Culture Matters

One of the things I had neglected to think about until recently was the phenomenon of 'culture shock'; how I would actually interact with individuals in all of these unique locations and how different perspectives might help or hinder my personal experiences. Having lived overseas for several years, and experienced 'culture shock' in the past, this wasn't something that I was especially concerned about at this point. To help me give this issue a little more thought, my father took the liberty of recommending a few books on the subject. So far I've only managed to get through: Survival Kit for Overseas Living. The book does a great job of concisely explaining 'culture shock': what it is, how to recognize it, and how to deal with it. One of the things I liked best about this book was the section pointing out American cultural characteristics, and how to qualify those as positive or negative within the context of a broader cultural arena; essentially, it helps make one aware of the unconcious cultural habits that most Americans embody, how those characteristics are perceived by other cultures and what can be done to help minimize negative perceptions.

Another book, which I have yet to read, but is on my list is: GenXpat. Perhaps my buddy Josh will grace us with a review in the not too distant future.

Finally, I just acquired an autographed copy (thanks to old Sambo) ofAmerican Cultural Baggage: How to Recognize and Deal with It. A review is forth-coming...

Vaccines: Check

After a, longer than expected, one hour meeting with a nurse at the CO Springs Health Dept, I walked out a little lighter in the wallet and with all of my necessary vaccinations: Hep A, Typhoid, Yellow Fever, and Polio. Thankfully I didn't need to get Meningitis, Hep B, or MMR which would have doubled the cost. The nurse did suggest that a rabies shot might be worth getting to help fend of the 'sacred', rabid monkeys in india, but I decided to risk it all and fore-go the expensive 3 part rabies shot.

I was very surprised and impressed by the amount of time spent going over the details of each location I planned to visit, with regards to the associated disease risks. I was also surprised at the great amount of very updated information that they provided. Much of the information revolved around the risk of Malaria in different regions, which definately seems to be the biggest risk. The WHO also has some great up-to-date info on Malaria, maps included, for anyone else interested.

Cool feet and dry clothes

I'm hoping this will be the last post about the aquisition of gear, and that from here on out any 'gear' related posts will be in relation to actual usage. I've wrapped up a few more purchases as I inch closer to closing the bag, opening the door and walking through it. Originally I thought that I would take only the new Salomon (XA Pro 3D XCR) shoes and a pair of cheap flip-flops for walking around, however after testing out the Salomons a bit I decided to reconsider. Don't get me wrong, the Salomons are great, and I'm sure will prove to be worth every penny, but they do tend to get pretty warm after a bit of walking. As a result, I thought that it might be nice to take another pair of shoes that would allow me to still do a fair amount of walking, while keeping my feet cool in the process and so I decided to purchase a pair of Chaco ZX/2 'performance sandals'. I haven't been a huge fan of these in the past, but have several friends (mostly hippie extremists) that swear by them. Based on my limited experience, they should be perfect for the above stated goal.

Another item which I wasn't entirely sold on taking, but finally decided to order (thanks to some input from my buddy Adam) was a travel clothesline.

After trying on a couple dozen, I finally managed to find a hat that fits my oddly shaped, oblong head: the Mountain Hardwear Fast Pack Cap. I'm also happy to report that my Mountain Hardwear Compass Shirt long-sleeve finally arrived this week and it's great: fits well, is comfortable, fast dry, looks good (meaning normal).

Walking the Digital Tight-Rope

To square the electronics away and make sure I can take all the pictures possible, I picked up another 1GB SanDisk Memory stick, a second Camera Battery, and a travel charger. One obvious concern was running out of memory for my camera, since I'm only taking one 1GB stick and one 512MB stick. In order to overcome this problem, my plan is to upload all of my photos to Flickr, which will allow me to upload upto 2GB of photos per month, and essentially act as an online photo archive. To aid in this upload process I purchased a SanDisk MobileMate Memory Stick Reader.


