And remember to pack a towel, you hoopy frood
Whether travelling in your home country, abroad, or around the universe, a towel is a wonderful thing to have with you.
“A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. Partly it has great practical value – you can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapours; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a mini raft down the slow heavy river Moth; wet it for use in hand-to- hand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or to avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (a mindboggingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can’t see it, it can’t see you – daft as a bush, but very ravenous); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.
Douglas Adams – The hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy
More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a strag (strag: non-hitch hiker) discovers that a hitch hiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, face flannel, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet weather gear, space suit etc., etc. Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitch hiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitch hiker might accidentally have “lost”. What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is is clearly a man to be reckoned with.”
While a towel may be a wonderful thing to have with you when you travel, it can also be quite heavy, slow to dry, and quite large, which makes taking them with you less than desirable. I’ve tried a lot of travel towels over the years and finally found this one which is amazingly light, can double as a bathing suit cover-up wrap, and dries extremely quickly, all while still being absorbent. Note: as an amazon associate I earn from qualifying purchases. The PackTowl (yep, just drop the “e”) Ultralite microfiber towel is attractive, and the lightest I’ve found. It’s still absorbent and comes in pretty patterns, so you can use it as a bathing suit wrap too. Packs down to practically nothing and even the beach size weighs only just over 5 ounces.
The beach size will double as a wrap, but the body size is plenty big to dry yourself and your hair with.
Happy Travels!
