Email yourself!

As you may have guessed dear reader, I'm not a 21 year old backpacker. I can remember the days when you would send postcards home from your travels. Some folks still do it, and it is nice getting a postcard that someone has spent time out from their holiday buying, writing & posting just to you. But in these days of the Internet, Email, Skype, Facebook, Blogs, Twitter and smartphones, postcards seem to be from a bygone era.

Now, I'm not pining for those far off times when travel was slower or less connected; although I would like to do some long train journeys in the future. As long as the train has Wi-Fi access!

For safety reasons we've been told to make copies of our vital documents: Passport, Visas, insurance documents, etc.; and stick 'em in the bottom of our backpacks. Better still, swap copies with your travelling companions. While both of these are good ideas, we now have the technology to improve on this. You can scan your documents & email them to your Internet email account, Gmail in my case. You can also email them to a friend at home, and / or your travelling companions. On my last trip OS, I used the iPhone app Evernote to store documents, take notes and write my blog.

So instead of carrying physical copies of the important documents, which you would also lose if your luggage was stolen, why not store them in Cyberspace. Then all you have to do is get thee to an Internet Cafe or Wi-Fi hotspot to retrieve your precious documents.