Whenever we travel within India, we have the luxury of being unorganised while packing our bags. Just dump all basic necessities and we are ready to travel within few minutes. That is because, you generally need not unpack or search for any items before you reach the destination. But, while travelling outside of India (or any international travel), we do not have that luxury. There are several documents that you may need during your travel, before we reach the destination. Be it your passport, credit cards, travel documents, world money/forex cards and so on. You may need to use some of these documents over and over again during the travel. Whether it is for immigration checks, or security checks, or for any other reason. Moreover, few transit airports have random checks where the officials may ask for certain documents.

Petronas Towers, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

I can recall my first international travel when I was unaware of all the processes involved during the travel. When the immigration officer first asked for the passport, I had to dig into my hand baggage only to find the passport hidden among all the other documents and items in the same section of the bag. Just when I felt relaxed that I found the passport, the official asked for the “invite letter” (this was for the business travel), and I had to start hunting again! What about boarding pass, you may ask. I think by now, you know what my answer would be 😉 Luckily for me, the official was patient enough to wait for me each time he asked for a document 🙂

An Evening in Paris

To avoid such embarrassing situations, it is useful to keep all the relevant travel documents well organized, and quickly accessible. This is where I found the Passport Holder from Urby very handy.

The Urby passport holder is made of premium quality leather that gives it a lavish look. It is quite compact and handy such that it can easily fit into your pocket or a small section in your hand baggage. The interior of the passport has a soft feel to the premium leather.

It has an exclusive slot for (of course) holding the passport. The passport easily slides in into the slot and is held very firmly. You can slide in the relevant visa page, so that when you take your passport out of the holder, you can handover the visa page easily to the officer.

The slide in passport slot also helps in cases where you may need to carry more than one passport. Sometimes, you may have your still visa stamped in your old/expired passport, but it may still be valid. In such cases, you have to carry both of your passports (expired, and new). Or, if you are travelling with your kid, you may want to carry kids passport in addition to your own. Whatever your case may be, the passport holder from Urby can slide in both your passports!

During the international travel, I usually carry and recommend to carry multiple international credit/debit cards. If you are in urgent need of cash, you are sure that one of these cards would be your saviour. The passport holder also has three slots that can hold upto three cards, be it an international credit/debit cards, or multi-currency card or forex card and the likes. It also has a fourth smaller slot where a business/visitor card can fit in. You can also use this slot to keep your Indian Driving License card (which is valid for a short duration in many countries)!

During the travel, you may have to carry the print outs of many other documents too. Whether it is the print out of the boarding pass, or the emergency contact numbers from the travel insurance company, or the hotel reservation voucher, or any other important documents. Depending on which country you are travelling to, you may need to present some of these documents either during immigration, or during random checks at the transit airports. The passport holder from Urby has a sleeve behind the card slots where you can safely keep all these documents.

The holder also has a slot at the back. This slot is useful to keep some forex cash. It is handy when you want to grab a quick coffee or a light snack at the airport cafe!

Don’t we all like the products when they are specially customized for us! Urby makes the product extra special by printing the name, or a message on it. I was pleasantly surprized when I saw the passport holder had my name printed on it!

The passport holder from Urby also includes a canvas drawstring pouch! The pouch can be used to keep the passport holder, along with all the documents. This becomes useful once you reached the destination, and when the usage of these documents is fairly lower than during the travel itself!

You can choose your Passport Holder from Urby from a range of colors that suit your taste. Furthermore, you can make it more personal by adding your own message!

If you are an avid or frequent traveller, you should also check Urby‘s collection of travel wallets, which helps you keep all the necessary travel documents, credit cards, currency etc along with the passport.