I decided to add this as the first entry in my guide just to have something to write about quickly, besides of course that no hitchhiker's guide would be complete without an entry about the towel.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy says that a towel is "about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have." Besides wrapping it round your head to avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (an animal that assumes that if you can't see it, it can't see you), and other uses in such heroic adventures, you can always dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough. More importantly though, the possession of a towel during interstellar adventures is in itself a symbol of great virtue. Apparently, "any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the Galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through and still know where his towel is, is clearly a man to be reckoned with."