I’ve gotten a lot of questions about how I got to Nepal, how I arranged everything, what I brought etc. I figured this section would be a good way to share everything about the trip. If you click on any of the pictures below, you’ll be able to view a larger version of them.

Travel

When I initially booked my trip to Nepal in August of 2007, I made the mistake of trying to save money on airline tickets. I used Orbitz to look at tickets and booked one on Air India because they were about $75 cheaper than every other airline. My flight was from Chicago, USA to London, England, to Delhi, India to Katmandu, Nepal. The tickets ran me about $1,900 including taxes and trip insurance. About a month after booking the tickets, I decided that I wanted to change my tickets to stay in Nepal a few days longer.

I spent the better part of a month and countless hours on the phone getting the run around from Air India and Orbitz about the tickets and how to extend them. Long story short, I had paper tickets, so I had to send them via FedEx for insurance, and they got lost by Orbitz and I had to pay to get them sent back to me. Then I had to pay the change fees with Air India. All in all, it ended up running me another $300 to get all of the changes made after all of the FedExing and all of the other crap was taken into account. So much for saving $75.

I’d advise you to avoid both Air India and Orbitz like the plague. Both have terrible customer service based out of India that you can barely understand. I think its a law that all companies who deal in the travel industry are required to have terrible customer service, but Air India and Orbitz really went above and beyond. Dealing with the morons at the Delhi Airport is like being in a Marx brothers’ movie. Everything is done manually with pencil and paper, airline representatives flat out don't work and spend time chatting with one another. Bar none, the Delhi airport is the most disgusting airport I’ve ever seen. The airport was filthy, the metal detectors didn't work, and there was a feral cat running around and bats flying around the inside of the terminal building. If I were to ever head back to Nepal, I would refuse to book any tickets that took me through India to get there. For more in depth details about my trials and tribulations when flying through India, check out my journal entries from March 21st and April 16th.

As far as the trek once we got to Nepal, Mike, Andrea and I were very fortunate that Blaine and Bethany were there a couple of days ahead of us and could scout out a good porter and guide. Everywhere on the street in Katmandu, you are bombarded by touts offering services for trekking, so it’s a good idea to do some research ahead of time about who you want to use if you decide not to use a tour company to arrange everything.

Gear

My boots, gaiters, hiking poles, glove liners, windproof hat and heavy mittens

The first piece of gear that I bought for my trip was a nice pair of hiking boots. I bought them on December 31st 2007, so that I would have a few months to start breaking them in and getting used to them. Every Sunday was my hiking day. I would hike between three and six miles on local trails to get used to my boots, hiking in general and breaking them in. While getting ready for the trip, I met a nice local guy named Don who joined me for a couple of days out hiking. He let me borrow some of his equipment and I was able to see what a difference different pieces of gear made. Two hiking poles make the going incredibly easier, especially up and down hills and in deep snow. Gaiters help keep the snow out of your boot tops when it’s deep.

I also was happy that I sprung for a set of synthetic glove liners, as I would find out that they were a nice piece of gear to keep the hands warm when it was just a bit chilly out and helped keep them toasty inside my gloves when it got really cold out. I also added a windproof hat from mountain hardware. It fits very snug and can be a little uncomfortable, but does an excellent job of keeping the heat in your head.

My backpack, camel pouch, nalgene bottle, rain cover and first aid kit.

Around the end of January 2008, I bought myself nice backpack for my trip. I would fill my backpack with a good 30 to 40 pounds of gear and wear it around the house when doing chores and hiking as well. I did this to get used to the fit and weight of the stuff I would be carrying. Even though I ended up using a porter for some of my gear, it was helpful to carry it around loaded with phone books, weights and clothes. I would also practice packing it with gear for my trip, to make sure that everything could actually fit.

The backpack had an 85 liter capacity, and there were times that I had it bursting to capacity. To go along with the backpack, I bought myself a Nalgene bottle, rain cover and camel pouch. I initially was skeptical of the camel pouch, but once I started using it, I discovered how convenient it was. It’s nice to be able to take a quick sip of water and not break your stride and rhythm while hiking. The model I bought was two liters and along with my Nalgene bottle resulted in me having the ability to carry three liters of water with me at a time.

Along with this gear, you can also see my altitude watch. I was concerned about altitude sickness since I had never been at those sorts of altitude before. The watch proved to be an invaluable piece of equipment as it helped us track our altitude changes and progress along the trek. The watch I bought was the Suunto core.