Another 'digital' concern is the fact that while I will have internet access, I will almost exclusively be using internet Cafe's for access. Internet Cafe's certainly make things easier than having to carry my own laptop, etc, however the big downside is that any sites I visit, will store cached data on the local system which could be a problem if I'm accessing things such as my bank accounts. To help mitigate this risk I'm taking a 2GB A-Data Flash Drive, loaded with a suite of 'portable apps' for anything from email, web-browsing, watching/editing videos, editing images, etc, all of which can be found at PortableApps.com and the Portable Apps Wiki. The basic idea is that I can use these applications on the flash drive, and not have to leave behind any data on the Internet Cafe system, we'll see how well that works in practice. For one more level of security, all of my data on the flash drive will be encrypted using TrueCrypt, which provides encryption that is "automatic, real-time (on-the-fly) and transparent", so that if I lose the drive or it gets stolen, all of my data will be secure.

If anyone wants more info on the portable-apps, let me know.

Global Climate

As I've begun to finalize my itinerary (which I should have finalized and posted next week) and lock in time frames for each destination, I've been researching the climate in all of these places to make sure that it will indeed be warm the entire time I'm gone. I thought this info would be readily available and relatively easy to find, possibly in some central location. Alas, no such luck, as far as I've been able to find. I did find one site, Responsible Travel - Weather to Go, which lacks temp details but gives you a red/yellow/green assessment of each month for many countries. Some additional details can be found here. I will also continue to fill in the list below as I find sites for each individual country:

• Turkey
• Greece
• Croatia
• Kenya
• Ethiopia
• Tanzania
• South Africa
• India
• Nepal
• Thailand
• Vietnam
• Cambodia

Almost done with Gear

Every time I think I have all my gear, a few more things pop up, but im pretty confident that I'll be done after next week. This weekend brought a few more goodies. To help keep all my money and important docs safe and concealed I picked up the Eagle Creek Undercover Deluxe Security Belt. With coolmax and hi-tech anti-microbial material, we'll see how it holds up.

To help keep all of my soap, tooth-paste, pills, etc organized, I picked up the Nalgene Travel Bottle Kit. I've also done some research on soaps that would be easy to take, that could be used to wash my skin, hair and any clothes or dishes in a pinch. All of the soaps I've come across seem to be pretty much the same: concentrated enough to use on dishes/clothes, but 'sensitive' enough for skin, as well as biodegradable. The consensus so far seems to be that Campsuds is the standard.

I was wondering what to do for a watch/alarm clock, since I haven't really worn one for the last 4 years. Luckily my dad helped me solve this problem by graciously donating a watch he no longer needed, the La Crosse Technology K2-100; a super fancy watch with altimeter, thermometer, and barometer.

Gear: Few more things

My Pack arrived over the weekend, and I finally had a chance to pack everything up and see how it all fit. A bit to my surprise, the pack is pretty darned full with everything in it, but there is still a bit of breathing room. The biggest surprise however is that with everything (sans my sleeping bag and a few toiletries) the pack only weighs about 15lbs completely packed. Trekking is going to be easier than I thought. At this point, I think the only things left to pick up are toiletries (shampoo, deodrant, etc), medical stuff (advil, bandaids, etc), pen/journal, a few other odds and ends and we should be good to go.

To help keep things organized, I did pick up a few seperate stuff sacks (Outdoor Research Helium Compression Sack and Helium Ditty Bags) for: socks, underwear, shirts, pants, dirty clothes. Having everything seperated makes it a breeze to pack and unpack everything and find exactly what I'm looking for.

I've also started to test the gear out: the REI towel is pretty amazing, it soaks up water much better than the previous 'camping towel' I used and dries extremely fast. The camera is performing well, but there are still a lot of features to familiarize myself with. The socks and boxers and performing well, but I've yet to decide if they were worth the price.

