Click the photo above to get your own Kindle Paperwhite!
Backpacking or traveling can bring your mind into overdrive with all the amazing sights, landscapes and delicious food—but between those breathtaking moments, there's also a lot of down time. Be it a long train ride, waiting for the next showtime, or the much needed rest after a long day of exploring—sometimes the best feeling is to kick your feet up and lose yourself in a good book. However, carrying your 20 favorite books on the trip won't leave room for much else. With that, here's our recommendation on what to read with when you travel—The Kindle Paperwhite.
1) Books are heavy
When you're backpacking in the wilderness or from city to city, you need all the room you can. Books take up a ton of room in much needed backpack space. Besides that, the books themselves can often get their pages bent and worn tumbling around between all your clothes and necessities (they even lose that amazing book smell!) My kindle for the trip had about 64 books on it..I can't even imagine what it would be like to carry that. Don't get us wrong, we love the feeling of paper between our fingers on a good book—but we might like saving our backs an extra 20 pounds a little more.
2) The Battery
But why a Kindle? We like tablets, we like phones, we like laptops—but sometimes the battery life just isn't up to the standard. The battery on the Paperwhite lasts for days (sometimes over a week) without charging it—and on the Camino, that was a lifesaver. Besides that, every tech device takes up room, and it all has to serve a purpose. We used our phones for music and tablets for Netflix. It's nice to have the one item just for reading...it offers much less distraction when phones or tablets have games or movies...or the internet in general.
3) The Backlight
I can't tell you the amount of late nights we spent in hostels with group lights on this trip. Having a nice backlight for your favorite story is one of the most amazing things to have when you're getting cozied up for bed. In addition, the backlight is why we recommend the Paperwhite as opposed to the regular Kindle. The joy of reading at night or the early morning without bothering someone nearby with a lamp can't be overstated. And on top of the backlight, the Paperwhite features a no-glare screen...believe us it makes reading on the beach so much easier.
And last but not least, make sure you have a cover for your Kindle to protect the screen! (and closing it is just like closing a book, it puts it into sleep mode) Here are a few recommendations from the brand we bought...Alex has the map!
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