Kit

Each individual article of clothing is in a separate lightweight plastic bag. Towel and sleeping bag are in supermarket bags. Everything except the bladder is in a large heavyweight garbage bag. By and large I only use ziplock bags for documents and batteries now. They weigh too much!

If you add it all up, it certainly looks as if my pack weighed nearly 9kg, without food or water, but I’m pretty sure it was less than that. In fact, I thought it was more like five kg. On the other hand, when I tried Marlene and Nicole’s bags, they seemed much lighter.

I carried 250g of leblebe ‘roasted chickpeas’ and about 100g of dark chocolate as a kind of emergency ration. I tended to start out with my 4 litre bladder more than half full and two 500ml water bottles, so between 3.5 and 4 litres. Most days this was more than I needed.

If I were doing it again, I’d bring a small tent and plan to camp. As I mentioned in the description, my reluctance to camp made me skip sections, and would have made me skip a lot more if I had continued, and also cost me a lot more than I wanted to spend.

The two Germans I met who were walking West were camping without a tent. Apart from about half an hour in Fethiye that time, I never saw rain. So the risk of camping without a tent and getting wet seems to be negligible. But I certainly saw mosquitoes. Which is why I think I’d opt for a tent over a tarp. Joyce said her one person double skin tent weighed under 1000g, and she substituted it for a parka. That sounds like a possibility to me for anyone serious about cutting weight, on the same basis as I reckon if it gets cold, I can wrap my sleeping bag around me.

Anyway, one of the main points in all this is that if you are prepared to go fairly ultralight, you can easily do this with a 30 litre pack – basically a daypack. Joyce had the Berghaus Freeflow 35+8 – exactly the one I had left behind to save about 350g. It’s certainly a lot tougher than the ultralight bag, but if you try to avoid the scrub, that shouldn’t be an issue.

Clothing	Grams	Note
Parka (Mont heavyweight 3-ply ‘Hydronaut’)	900	1
Boots		2
Poly zip neck	170
Poly top	139
Poly t-shirt	110	3
Poly bottoms	115
Light fleece	202
Poly gloves	40
Buff	37	4
Beanie	63	5
Spare shorts	123
Microfibre trousers	260	6
Hat	53
Undies x 3	165	7
3 x Smartwool trekking Socks	291	7
Togs	70
Tools and electrics
Princeton head torch (3xAAA)	98
Hand torch (Magnum 1xAAA)	28
Knife (Gerber)	89	8
Swiss Army knife	85	8
Pliers (small Gerber multitool)	72
AA batteries x 4	133	9
AAA Batteries x 4	48	9
GPS (Garmin etrex)	164
Phone	105	10
Phone charger	79
Camera & spare memory in case	302	11
Camera cable	37
USB flash drive	14	12
Camping
REI UL 30 Pack	1070
Shoulder bag (Kathmandu ‘pocket’)	301
MSR 4 litre Bladder (empty)	170
Shoulder strap Pouch for GPS	40
Marmot ‘Pounder’ sleeping bag	610
Silk liner	161
Thermarest	406
REI UL Peak carbon fibre trekking pole	200
First aid kit	371
Bandaids
Moleskins
Gauze
Ace bandage
Aloe vera gel
Bactroban
Imodium
Paracetamol/Acetemenophen
Paracetamol + Codeine
Pseudoephedrine
Safety pins
Needles, thread, fishing line
1 m duct tape
Toothbrush and salt
Miscellaneous
ID (Passport, passport photocopies, cash, debit card, etc. in plastic bag)	80	13
Microfibre Towel and small soap	209
Spoon	38
Cezve w/tea & sugar	223	14
Turkish Dictionary	330	15
Lycian Way guide	486	16
Map of Turkey (w/o cardboard cover!)	73	17
Compass	27
Sunnies in case	105
Notebook & pens	120
Bog roll (half)	35
Loupe	61	18
Space blanket	54
Short string	55
Long string	75
Cigarette lighter	10

¹ The parka was overkill. I’d have brought a lighter one, but it wasn’t really waterproof. Didn’t need it, but might have!

