Maitravelsite's Blog and Travelogue

About to hit the road? Unsure about what back­pack to buy? Need help? Buy­ing a back­pack might seem a daunt­ing task because of all the options avail­able, but don’t worry because help is on the way. This post will help you by point­ing out what in my expe­ri­ence are the fea­tures you should not miss out when doing your pur­chase, with­out hav­ing to spend more than what you need to.

I will also tell you why that fea­ture is impor­tant, because you should under­stand why you are spend­ing money on it. The back­packs I sug­gest are in the mid price level– you really don’t need more. Let’s begin!

• When buy­ing a back­pack expect to spend between 150–250 $US for a good, ver­sa­tile model. Sure, you’ll find them cheaper, but beware of qual­ity. And you will of course find them much more expen­sive, but it is not nec­es­sary to spend as much. I strongly sug­gest you make an invest­ment that will last many years, maybe even for­ever if you plan on trav­el­ling a lot. If all you want to do is a three week trip and don’t plan on repeat­ing, or not much any­how, then spend less.

• Back­packs are ini­tially clas­si­fied as inter­nal or exter­nal framed. Make sure you choose inter­nal frame because you don’t want alu­minum bars dan­gling around, plus they use space better.

• Inter­nal frame back­packs are then clas­si­fied as top or front load. Don’t even con­sider get­ting a top load back­pack! I can still pic­ture my good friend Jack hav­ing to take out most of his stuff out of the back­pack every morn­ing when look­ing for clean socks or some­thing else. I, on the other hand, can very much see where every­thing is when I have mine open. It sim­ply makes life so much easier.

• I have seen a few sites that rec­om­mend not get­ting a back­pack that includes a day­pack and instead bring an addi­tional day­pack but don’t say why (??). Non­sense. Get one that does. There are sev­eral advantages:

1) When hav­ing to walk more than 5 min­utes I appre­ci­ate hav­ing my hands avail­able to look at the map or not hav­ing the front of my t-shirt sweaty because I’m car­ry­ing the day­pack on my chest. 2) When vis­it­ing a city/town/whatever I can leave my main back­pack with all my stuff in my room, unzip the small one and take it with my travel guide, cam­era and water bot­tle. 3) On rainy days, because it is attached to the main one, it will stay dry thanks to the back­pack rain cover you have.

• Make sure all or at least the main zip­pers are dou­ble zip­pers, dou­ble stitched, lock­able and cov­ered. But do not lock them when fly­ing into/within/out of the USA: assume with rea­son that an ATA offi­cer will break it to check what you are car­ry­ing. Save the lock  for later.

• The last char­ac­ter­is­tic you have to decide on is vol­ume. Pop­u­lar advice is to buy a medium sized back­pack because you will be drag­ging less stuff around if you don’t con­trol your­self. But I got one of the larger ones and I am sooo happy I did. If I’m not going to travel much, I pack less. If I am, I pack more. And at any rate I want to have some extra space so I can bring home sou­venirs I like with­out hav­ing to carry them in my hands. Long story short: it’s up to you. But if you get a big one, remem­ber to plan accord­ingly. This is a pic­ture of me in Lake Tit­i­caca, Bolivia, with my beloved Eagle Creek Grand Voy­age. Too big for some, great for me.

If you fol­low these guide­lines you have nar­rowed down you’re quest of find­ing your per­fect back­pack quite a bit. From here it’s per­haps a mat­ter of design, colour and brand. I would stick to the most impor­tant brands like Jans­port, Eagle Creek, Kelty, Osprey and a few oth­ers to guar­an­tee best results (these brands are bet­ter aimed at trav­el­ling back­pack­ers, where as The North Face and oth­ers tend to focus more on moun­tain gear).

Which one would I rec­om­mend? I bought the Eagle Creek Grand Voy­age eight years ago. Since then it has gone around the world 5 times, been north of the Arc­tic Cir­cle, in the desert of Tunisia, in the trop­i­cal jun­gles of Brazil, and in iso­lated islands of Indone­sia, and it is as good as it was when I first got it. If I could go back in time I would def­i­nitely get the same one. Appar­ently they now have a new model, the Thrive 90 L or in smaller vol­umes, so today that would be my choice. How­ever the Osprey Arpon 85 has received very good reviews too.

Where at? Check out Ama­zon, Trav­el­Coun­try and Back­coun­try. They have excel­lent cus­tomer ser­vice, usu­ally offer free ship­ping and have great prices and deals. You can also use the search box below to quickly find other stores and their prices.

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