Packing for the Tour wasn't the hardest task in the world but it did require a fair amount of thought. I normally eschew the minimalist strategy when travelling, preferring to have options for every possible contingency. In this case however, with limited luggage storage space available (a 85x65x50cm locker ~ 150 litres of useful space) for four months worth of kit, it was necessary to prioritise.

Clothes being the simplest of all items to pack, I left this until last. It seems that if I hadn't had to take clothes then I would have been nicely under the space limitation. Adding a meagre amount of clothes (just THREE t-shirts, for four months of travelling!) filled out my duffle bags by a surprising amount.

The rest of the space within my two bags was composed of both camping equipment and bicycle equipment. The camping equipment consisted of a lightweight tent, a sleeping bag and thermarest which take a good proportion of one of the bags. This bag also stores most of my clothes.

The other bag contains a tonne of cycling spares (tyres, cables, chains, tubes etc) plus some 'rarely needed' clothes (for example, my swimming costume). It also includes various cycling accessories - such as the rack bag, bottles, lock and Camelbak I'll be taking from day to day on my bike.

My third bag contains my electronics. In the last few years I've gradually acquired more and more camera equipment with each trip abroad (photos here). However, it seemed unwise to cycle along the rough African roads with my D-SLR in tow since vibration would probably kill it slowly. At the same time, travelling through most of Africa is an unmissable photography opportunity. So I've taken both cameras with the intention of leaving the D-SLR in the van when I'm cycling. I decided against taking my wide angle lens and Gorillapod in the end because of the added bulk.

I'm taking a netbook because it'll be useful for writing purposes (I find it impossible to write anything significant on paper - my fingers just get in the way) and for backup of photos. The battery will last approximately 10 hours and we have weekly rest days on which I hope to charge it fully. Likewise, I will charge my camera batteries then.

I'm taking a handheld GPS device to provide the location updating that you can see on the Geo page. This runs on AA batteries and each set of batteries lasts (supposedly) 25 hours. I figure this should give me two or three days of usage at least if I was to tracklog all my riding. These batteries should be fairly easy to find on the ground.

In order to keep in touch with those back home and to update my coordinates (we'll see how well this works out), I'm taking a couple of mobile phones. Rather than take my smartphone, I'm taking a basic Sony Ericsson featurephone which has relatively better battery life. I have a solar panel which I can use to charge these via a Powermonkey (this is a self contained supplementary battery which can charge and be charged) - the Powermonkey can also take power from the mains or via USB from the netbook.

Finally, I'm taking a flash based mp3 player since my hard disk Walkman would almost certainly not survive the first month. This represents a cut in capacity but coupled with the ability to swap music from time to time using the netbook, this should suffice. This has a 25 hour battery life and can charge from either the Powermonkey or the netbook.

I wonder how the above reflects on the nature of our generation - that instead of embracing the opportunity to leave technology behind entirely, I've seen the more hostile operating environment as a logistical challenge to be solved.

Addition
Having arrived in Cairo and spoken to some of the other riders, the above chargin strategy seems sound except with one possibly useful addition. One of the other riders has the Solargorilla, this is the more heavy weight version of Powermonkey coupled to a solar panel - apparently it charges his Macbook in about 2 hours. They're quite expensive but for that sort of convenience, it's probably worth it!