Leading up to my trip, I spent months researching what gear to pack. I read dozens of reviews, watched YouTube videos demoing each product, compared weights and sizes, and purchased and returned items as I tested them out to see what worked or what features I thought I would prefer.
Here is your guide to the gear choices I made, why, and honest reviews of my experience traveling with them for 15 months. This guide is particularly focused on backpacking and camping gear. Whether you are backpacking around the world, or planning a long weekend in the national parks, you can be sure that the gear included hits a sweet spot of price, quality, and weight.
Why are you charging money for travel tips? Aren't a lot of bloggers offering recommendations for free?
Walk with me for a bit while I put on my philosophical hat. I question the use of the word “free” here because it implies that when you type into a search engine – for example: “what is the best travel insurance” – it comes at no cost to you. (Wait a minute, you are saying, but it does come at no cost to me…)
Actually, no. When you read on various blogs their opinions about what the best travel insurance is – it’s World Nomads (and now you are saying, how did you know??? But I’ll get to that in a minute) – you are receiving that information alongside advertisements and affiliate links that pay the creator so that you get the answer “for free.”
But it isn’t free, because it has cost you your attention, and what you don’t know, is that if you follow the advice, it has also cost you money. (HOW???)
World Nomads is great insurance, don’t get me wrong. It’s the Cadillac plan of travel insurance. And therein lies the problem. Because while World Nomads is great insurance, it may also be overkill depending on your travel plans, risk tolerance, health conditions, age, and more factors that are unique to you. Every creator recommends World Nomads, because World Nomads pays them to recommend it, and it’s a pretty safe recommendation to make because it’s the Cadillac option. But I recognize that not everyone needs the Cadillac option, and my goal is to save you money. So I have tied my financial incentives to saving you money, instead of tying my financial incentives to whoever is paying me to get your attention.
And that is why there are no advertisements on the site, and there will never be advertisements on the site.
What? You are saying. No ads?
Our advertisements policy is as follows:
- No ads on the site.
- No ads in the paid 100 Dollars A Day newsletter.
- We may experiment with ads in the free Adventure to Awaken newsletter, in the event that companies want to offer you discounts or promotions that we think you might be interested in. You can always click the link at the top of the newsletter to read an ad-free version on the site. Also, there is a way to do it where no ads appear for paid subscribers. Regardless, if and when we are approached by advertisers, we will source feedback from you before we start running ads. Your agency and experience with this site is our number one priority. We will only run ads that feel like they could be as valuable to you as they are to us.
But aren't ads the primary way blogs make money on the internet?
Yes. But that is not the ethos of this site. No ads without consent, because you are not a product.
The whole point of the life journey that I am on – and that likely you are on too if you find yourself here – is that we are in a collective existential crisis because we and our bodies and our eyeballs have been commoditized to the point where we don’t even know who we are anymore or what we want. We are doom scrolling while tech companies tell us what we want or what we should want and we are not happy.
You get enough nonsense that you didn’t ask for served up to you on Facebook and Instagram and every other platform every day. I am not here to create more noise. I am here to help you cut through the noise. To help you find quiet. A place to rest. Come home to yourself.
And if you enjoy spending time here, in this quiet place, with this community of people who want to know themselves and this world and feel presence and gratitude and awe, and if you want more of that, you might choose to vote with your dollars to support the existence of this space. You might choose to use your purchasing power to support me. You might choose to exchange money to get more benefit from the travel tips that go out to premium members. But that is a choice you get to make for you. Agency and choice matter to me. Here is one place where you are not a product. You are a human being.
No ads.
