Road Trip Essentials - A 360 degree guide to prepare for your road trip

Our last article was all about packing tips and tricks. If you are looking for what and and how to pack, just scroll down for all the deets! This article is concentrated on essentials required for a Road Trip. What are the safety equipments? How to quickly load and unload etc.


What to carry
Me and Rit are carrying one big suitcase each. Whatever we can stuff in this suitcase is all we can carry. You can buy any suitcase, but based on our experience, it should have a few important features like:

• It should be four wheeled, if it is double four wheeled then ever better.
  
• We recommend hard cases as they are wear and tear proof and more durable.
  
• Hard case suitcases, split open instead of having a covering lid on them. They are easy to access and dig in.
  
• Use packing cubes. They are perfectly sized to fit in any standard size suitcase.
  

We carry 4 big packing cubes each, used for:

1. Jackets
   
2. Dresses & skirts, denims & pants
   
3. Tops/Shirts and lounge wear
   
4. Comfort wear
   

And 2 medium packing cubes, used for:

1. Tit-bits like thermals, beanie, scarfs, socks, gloves
   
2. Undergarments.
   

It’s super simple and non messy to be living out of a suitcase with packing cubes. Try it once, and you will never travel without packing cubes again!

Then we carry one backpack each with houses our Mac, camera, and charging cables.

Road Trip Essentials
We initially thought that we should have additional headlights on the car but figured from car mechanics and experts that any type of additional accessory is an added weight on the car. One should avoid, any new wires and connections as they would only add to complexity. We just replaced our headlights with high intensity ones and that’s it.

We did a lot of research to come to this list. We spoke to rally drivers, automobile engineers, car mechanics and cab drivers to reach must-have tools, one must have (yeah, read must-must-have) on a road trip. Just one month into the trip, we can vouch that these are completely indispensable. It saved us from gritty situations and helped us settle back on the road.

• International car insurance and roadside assistance. We booked through Go Mechanic. They were very helpful in answering all our questions and suggested Tata AIG insurance which insures our car in India, Nepal, Bhutan and offers 24X7 roadside assistance anywhere in India.
  
• Tyre Air Pump. Some notorious hotel owners deflated our car tyre, when it was parked because we surveyed but didn’t book their hotel. We could have been stranded in the middle of the road, if this pump was not handy. It gets connected to the car charger socket, comes with a reading meter to note the pressure and is superbly compact. It was also of great assistance when we had a punctured tyre and we wanted to aptly inflate the spare wheel.
  
• Tyre puncture kit for tubeless tyres
  
• Tool Kit, a no brainer
  
• Jumper cables. When the battery needs a chuckle
  
• Tow hook and tow cable
  
• Diesel additive. We got to know from experienced rally drivers that diesel and petrol in hilly regions is not completely filtered and comes with a lot of impurities. It is imperative to use this additive as it stabilizes and controls the quality of the engine and improves the performance of the car. Use a bottle every 2000-3000 kilometers. Empty the contents into the fuel tank just before filling it up with diesel. We could feel the difference in car noise after we used the additive, it appeared to run smooth. We later got to know that it’s a good practice to use the additive even in plains, as luxury car owners use them. I am sure that our EcoSport is also in love with it so much that now it will be a regular in our car.
  
• Emergency glass hammer, LED flashlight and seat belt cutter. We got a 3-in-1 tool to solve all these purposes
  
• Car mobile stand and a car charger​
  
• Finally, a travel pillow for extra comfort on the bumpy roads. I prefer the tailbone support one over the neck pillow.