The tourist’s backpack and the right weight: instructions for ruining your day (and your back)

There comes a moment, on every trip, when the backpack stops being an ally and becomes an enemy. It doesn’t happen right away. It happens after a few hours—when your right shoulder starts to complain, when your stride shortens without you even noticing, when you catch yourself thinking more about the backpack than about what you’re actually looking at.

And by then, it’s too late.

Many people look for answers online and end up with the usual formula: “your backpack shouldn’t exceed 10–15% of your body weight.” A rule that sounds rational, but works poorly in real life. Because the human body is not an Excel spreadsheet.

The flaw becomes obvious if you think about it for a moment. An overweight, possibly sedentary person should theoretically carry a heavier backpack than a lighter, fitter one. Yet anyone who has walked all day on asphalt, stone, or cobblestones knows that your back doesn’t reason in percentages. It reasons in terms of fatigue, stress, and duration.

In urban tourism—the kind made of museums, historic districts, sudden detours, and those extra kilometers you didn’t plan—the weight of the backpack adds up with everything else: heat, imperfect shoes, irregular breaks. And eventually, the body presents the bill.

That’s why it makes more sense to forget percentages and think in simpler, more concrete terms: how much weight can I carry without thinking about it? For most people, the answer lies between 5 and 6 kg.

It isn’t much—and that’s precisely why it works. A backpack in that range:

• doesn’t alter posture;

• doesn’t force compensations;

• doesn’t become the unintended protagonist of the day.

Beyond that threshold, the backpack starts to make itself felt. At 7–8 kg you tolerate it. At 9–10 kg you endure it. And when you start enduring something while traveling, something has already gone wrong.

For reference: my Lowepro Flipside 400 AW camera backpack, with a Nikon Z5, a Nikon Z 24–200 lens, a few spare batteries, a power bank, and some cables, already exceeds 5 kg—without even including a bottle of water. And this is the minimum setup I travel with. Every additional accessory, even a trivial one, becomes extra weight beyond what is advisable for my back and for my overall well-being during a day spent walking around a city.

There is another detail that makes a huge difference: how the weight is distributed. A compact backpack that fits close to your back, with the load held near the body, always feels lighter than the scale would suggest. By contrast, a poorly balanced backpack that pulls backward or rests entirely on the shoulders becomes tiring even when it is relatively light.

But the core point remains this: traveling light is not a minimalist fashion—it is a form of respect for your body. Every item in your backpack should earn its right to be there. If you don’t truly need it today, it can probably wait at the hotel.

A light backpack makes your stride more natural, your gaze more attentive, and your mind freer. And in the end, when you get home, you’ll remember the places—not the back pain.

And that is exactly how it should be.

If we want to simplify the conclusion, it’s this: to travel well, less really is more. Every item that goes into your backpack should pass one very simple test: will I really need this today? If the answer is “maybe,” it can probably stay in the hotel.