Dinesh Chauhan

Showing up to a client meeting in a suit that looks like it was pulled from a hotel laundry pile is the fastest way to undermine a week of careful preparation. I have made that mistake exactly once, after stuffing a navy blazer into a backpack for a four-hour flight to Chicago. The dry-cleaning bill … Read more

After lugging three different bags through a six-week trip across Portugal and Morocco last year, I swore I would never travel with more than one bag again. That single decision pushed me into the world of convertible travel backpacks, and I have been testing them ever since. A convertible travel backpack is a bag that … Read more

Working from a Bali cafe one week and a Lisbon apartment the next sounds like a dream until you try to join a client video call on hotel WiFi that drops every three minutes. I have been a digital nomad for years, and the single best investment I made in my remote work setup was … Read more

I still remember the morning my kayak broached a wave off the Oregon coast and the dry bag I’d trusted for two years dumped cold seawater straight into my camera sleeve. That single soaked sensor board cost me $1,400 and turned me into a dry bag skeptic for life. Six months later, after running ten … Read more

I’ve been searching for the best toiletry bags for international travel for the better part of a decade. After my shampoo bottle exploded across a fresh shirt in a Rome-bound suitcase, I learned the hard way that not all toiletry bags are created equal. The best toiletry bags for international travel solve three problems at … Read more

I learned the hard way that not every travel adapter plays nice with a laptop brick. On a 14-day shoot across Lisbon, Berlin, and Seoul last year, two of my adapters overheated, one fell out of a wall socket mid-export, and a third simply refused to push enough wattage to charge my MacBook Pro while … Read more

I learned the hard way why travelers obsess over the best anti-theft backpacks for travel. My first trip to Barcelona in 2022 ended with someone slicing my daypack strap at La Rambla and walking off with my camera. The thief was faster than I was, but the bag itself offered zero resistance. That sting pushed … Read more

I remember the exact moment my shoulder gave out hauling a 60-pound duffel across a Madrid train platform. That was the trip that sent me down a 6-month rabbit hole testing every rolling duffel bag I could get my hands on. I packed each one full, dragged them through airports, tossed them in car trunks, … Read more

Last March I landed in Lisbon with a busted wheel and a hardshell suitcase that no longer fit Lufthansa’s strict 8 kg cabin weight limit. That trip cost me 85 euros at the gate and a full afternoon waiting at the oversized baggage carousel. I swore it would not happen again. Finding the best carry-on … Read more

I’ve been testing hardside luggage for over a decade now, both professionally and personally. When I planned a three-week trip across Europe last year, I took four different hard shell bags with me to see which would actually survive the airlines. That trip taught me what really matters in hardside luggage for long trips. It’s … Read more