All of my clothes

In terms of clothing, I went with all synthetic clothing. From talking to the experts at different outdoor stores and reading online, when you’re out hiking you don’t want any cotton clothing. Synthetics are preferred to cotton because cotton retains moisture and will stay soggy and heavy with water. This holds damp clothes against your skin which makes it easier to pick up blisters along the way. This is why good wool hiking socks are key. I also noticed that when I did laundry along the trail, the synthetic fabrics seemed to dry a lot faster than cotton would have. The only major downside to the synthetic fabrics is that they really can stink after you sweat in them. Anti-microbial fabrics can be found, but they carry premium prices.

I had a reversible waterproof fleece that I brought and a windbreaker from my dad, but the rest of the clothing I bought. Three pairs of hiking socks, three pairs of synthetic underwear, three synthetic t-shirts, two long sleeve t-shirts, water/windproof pants, synthetic long underwear, and a pair of convertible pants where you can zip off the knees to turn them into shorts.

All of my clothes packed

I bought my clothing both at discount retailers and specialty outdoor stores. All of my shirts, both long and short sleeved as well as the underwear came from Marshalls, a discount retailer. The shirts were all North Face brand and I found them on the athletic shirt rack for $15 each. The long sleeved shirts were the Nike performance fabric and they ran around $20 each. All of the underwear was Under Armour athletic boxers, and I picked those up for only around $8 each. It was a huge cost savings for all of this stuff at Marshalls because I paid around $110 for easily $250 worth of clothing.

All of the rest of my clothing came from the outdoor stores REI and Moosejaw. I definitely had to pay the premium prices for the gear, but it all worked extremely well. From these stores I got my hiking socks, long underwear and two pairs of pants. My theory was that I was headed into the Himalayas in the spring, and would have to deal with the snow and elements. I didn’t want to cheap out on gear and regret it along the trip. I wanted the confidence of knowing that I could depend on my gear in case things got really bad, and with the purchases that I made, I felt very confident. It's also important to test out the clothes that you plan to wear on the trip. I made sure break in everything I bought out on my local trails to see how well it worked in keeping me warm as well as how comfortable it was to wear. The last thing you want to do is get all the way out into the middle of the wilderness and find yourself totally uncomfortable with the clothing that you are wearing.

My sleeping bag and winter jacket

To pack all of my clothing, I bought two small stuff sacks, about three liters in total volume. Since synthetic fabric is easily crushable, I was able to cram all of my clothing into one stuff sack. The second stuff sack was used throughout the trip to separate my dirty and clean clothing from one another.

I was lucky enough to have Michael lend me his sleeping bag. Since he was off on his trip around the world, I was able to borrow his sleeping bag from his parents which saved me a couple hundred dollars. It was a very nice zero degrees mountain hardware sleeping bag, that also happened to be extra long. This was really nice for a guy my size. If you have to buy a sleeping bag for the trip, don’t cheap out. I would get a minimum of a fifteen degrees sleeping bag with a preference for a zero degrees (Fahrenheit) sleeping bag. As you get higher up in altitude, it gets significantly colder at night, even during the spring months. When we stayed in Thorung Phedi, the temperature was easily below freezing every night and the warm sleeping bag was a necessity.

My sleeping bag and winter jacket packed

To help fit the sleeping bag into the gear that we were carrying, I bought a small compression sack. The synthetic sleeping bag was able to be crammed into the small compression sack, and then by applying further pressure while pulling the tabs on the side of the compression sack, you can crush the sleeping bag into a smaller size. You can see it packed up into the blue compression sack below. The two liter bottle of Coke Zero is there for a size frame of reference.

My winter jacket was a synthetic Columbia jacket that I had for several years. The small grey bag you see it in was actually supposed to be a stuff sack / pillow. The grey you see is supposed to be the inside of the bag, but at night you reverse it and fill it with clothing then the fuzzy grey is what you sleep on for your “pillow”. I thought this might be something nice to have along, but I never used it for the pillow part. It feels like a hard log, and is not comfortable to rest your head on when trying to sleep. It did do a good job of just fitting in my winter jacket to help save space in my gear. All in all, it is rather remarkable how compactable sythetics are, yet they seem to spring back to life and keep their warmth even after pulling them out of a small sack.

