12 Sep 2015 | 2 mins

Ah, backpacking; a wonderful friend and the ultimate foe. Good for your wallet, but quite the blow to your body/dignity/personal hygiene.

While I highly recommend backpacking to anyone who’ll listen, everyone who is planning on strapping their worldly possessions to their back and jumping on a plane to a place they’re completely unfamiliar with needs to know what they’re getting themselves into.

There will be struggles. There will be tears. There will be passive-aggressive stares across crowded hostel rooms. No one comes out of backpacking completely unscathed, so here are the 10 fails that will almost definitely happen during your backpacking trip.

1. You will not be able to fit everything into your bag

Whether this happens while you’re still on home soil, or after a few months of your trip when you’ve collected a few hundred mementos, the packing fail will happen at some stage.

You will probably need your travel buddy to sit on your pack while you struggle with the zip, but whatever you do, don’t break it. That will mean forking out a couple hundred for a new bag, and possibly a trip to the airport carrying all of your clothes in your arms.

2. You will have too many bags (and you will struggle to walk)

Sometimes, a big backpack just doesn’t cut it – on my trip, I carried a backpack, a front-pack (sexy), a large handbag and, towards the end, a second tote bag. Yes, I looked like a crazy bag lady. Yes, I needed someone to help place all these bags on my person. Yes, like a tortoise, if I had fallen over I probably never would have been able to get up again.

3. Your body will ache

For people who spend most of our lives slouching at our computer desks and only performing heavy lifting when our Mum makes us carry the shopping, backpacking can be a shock to the system. And it’s not just carrying the heavy bags. It’s all the walking. It’s all those sh*tty mattresses in the dodgy hostels. And it’s the pounding headache you get from late nights drinking. Trust me, backpacking hurts.

4. You will drink too much

It’s just another one of those inevitabilities; as sure as the sun will rise, there will be nights when you drink way too much. Usually, the results of this will be minor – a fight with your friend, hooking up with someone whose name you don’t remember, a sneaky upchuck in the nearest pot plant (props to those who manage to keep partying post-puke).

Then there’s effects of the more catastrophic variety: ambulances called, passports lost and – my personal favourite – being dumped by a wave whilst swimming in your clothes in Barcelona at 2AM and losing your phone and wallet to the ocean. I definitely don’t know this one from experience.

5. Something important will be lost/stolen

Make peace with this fact early on– something you own, possibly something you love dearly, will be cruelly ripped from your life at some stage during your trip. Whether you leave it behind at a hostel or it is stolen, mark my words: this will happen to everyone.

I was one of the most careful backpackers you ever did see, and I still managed to lose the USB that held all my music files, and an “I Survived Barcelona” t-shirt that was my only memento of Spain. 

6. You will miss flights/trains/buses/ferries

We can’t always be on time, and unfortunately when you’re lugging an extra 20 kgs on your back, getting to where you need to be can take a little longer than usual. Don’t get too upset if you miss an important transfer – it happens a lot more than you might think and it’s not the end of the world. It might hurt your wallet, but it’s a necessary evil.

7. You will offend someone with attempts at their language

And 80% of the time this will occur in France. It’s polite to try and learn at least a few basic phrases from the country you’re travelling to next, but even at your best attempts this can go awry. Don’t dwell on it for too long, just embrace the fact that you’re a tourist and no matter how cool you try to be, there’s no way to avoid the label completely. Be friendly and laugh it off.

8. You will fall spectacularly

A heavy backpack, one mis-step and you'll be gone.

9. There will be at least one hostel that will make you want to turn around and go home

Not every hostel can be the Hilton, and there are some real shockers out there. So be prepared from some drizzly shower heads, stained bedsheets, gigantic dorm rooms (there is such thing as a fifty bed dorm in Berlin… avoid it at all costs), rude hostel staff and seedy patrons… they’re out there, and they will break you.

10. You will run out of money

If you’re backpacking, then it’s probably safe to say you’re not exactly overwhelmed with cash. There will be times when you’ll have to tighten your purse strings and skip out on a few activities you may have wanted to participate in. For some, this could mean missing out on going paragliding, for others it could mean purchasing a single loaf of bread for dinner… and staying at those aforementioned hostels. Embrace the poverty and do the best with what you can.