This is what we looked like with 55L backpacks (40L large backpack and a 15L front pack). We are not ashamed, they served us well and we could have used these backpacks in one of our India destinations.

The honest truth is that we weren’t really walking around too much; here’s our breakdown, by region, of why we think we didn’t really need a backpack, for our style of traveling. Also, just FYI, we are a bit of clean freak (not too bad) but we didn’t really like setting our stuff down on grubby places but somehow ‘rolling’ through the same places, doesn’t bother us.

In Central & South America Uber is cheap enough that we didn’t take public transport too much, just to get around during the day, but not generally on travel days. Assuming you are not traveling a short distance, there is a lot going on during a travel day. We try to keep things simple so we run into the least number of snags.
In Australia and New Zealand, we had camper vans so again, didn’t really need to backpack. Our backpacks were front loading, so easy to access and inside we have packing cubes. When we were in the camper vans, we just took out all our packing cubes and put our backpacks away.
In Japan and Korea we used public transport but everything is so clean and convenient, we could’ve rolled - there wasn’t much benefit in wearing our backpacks. Additionally, in the trains, we had to take our backpacks off so we wouldn’t be bumping into people. Makes sense, right? Plus they are heavy-ish (both our backpacks weighed about 14kg). The thing is, when you take off your backpack, you gotta put it back on - you can’t just sling this puppy around, you gotta be careful b/c it’s heavy… so you carry it out, then you put it back on… it’s annoying (although thankfully you can rest it on a relatively clean surface).
In Mongolia, again, same as South America, taxi everywhere and our excursions out, we just carried our little day pack for the few days we left Ulaanbaatar.
South East Asia, places like Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, Borneo, etc… again, Uber/Grab is so cheap that we didn’t end up walking, mostly because the heat is exhausting (dangerously so) and public transport like trains/buses can be very poor. Uber/Grab is not just easy on your back, it’s also easy to find your destination b/c many of the locals don’t speak English (obvi).
In Sri Lanka and India we only found 1 instance where we wished we’d had our backpacks and it’s because it involved walking on a beach - we could’ve ‘rolled’ in the hard part of the sand but we didn’t want to risk ruining the wheels so we carried the roller the distance (maybe 500m?). Yes we were sore, but compared to all the times we haven’t had to put the cumbersome backpacks on, we are OK with this one time it wasn’t perfect.

India with our rollers - we thought it would be much harder than it really was.

Now we have the 35L Muji Hard Carry Suitcase, i.e a roller and we love it! We also bought one of the Muji rucksacks (about 20L), but we think these particular ones are only available in stores in Asia.

Any regrets? Nope, none so far. We also don’t regret having had our backpacks for as long as we did - over 1 year. It was a good lesson about how we actually travel. Plus, carrying the weight on your back definitely limits what you want to carry; we are still limited by the size of our rollers, but it is more tempting to buy ‘shtuff’.

What about you? Any drastic travel changes you’ve done while traveling? Share down below, we’d love to read your comments!

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