Harrison Jacobs/Business Insider
Business Insider's Harrison Jacobs and Annie Zheng are have been traveling the world for about a year.
- Over the last year, we have traveled the world for Business Insider, visiting nearly 20 countries and climates ranging from Beijing's frosty spring to summer in the Middle East.
- Since we each brought only a carry-on suitcase and a backpack, we had packed it strategically with only the most essential items.
- We found that packing for a long trip was easy so long as you pack the right items that serve multiple purposes, like hiking boots that look good on a dance floor or a short-sleeve turtleneck that looks as good in the board room as out on the town.
Last March, we left behind New York to
Packing was daunting.
We had plans to travel through Hong Kong, China, Singapore, Greece, Israel, and Russia, among other places. Our trip had a wide variety of climates to plan for, from Beijing's frosty early spring to Israel's oppressively hot summer, and scenarios from board room meetings with executives at Chinese tech startups to hiking China's Zhangjiajie National Forest Park.
How could everything we needed possibly fit into a single bag? There was no shortage of packing lists to draw from. But most lists were ridiculously minimalist and seemed geared only to backpackers.
We didn't get it all right at first. Throughout the trip, we purchased items, threw other ones away, and then when we stopped in New York in September for a wedding, we reassessed our entire packing list. Now, however, it's down to a science.
The key, we found, was picking items that serve dual purposes, like hiking boots that look good on a dance floor or a short-sleeve turtleneck that looks as good in the boardroom as out on the town.
If we had to whittle our packing list down to only five items each, here's what we would pack.