I can’t think of any traveller I’ve met that doesn’t love hammocks. Aside from the trickery of getting into some of them gracefully, hammocks are pure relaxation!

Questions like ‘what are the most important travel inventions’ or ‘what essentials items do you need when travelling’ always seem to have people listing a long series of heavy, noisy, digitized, ‘disconnected’ items. Nobody can travel without their smartphone or tablet/laptop these days and cameras and wifi connections are must-haves it seems.

 

I’m totally guilty of being a digital traveller too. If you ask me what is most important to me when travelling, then my camera gear comes up tops. But, I don’t think it should be that way, I think the questions we’re always asked are skewed…we need to pay more attention to what we enjoy most about travelling and why we travel…not what we travel with. I think if you eliminate the wants and focus on your surroundings – whether on a beach, on a boat, or in a forest, then simple things like staring up at the stars and swinging in a hammock creep into that ‘must-have’ list.

At least they do for me.

 

Enjoying downtime on the road is something I only recently started to appreciate. I normally would pack in every minute of extra time with more activities, hikes, adventures and sight seeing. Now, I try to find a few days of relaxation time here and there. I’m letting the hammock lifestyle creep back into my travel plans and I’ve been less stressed on recent travels than I have before.

 

So the question I send out to you is: What things are a must for you to be relaxed and happy when you travel?