Step-by-step guide to packing efficiently

Are you planning a bag packing trip and having sleepless nights just thinking what and how to pack? Facing difficulty of not able to make it light?
Don't worry you are not the only one. We all travelers have faced this problem some time or the other. Below are the steps I follow to pack my bags for any trip.

There are 3 major categories of things you would need on your trip:

• Appropriate and just sufficient clothes, shoes and accessories; 
• Toiletries and 
• Medicines. 

Lets first concentrate on clothes, shoes and accessories. Follow the below steps... This might look like an elaborate way but believe me follow these steps to pack for a few trips and you will be a packing expert!

First of all keep everything that you want to take on the trip - clothes, matching accessories, shoes, woolens and undergarments in one place.

Then make different stacks. Keep lowers like jeans, trousers, salwar and churidaar in one, tops and kurtis in 2nd, night ware in the 3rd and woolens in 4th. Keep all accessories separately.

Now pull out/shortlist tops and kurtis equal to the number of trip days and a pair or 2 of jeans, a skirt and a churdaar/ salwaar from the respective stacks. Keep minimum and comfortable nightware. And enough woolens. Usually what I do is keep 2 pair of jeans, a skirt and a salwar or churidaar with a couple of t-shirts and kurtis for a trip of around 10 days. Along with that some scarves and stoles. That gives me enough choice to make various combinations and look different everyday. 

After this sorting comes packing. Take a comfortable bag-pack with enough space. You would not want to make 2 bags in case you are going on a trekking trip where you might have to carry your bags.

Pack each stack in separate small poly-bags. The problem I  faced on my initial trips was that all my stuff used to get mixed up in a heap inside the bag and I had to go through all my clothes just to find one top. So the solution I found was to keep lowers, uppers, nightware in small cloth bags or poly-bags. And believe me it really helps.

Now all you have to do is arrange these small bags nicely in your bag-pack. Pack your footwear - not more than 2 pairs one pair of sandals/floaters/slippers and one pair of shoes, in a separate poly-bag and keep it in one of the side pockets. Similarly put all your accessories in one separate pocket.

And that takes care of our first category.

Next important thing is toiletries. Always keep atleast basic things like soap, shampoo pouches, a small toothpaste tube, moisturizer, a small towel etc with you (preferably in a pouch that can fit into your hand bag) even if you are sure you will get it all in the hotel. Many a times it all has come very handy when we are stuck in landslides or long traffic jams. You might have to stay in places you have not planned and you don't get these things there. 

This all hardly takes any space but really save you in emergencies.

And the most important thing that people usually ignore is medicine. You should always be ready with your little medicine kit that has some basic medicines like crocin, a pain killer, an anti allergic, some tablets for  stomach infection, digene, something for headache and some bandaids. 

Don't forget to keep camera to capture your beautiful memories, charger to charge your camera and mobile, power bank (helps in long road journeys and trekking), and enough memory cards. I like to keep it all handy in my hand/ camera bag.

This is my luggage for a 10 days road trip