Gear and equipment forum

Last year I picked up a reduced-price schoolkid planner for $1. (School terms here in France are Sept-July I'm on the road Oct-April usually). There was one page a day to scribble on and it had an address book, a few country maps, English/German/Spanish irregular verbs, the periodic table, important historical dates, weights and measures, algebra and geometry and the Paris metro system in it.

I got the smallest one I could find that had a page a day to write on and tore out all the pages I didn't actually use to write my travel journal.

So what I've got left is mainly an address book that's falling apart as I never keep up with the journal stuff for more than a week. I see I still have all the maps, algebra, verbs etc. so I can tell you with complete certainty that Clovis became king of the Francs in 481.

I found it moderately useful. The fact it was a planner was sometimes useful for quickly reminding myself what day of the week it was and as a source of bits of paper to leave messages for people etc, but a small address book with a notes section would have done just as well really. You can use a cellphone to store the important information you mentioned and it has a calendar on it too but it's handy to have a paper backup in case you lose your phone.

Nowadays people have netbooks etc which might be better if you really want to write a travel journal as there's more room on them to write and you can use them to store photos or transfer stuff onto a website blog.

I'm not an electrical gizmo expert so I don't know what the best option as far as those kinds of things are... the only obvious drawback with them is that they are only usable if you can keep them charged.

I took some coloured felt-tip markers on my trip to India, along with a cheap exercise book. That way I could illustrate some scenes in their full technicolour glory and have fun drawing with kids while waiting for trains (no language barrier sketching stick figures!)