The Craziest Online Date, Ever: 21 Days, 8 Countries, 1 Outfit, 0 bags

Clara and Jeff, pictured in Budapest, Hungary, were catapulted into the spotlight after their travel experiment went viral. TV talk-show interviews were followed by book and film deals. Photo: Instagram

No going back now.

That was my first thought as the wheels of the Boeing 767 met the tarmac at Istanbul Atatürk Airport on a late June afternoon.

I turned to the man sitting in the seat beside me. A few weeks ago, I wouldn’t have known Jeff from any other face on the street. Yet here we were, a world away from Austin, Texas, his hand resting on my leg as I completed a customs form full of questions I didn’t know how to answer.

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How long would I be travelling? 21 days (if we make it that long).

What address would I be staying at? Not applicable. (I had no idea where I’d be sleeping on any night during our trip.)

What was the purpose of the visit? Inadvisable travel experiment.

Jeff and Clara wanted to travel "unencumbered by bulging bags". They wore the same clothes for 21 days (opposite) and carried only the bare essentials (pictured). Photo: Instagram

An hour later, we stood empty handed in the arrivals terminal, senses adjusting to a throng of new sights and sounds. I looked at Jeff. "So what now?" He shrugged, "We’ll figure it out." By "it", he meant the fact we had landed in Istanbul with no plans, no contacts, and a vow to stay with locals instead of in hotels.

That wasn’t all, either.

Jeff – the daredevil professor who’d invited me to join him on this summer holiday after we had only been on four dates – had also suggested we do the whole three weeks with no luggage: just the clothes on our backs. It’ll be an experiment, he said. We would drift from place to place. No stuff, no expectations. Together, we would find out just what it would be like to move through a country unencumbered by bulging bags stuffed with outfit changes.

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My response when Jeff had proposed this particular experiment was an automatic: hell no. But then, I couldn’t get the idea out of my head. Would wandering around the Balkans with greasy hair really be so bad? I was curious about my own fear.

More and more I found myself thinking about how it would feel to move through time and space, free of the literal and figurative weight of clothes and makeup and books and souvenirs and … And, I was in the mood to shake up my life – even if it was reckless; even if I trailed week-old sweat through the Acropolis of Athens; even if this relationship crashed and burned. Which is how I ended up at Istanbul airport with nothing but a green dress, a handbag, and a guy I hardly knew.

The Craziest Online Date, Ever: 21 Days, 8 Countries, 1 Outfit, 0 bags... Photo: Instagram

Two months earlier I’d signed up for online dating on a whim. I was in recovery from a severe anxiety disorder that had dragged on for two years. Creating an online dating account seemed like a practical step towards rejoining society. I wasn’t looking for love, necessarily – I just wanted to talk to someone besides my house plants (a fact I left out of my dating profile).

"One-man-tent" looked like someone I could talk to.

I stumbled on to his profile within 10 minutes of creating my own, drawn in by the sheer weirdness of his picture. He was wearing a Mexican mariachi bow tie, thick black Buddy Holly glasses and a naughty grin. Our profiles had a 99 per cent compatibility rating. Without thinking, I fired off a message.

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It worked. "One-man- tent" – also known as Jeff – wrote back. Sparks flew. He was an extroverted science professor with a penchant for flashy prints and adventurous travel. I was a quiet writer, slowly reassembling my life. We agreed to meet in person two weeks after our first message. The first date was intense. A few hours after meeting we were kicked out of a dive bar after a steamy, tequila-fuelled make-out session.

But that was nothing compared to the travel invitation after only having known each other for a matter of weeks.

The Craziest Online Date, Ever: 21 Days, 8 Countries, 1 Outfit, 0 bags... Photo: Instagram

I was shocked when he asked me to come along. At the time, he was teaching at a university five hours' drive away. For the last four weekends he'd driven to Austin, where I lived. We’d only been on five dates when we sat at my table, nervously buying tickets – one-way into Istanbul, one-way out of London. When we bought the tickets, Jeff hadn’t proposed travelling with no baggage. That surprise came a week before our flight (because, apparently, taking off with someone he hardly knew wasn't challenging enough).