All of the crap I took along on my trip before I packed it

It’s hard to imagine how much gear that I actually brought along to Nepal for my trip until I had it all piled together in my office for this photograph. It can be tough to try to cover all of the variables about what you might face along the way, so you have to do the best you can to make sure you have a reasonable amount of gear to cover what you might face along the way.

To get everything to Nepal, I bought this Airporter bag and also brought my blue Adidas bag as a carry-on. The Airporter bag is what holds the backpack and other gear while on the trip. It keeps it safe and clean along the way. When I got to Nepal, I actually had some sort of liquid all over my Airporter bag. Something had broken in the luggage hold, but thanks to the Airporter bag, all of my gear stayed clean and dry.

Inside the Airporter I had my backpack along with some extra toilet paper and some gear for Mike and Andrea. In my backpack, I packed my hiking poles, hat, gloves, first aid kit, jacket, sleeping bag and other misc gear and supplies. Some of the food I was bringing along, like peanut butter also went in the Airporter bag to be checked.

All of my gear all packed up

The blue duffel bag is what I had as my carry-on. It contained all of the items that I deemed too valuable or fragile to put in the Airporter bag. I had all of my camera gear, and some of my food in this bag as well. I also brought all of my clothes for the trip on my carry-on due to their compact size and the fact that they were all synthetic fabrics for hiking.

My hiking boots I actually wore onto the plane because I had broken them in over several months, and if my luggage got lost, I didn’t want to have to buy a new pair of boots and try to break them when we started hiking. When I left Katmandu for the start of our trek, I was able to leave my blue duffel bag along with some unneeded items at the Deutsch House where we were staying until we returned a couple of weeks later.

Here is the final gear list for everything that I brought to Nepal with the exception of camera gear and food.

One piece of gear that was sorely missed was some diarrhea pills. There was a miscommunication between Mike and I on the subject. He had anti-diarrhea anti-biotics along for the trip, but I thought when he told me that he had pills, he meant something like Imodium AD. I didn’t end up bringing any along, and I regret it. Odds are, you will get some form of traveler’s sickness and having some regular diarrhea pills along would help out greatly.

Camera

All of the camera gear that I took to Nepal

I had always been interested in getting more into photography. I took this trip as my excuse to go and buy myself a really nice camera. I knew that the scenery was going to be incredible, and I wanted to have a good setup to capture everything. I had been debating a digital SLR camera for a long time, and this felt like the right reason to go out and get one. My trip was planned for March – April 2008 so I wanted to make sure that I bought a camera early enough to be able to practice and get used using it.

I had always used Canon digital cameras before, and had great success with them, so that was the primary area that I looked at when looking to buy my first digital SLR. In October 2007, I bought most of the following setup. The complete list below is what I took along to Nepal with me. Some of the accessories listed below were added as I got closer to my trip and determined that I was missing some key items. Almost everything was purchased from B&H Photo who I have found have great prices, customer service and quick shipping.

My Nepal Camera Setup:

All of my camera gear packed up for the trip

All told, it ran about $6,500 for everything. I also made sure before I left to take out an insurance policy on my stuff. For $1.30 per year per $100 of coverage, I was covered against all damage, theft, mishaps etc. So basically for $90 per year, all of my gear is completely covered. This was through my State Farm insurance agent.

The early purchase, gave me enough time to get familiar with the settings on the camera and used to using it. On my trip, I also had the huge advantage of having Blaine and Bethany Franger along. They are both incredible photographers who helped show me how to use my camera better. Check our their photography skills by visiting their site here.

My one biggest regret was not bringing along a small point and shoot camera. When the weather was really bad, I had my camera packed away so I didn’t get any photographs at all. I was also trying to take more artistic and moving photos, so I missed out on a lot of the every day items. Mike & Andrea, Blaine & Bethany both had some small point and shoot cameras along which recorded not only the occasional video, but also the everyday minutia of life along the trail. I find this an invaluable part of helping to remember the trip.

It’s also nice because you can easily slip the camera in your pocket when you don’t want the attention, versus having a huge camera with big zoom lens dangling off your neck. A large expensive camera tends to hurt the ability to successfully barter, and it is something that Blaine would always take off before going to a lodge to barter for rates. In summary, small point and shoot camera is a must for capturing the small everyday things along the way. I recommend the slim SD point and shoot series by Canon. They take great photographs and are compact.