Advice on Travel Gifts

My Gonex Ultra Lightweight Packable Hiking Daypack goes on every trip. Read why I recommend this inexpensive travel backpack for all my adventures.

When shopping for the travelling friend that loves the latest technology or if you are shopping for yourself (hint, hint) here is an easy shopping guide of twelve great tech gifts for the traveller in your life.

Souvenirs, trinkets, T-shirts and tourist trash; how many of these things have you purchased while on vacation for yourself or your family that ultimately ends up in the garbage or the donation pile?

Welcome to the 2nd Annual Holiday Gift Guide for all those travellers in your life! From bags to clothing to electronics to accessories we’ve got it all…

We share our Holiday Gift Guide 2013 to make the travelling Women in your life happy & hopefully, SHE won’t return your gift in January!

It’s the season of holiday gift guides! With December just rolling in, thus starts the constant holiday jingles on the radio, mad decorating sprees around the house, and of course, the panic of last-minute Christmas shopping. If you’re like me and too lazy (or scared) to go out during the Black Friday madness week, and somehow manage to leave the shopping to the last moment (admit it, it happens!), here are some simple ideas for holiday gifts for the young male traveller. Click here to see our Tech Traveller suggestions. Click here to see our Female Traveller suggestions. Holiday Gift Guide 2013 #1 – Whitelines Link Notebook Whenever I travel, the one thing that I always make sure I carry with me is my sketchbook, but oddly enough, I find that I end up doing an equal amount of writing AND sketching. Whitelines came out with a brilliant solution to this conundrum – light grey pages with white lines create ruled pages without the lines becoming distracting to the eye or the content. Your writing or drawings pop off the page, and best of all, scans absolutely clear of lines! The Links notebook is also designed for a free app that they released, which allows you to use your smart phone to line up the page for you when you take the photo, for easy sharing and storage through social media or Evernote. So whether it’s jotting down a suggestion from a local, or getting something written in another language in your book, having something to write on when you travel is never a bad idea. Whitelines is a great product for keeping handwritten and digital notes – and can be a great stocking stuffer! Holiday Gift Guide 2013 #2 – Original Astronaut Pen Now before you go looking at the price tag for these pens, hear me out. Not only does the name of these pens sound AWESOME, but they write, feel and look really great as well. The most annoying thing when you’re travelling is having your pen die in the middle of exploring a city. If you’re up for actually investing in a great pen, check out these space pens – perfect for the extreme traveller (the pressurized ink allows you to write at any altitude or angle) – however if concerned with actually losing a pen like this when you’re away from home, there are a lot of cheaper options out there that offer similar results. Holiday Gift Guide 2013 #3 – Lens Kit for iPad/iPhone Got the Instagram bug? Or really love taking cool photos, but hate carrying around a heavy SLR or even a camera in general? How about using your iPhone or iPad! Most travellers these days carry around their iPhone anyway for access to apps, email, and communications, so why not make the most of the camera. And if you’re like me, you probably hate carrying a lot of stuff on you when you travel. Here are some cool attachments for your iPhone/iPad that are portable and offer fisheye, macro, wide angle and telephoto options for that budding photographer. I’d recommend checking out Photojojo – quite the popular spot for these lenses. Holiday Gift Guide 2013 #4 – Deuter Speed Lite 20 Backpack You know the saying…”you can never go wrong with a great backpack”. (Wait is that a saying? It really should be…haha). In all seriousness, a traveller is never complete without a good bag, and Deuter’s backpacks are some of my favourite. These got me through my 2-month trip around China, running after trains and hiking through the Shennongjia Mountain area — light weight, durable, breathable, lots of well-thought out pockets, and it can hold a lot without feeling like someone just jumped on your back for a ride. Holiday Gift Guide 2013 #5 – A Good Ol’ Paperback Pocket Book With technology all a buzzing nowadays, the one thing missing on everyone’s Christmas list is a good ol’ pocket (or small-ish) book. Jamie’s recommended reading? How about a classic, like The Chrysalids, or Catcher in the Rye, or To Kill A Mockingbird, or Ender’s Game. (I think that covers most genres!). Skip the kindle and go for the real thing. There’s nothing like the feel of a paperback book on the long flight across the globe. So there you have it – gift ideas for the young traveller. Stay tuned for some more awesome holiday gift guides from the Calculated Traveller crew as we approach the Christmas season. Happy shopping! Any ideas to add to the list? I’d love to hear about them in the comments below!

Here is our Holiday Gift Guide 2013 with 5 affordable gift ideas for that person on your list who loves technology and loves to travel.