Convincing me to take off with nothing? Now that was a proper experiment. The night before we left we sat on the floor and slowly whittled down our possessions into two tiny piles. My pile had a passport, iPhone, deodorant, contact lenses, tampons, a toothbrush, a cotton scarf, two pairs of underwear, and a few cosmetics. Jeff’s had a passport, phone, notebook and map of the Balkans. He stuffed everything into his pockets. My dress was pocket-less, so I brought a tiny handbag instead. The summer dress was another impractical choice on top of all the others. I figured the trip was already so ridiculous – why not add a touch of elegance?

We spent our first afternoon in Istanbul wandering through mosques and markets. By nightfall we still had no place to stay. Jeff and I agreed we’d be open to staying anywhere, eating anything, and doing whatever presented itself between Istanbul and London. I was psychologically prepared that at some point, we might end up sleeping on a park bench. But that night, our luck shifted when we stopped at an internet cafe where Jeff opened an email from an Iranian cyclist he’d met in Kazakhstan years earlier. Mohammad also happened to be in Istanbul, had a spare mattress in the living room and wondered if we needed a place to stay.

On that night, like all the rest, our basic needs were taken care of – a combination of low expectations, Jeff's extraversion, the kindness of strangers, and a large dash of kismet.

By the second day, I realised the secret to travelling comfortably in a single outfit boiled down to a temperate climate and regular laundry. (I washed my clothes almost every day; Jeff had a slightly higher tolerance for dirt.)

The Craziest Online Date, Ever: 21 Days, 8 Countries, 1 Outfit, 0 bags... Photo: Instagram

Handwashing my underwear in the sink was a small inconvenience, but it was hardly the wardrobe catastrophe I’d braced myself for.

Over the course of our travel sans baggage experiment, we drifted across Turkey, Greece, Macedonia, Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Hungary, and the UK.

Most mornings we headed to the bus or train station to pick out the next dot on the map. In the afternoons, we explored, checking out tourist spots and people-watching in parks and cafes. At night, using our phones, we found places to couch-surf, bunking down with a diverse cast of locals. Through their eyes we experienced everything from a Turkish political protest to a midnight crawl through abandoned buildings in Budapest to sample the city’s "ruin bars".

The added bonus of our pace meant we rarely stayed in one place long enough for anyone to notice our one-hit wardrobe. And while I’d expected to get sick of wearing the same uniform on repeat, it actually turned out to be one less thing to worry about.

After a week, travelling without luggage became an afterthought to the adventure at hand. Aside from a roof, a bed and a bar of soap, I didn’t need much. I felt no desire to go shopping – a departure from past holidays where I felt compelled to stock up on knick-knacks and mementos.

The Craziest Online Date, Ever: 21 Days, 8 Countries, 1 Outfit, 0 bags... Photo: Instagram

The physical lightness that had been so threatening in the airport now felt like an unexpected liberation.

Three weeks after our journey began, we boarded our flight home out of London. Although we were still empty-handed, I felt rich with unusual memories and the awareness that a meaningful experience isn’t necessarily an accessorised one. Removing the focus on stuff left me keenly aware of all the magic unfolding in the moment. On the plane, I promised myself that I’d halve the possessions in my apartment when I got home (which I did).

That left one question: what did the journey mean for Jeff and I?

In the pre-trip chaos, we’d never stopped to consider what we would do if the experiment actually worked, or if we finished with a closer bond than when we had started. But by some miracle – despite 21 days of travel, absolutely no privacy, and a shouting match on the side of a road – we still weren’t sick of each other. That had to mean something.

Back home, we gradually began to integrate our lives. He took a teaching job in Austin. I invited him to move into my unit. Family and friends were shocked to see that the wild experiment was maturing into something more.

The Craziest Online Date, Ever: 21 Days, 8 Countries, 1 Outfit, 0 bags... Photo: Instagram

Six months after the trip, I wrote a piece about it online.

The story was just a whim – I was shocked when my inbox exploded the next day with emails from literary agents, morning talk show producers and readers all over the world. A few weeks later we were in a New York elevator with Barbara Walters.

A few months after that I was writing a book and a screenwriter was asking who I imagined playing me in the film adaptation – a question that’s still so strange I don’t even know how to answer it. In a way, our experiment still hasn’t ended. Anyone who’s ever watched reality television will agree that having a relationship go viral is about as disorienting as travelling with nothing.

Yet one book, three years, and four more no-baggage trips later, I’m still so glad I said "yes" to a crazy invitation. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

No Baggage by Clara Bensen (Hardie Grant, $29.95) is out now.''