² This was my first serious hike with these Vasque fabric and leather boots. I am pretty unsatisfied. They don’t need breaking in, but my feet were consistently sore at the end of the day. I have Nikwaxed them repeatedly, but they still leak. And they don’t offer any protection from pointy thorns and grass seeds, which come right through the fabric. Note that I didn’t carry any sandals or other footwear to change into. It would be nice to change, but I preferred to forego the extra weight this time.

³ I rinsed out whichever poly I was wearing and changed into the ‘clean’ one each evening, so never used this third one.

³ I always welcome the opportunity to take off my wet sweaty hat at the end of the day and put on a warm dry beanie to keep my head warm as it cools off in the evening.

⁴ The buff is a seamless tube of polypropylene that can be configured as a beanie, a bandana, a scarf, a balaclava, a mask, etc. I also find it works well as a blindfold when trying to sleep on the bus. This time of year, I wear is around my neck and pull it up under the back of my hat for uv protection. At about US$20, the things are seriously overpriced, but I expect that to drop as they become more popular. It’s definitely worth the 37g it weighs. There are winter versions available that incorporate sections of fleece.

⁶ Similarly, it’s good to get out of the damp sweaty shorts and let them dry overnight and change into something completely dry. I’ve never tried zipoffs and sometimes think I ought to, but it would preclude this little luxury, unless I carried two pairs.

⁷ The three pairs include the ones I was wearing.

⁸ I like to have a knife that I can open with one hand, that’s long enough for the handle to fit comfortably in my hand, and to cut things like bread. This one has about a 7cm blade. I only brought the Swiss army knife for the scissors. I had been thinking that I should have gone for the version of the small Gerber multitool that had scissors instead of pliers, but found that I did actually use the pliers to repair a bent lace hook on Nicole’s boot when she tripped.

⁹ On this occasion, I substituted alkaline batteries for all the NiMH batteries as I didn’t bring a charger. As I had access to power almost every night, a charger would have been a real possibility, but I preferred to forgo the weight of the charger and the extra batteries. Solar chargers are available, but I don’t have one and I understand they are not that effective if you’re on the move. I do have a windup ‘Sidewinder’ phone charging generator, but haven’t managed to connect it to a standard AA battery charger. If I ever do, I expect it to be very time consuming to charge a set of batteries fully. However, if I were going into the wilderness and wouldn’t have access to mains power or replacement batteries for any length of time, some mechanical generator seems to me to be the way to go.

¹⁰ As much of the Lycian Way is in range of the Turkish mobile network, a phone is worth having. Indeed, even when I was out of range in Alınca, I was still getting an ‘emergency’ signal, so could have rung for help if necessary. If your phone has an MP3 player, it saves carrying an extra device. Mine only has space for about 20 songs, which I didn’t think was enough, but ultimately, I didn’t even listen to them.

¹¹ I am using a Casio QV-R62 which I got because at the time it had one of the largest displays and most importantly, because it runs on ordinary AA batteries (see note 9). There are much smaller and lighter cameras with much nicer displays around now. If I had a reliable way to charge it, I’d consider a camera with a special battery.

¹² I brought a 4Gb flash drive. The main points were a) to have copies of some crucial documents and a selection of photos, in case I met anyone who wanted to see them and b) to copy photos off the SD cards, to free up space for more photos. As I was only away for a week and a half and took barely a Gb of images, it never came up. But on a longer trip, it would almost certainly become necessary to burn a DVD from time to time.

¹³ I consider a wallet unnecessary weight.

¹⁴ Instead of a cup, I brought a largish Turkish coffeepot. I thought if I had to camp, at least I could boil water for tea. Ten teabags and twenty sugarcubes just fit inside.

¹⁵ I didn’t use the dictionary as much as I expected to. A much smaller one would have done, but the small print has become a problem for me and I decided it was worth the weight. See note 12.

¹⁶ The weight for the Lycian Way guide includes printouts of updates, David Carter’s notes, lists of transport and accommodation facilities, GPS coordinates, and the relevant pages of the Lonely Planet guide.

¹⁷ I thought it would come in handy, but never looked at it. Cutting the cover off was definitely a good idea.

¹⁸ I always carry a folding magnifying glass in case I need to read something small. Younger people probably don’t require this. I should get a smaller one, but this is what I have.