Time Machine: Mobile incremental Backup
In Mountain Lion and greater, you can create multiple separate backup disks with Time Machine. Get an USB external HD for traveling, and use that to backup your Mac whilst on the road. When at home, you can do a backup to another HD, (USB or otherwise,) which stays there permanently. I take this external HD when I travel. It is wicked fast, and demonstrably rugged, as I have dropped it several times with no ill effects. You can also use this disk to make a CCC clone, if that is your preferred backup method.

Note: It is not a wise idea to have a backup partition, (CCC, TM or otherwise,) on the same drive you're backing up. If the HD itself goes poof, you've lost the backups you need to restore your system.