Once, whilst returning from a trip to Italy, I met a man on a train who was travelling dressed only in a swim suit and a towel. He had left his bag on the beach for just a few moments to paddle in the sea. When he returned it was gone, along with his passport, money, tickets and all of his clothes (apart from his towel).
As well as a lesson on the importance of looking after your possessions as you travel, strangely enough this story also shows how little you really need to take with you. People (including myself) made small contributions to his funds and food supplies (although none had donated any clothes when I saw him), and sympathetic train porters and guards had let him on the train without many questions.
A number of people each year have everything stolen from them as they travel around the world. Most just go to the local shop and buy what they need and go on with their trip. This is made more difficult if you have no access to money, and you definitely will have trouble crossing international borders without your passport.
Of course, the best thing is to avoid getting into situations such as this in the first place. Some ways of doing this, such as physical security (money belts, etc.), are covered in the ‘Packing’ section under ‘Security‘. The following gives some basic tips and ideas for protecting and gaining easy access to your essential travel documents.
Making Copies of Everything
With the exception of cash, there is almost no paper or document that cannot eventually be replaced while travelling if you keep a copy or a record of it. You will probably not lose any of the items below but if you do and have taken elementary precautions, you will be able to get them replaced with the least amount of trouble.
The way I usually do this is to gather together all the documents listed in the ‘Papers‘ section of this website. Then I empty out my travel wallet / money belt and make photocopies of everything.
You can use the photocopier’s zoom function to make everything really small (but readable) to fit two or three documents onto one page. You can also copy on both sides of the paper.
It is not necessary to photocopy every page of your passport, just the photo page and current visas, perhaps. This should make it a lot easier to replace them if lost or stolen. Also, take a copy of your birth certificate to help you get a new passport.
At the same time I make photocopies of all the financial information listed in the ‘Money‘ section of this website, such as credit cards, traveller’s cheque serial numbers, insurance policy numbers, bank accounts, social security number, the serial number on your camera. and so on.
Another, more high-tech, way of duplicating important information is to use a scanner to make electronic copies and then store them on a computer or removable storage. Once a document is scanned it can then be stored using an online file storage service, or even emailed to yourself for retrieval from anywhere in the world (even if you are only left with your swim suit).
If you don’t have a scanner then the local copy shop should be able to help out. As a last resort you can use a digital camera to take pictures of credit cards, passport pages, etc.
Another good idea is to give the photcopies/scans to a trusted friend at home whom you can call on the phone from anywhere in the world to retrieve the information (well, the text and numbers parts, that is, not pictures, obviously). Or if you are travelling with a companion then you can also swap documents with each other.
Encryption
If most of this sounds quite insecure (i.e. having multiple copies of everything, including credit card and bank account numbers thereby multiplying opportunities for loss or theft), then don’t worry! There are some tricks to make the copies more secure.
The safest ways to do this are usually electronic. Scanned documents saved as text files or pictures (jpg’s, gif’s etc.), can be encrypted and compressed (using, for example, Winzip with a password). Email and server storage are quite secure, too. However, bear in mind that this is completely dependent on how strong your passwords are. Also, be careful when retrieving your data from a computer that isn’t yours (for example, in an Internet cafe) as key-stroke logging software may be installed.
A good way to avoid this, and also for securing paper copies, is not to write down the real numbers at all, but simply to alter them in some manner known only to yourself. One method I used to use was to alter one digit (the last number of a credit card number, for example) by, say, adding a 1 to it. Reversing the number can work too, as well as complicated things like multiplying the whole thing by, say, 2 or 6, and so on (and remembering which!).
Portable Storage
Recently, I have been using various portable methods of storing encrypted documents. Most small electronic devices around these days can be used for this, some more obvious than others.
For example, I have encrypted zip files with scans of my passport(s), financial data (credit cards, traveller’s cheque numbers, etc.), licenses, guide books, and so on, copied to a small 
flash drive
Eagle Creek all terrain money belt
Just as a test to see what is possible, I have also made copies of the same zip file onto my camera (copied via USB from my hard drive to the camera’s memory stick folder), my phone’s memory (using Bluetooth to connect) and my iPod (enabling disk use and copying it to the Notes folder), plus I have emailed it to myself as an attachment. And, of course, the original file stays on my laptop.
(If anyone wants any help doing things like the above then email me and I can explain further. If there is enough demand I will write a separate page on it on this website).
