It is one of the most given advice on travel community to pack light. It’s technically right that the lightest your pack is the more you can cover and the less fatigue you will experience at the end of the day. But on the same forums you can find what not to miss and that list sometimes grow beyond what they suggest is light. 

I don’t want to give another list of essential or another recommendation on how much is heavy but just wanted to express my opinion on what I had done and would do.

Let’s proceed with the factors affecting weight of bag

  • Trip Length:

Your bag size is directly related to length of trip. Multi Day trips means you are carrying extra garments, hygiene products, emergency medications and more of electronics. If it’s just for 1 or 2 days you can skip power adapters, extra garments and reduce the quantity of snacks.

  • Trip Style:

By style I mean whether you want to do credit card trip or backpack/bikepack trip or supported trip. Thinking of self sustainable trips means you are carrying tents, sleeping bags and much more, while in other cases your bag reduced to personal essential excluding the shelter needs

  • Complexity of the trip:

Trip to remote location requires you to get prepared for extremities and you need to be self-supported up to a certain extent. If the trail don’t have much of hotel and settlements, you got to carry foods and some means to cook if that section is longer. It also determines what medicine to carry and what type of clothes to carry.

  • Mode of transportation:

If you are trekking, trekking pole will be on you bag while cycle tour will require basic repair kits and spare parts and vehicle transportation will require none of the above making your bag light.

  • Type of  gears:

Gares like sleeping bag, tent, mattress etc normally gets lighter and smaller as the price tag of it increases. You can nowadays get tent+sleeping bag+mattress under 2 kg limit and pretty compat on size, but ya the price tag increases accordingly. 

Heavy bag is always pain but missing essentials is more painful. So you  have to find the balance between weight and not missing must have tools. Think a bit before you are including anything to essentials list, think at what situation you would gonna use them. If that situation is very unlikely, you could cut it form the list and make your bag heavy.