling light is a myth for me!
I have wanted to travel light for so long, and I always set my mind to it whenever I make plans to travel. But more often than not, I get handed a shit ton of stuff to carry and a lot of the times it's not stuff that belong to me. I just act as the free transport agency...sometimes a local courier, sometimes international free Fedex or some shit!
The problem with this, besides me absolutely hating travelling with so much luggage, is the little issue of weight limit that is imposed heavily on international flights. With a lot of reluctance I may have agreed to be your free of cost international shipping agency, but no way in my right mind am I going to pay out of my pocket to pay the fine for extra luggage. Not a lot of people want to understand this and hence sometimes I have had to come up with shit that has left people at the airport dumbstruck!
I am not entirely sure if this fits the #travellight minimalist theme, but I have surely saved myself a ton of money pulling crazy stunts like the one I am going to talk about, so at least the Minimalist part fits, I guess 馃槃
I was travelling back home during one of my semester breaks in the winter, and as usual I had my wechat bombarded with requests from fellow countrymen to carry "only a small package" to their families! After shoving in about 20 odd such "small packages" I was 6-7 Kgs overweight and was struggling to carry my own stuff.
So I had to make compromise. Out of all my stuff I first slid in the ones I absolutely had to take...gifts for my mom and sister, and my brother and my father and of course some of my coffee beans! (Yes, there was once a time I carried my own coffee beans with me...coffee beans were not readily available in my country).
After all was said and done, turned out the stuff that was getting left behind were all my clothes I had to take. Again, I picked out the absolute necessary ones and I already knew no way they were going to fit the limit.
And then with a stroke of brilliance, I put on two shirts over the one I was already wearing, took off the jeans I was wearing and wore a couple of shorts and put the jeans back on and topped it all off with another jacket to go with the three layers I was already wearing.
There were still a few stuff left and I shoved them in my luggage anyway, hoping against hope I get a nice person at the airport counter who would let me pass with a couple extra kilos. Unfortunately, he was one of the strictest and wouldn't let me carry a single extra gram over the limit without paying.
I was equally stubborn and was not going to pay. So I opened the luggage at the counter, scratching my head...what to leave, what to leave. And then with another moment of "brilliance" I took out a heavy pair of jeans and put them on, right in front of the counter - the guy staring at me with his mouth wide open, literally! I closed my luggage shut.
"Weigh it now please!"
300 grams below the limit!