Gear: Shirts and Pants

Little did I know how difficult it would be to find 2 pairs of pants and 2 shirts. Apparently, an unspoken rule of designing light weight/travel clothing made of quick-dry material is that if you are going to use those materials the clothes themselves either have to have some kind of hideous pattern (in the case of shirts) or (in the case of pants) be completely off the wall, ie. dozens of pockets, zippers, and mounds of excess material to make things excessively baggy. The trade off for finding any 'normal' pants/shirts that are quick-dry and pack light is that you have to pay twice the price as you would for the shirts/pants mentioned above. My experience and frustration comes from trying on about two plus dozen pants and shirts over the weekend, and luckily after all that I did manage to settle on two pants, one long sleeve shirt and one short sleeve shirt.

The first pair of pants comes from Patagonia, the Patagonia Sol Patrol Pant: light, wrinkle-free, quick drying, and very comfortable for hot weather. After wearing them around for a day, I've been pleasantly surprised at how comfortable they are. Pant number two is the Prana Traveler Pant, a very comfortable pair of mostly cotton pants, which packs light and is very functional.

As for shirts, we went with the Prana Bandana Print short-sleeve and the Mountain Hardwear Compass Shirt longsleeve. The Bandana Print shirt certainly falls outside the realm of my normal 'style', but after some outside consulting I decided to take the plunge. It's has a nice material blend, wears comfortably, and is a good color that won't show dirt too readily. One of the main reasons for going with the Prana shirt is that apparently most 'travel' shirts are made for a race of people where a small is considered to be 200lbs, meaning I was swimming in the excess of even the small sized shirts of most other brands. The Compass Shirt was actually a bit of a gamble...I ordered it without actually trying it on. Based on the other Mountain Hardwear shirt I tried on, the size and fit should be good, but we'll find out in a week or so I suppose.

Visas and Vaccinations

I spent a fair amount of time over the last few days figuring out what I needed to do regarding visas for all my destinations as well as what vaccinations I needed to get. I used the CDC Travelers' Health site to get a rough idea of what I might need. After contacting the local Colorado Springs Health Department, it looks like I'm going to need the full gamut of shots: polio, MMR, tetanus, typhoid, meningitis, hep A/B, yellow fever.

As for visas, the US State Department site does a good job of providing the entry requirements for most if not all countries. I was anticipating lots of visa related headaches, but so far that doesn't seem to be the case. For a few destinations (greece, croatia, south africa, thailand), no visa is needed for stops less than 90 days; for a few others (bali, kenya, turkey, nepal), I can pick up a visa upon arrival; and for the remainder (india, vietnam, cambodia), I'll have to pickup visas at their respective embassy's somewhere along the way.

Travel Resources

I thought it would be a good idea to compile some of the travel resources that I've used, and offer some info. A lot of these are under the 'Links' section, but this will be easier to update as I come across new resources.

Travel Independent - www.travelindependent.info

This is by far the single best, ultra-light/backpacking travel resource that I have come across and several of the resources below came from this site. This is a site that is, as far as I can tell, put together by a single person in the UK. It hosts roughly 200+ pages of info on what to do before you go, what to pack, where to go (including coutry/region summaries), what to do when you're on the road and a host of other valuable resources.

OneBag - www.onebag.com

This is another great 'traveling light' resource. The main thing I used from this site is the convenient PDF packing checklist.

The Travel Insider - www.thetravelinsider.info

A good resource for traveling in general. I haven't used this too much, primarily because the sites above were so comprehensive. This site does however include info that the others are lacking, including: how to book and buy tickets, airline reviews, info on security, and some gear info. Additionally this seems to be updated more frequently, as it has several article series about traveling.

REI - www.rei.com

This has certainly been my primary source for gear, mainly because they provide great info on all gear, can't seem to be beat on price, and have an amazing return policy that I can't find anywhere else.

The Mountain Chalet - www.mtnchalet.com

This is my other gear resource, which carries more specialized/high-end stuff that couldn't be found else where. This store is local to CO Springs, and I would highly recommend it to anyone local: the staff are incredibly knowledgable and friendly, and you can always find someone that has used the specific product(s) that you are looking at and will give you and unbiased opinion.

Mountain Hardwear - www.mountainhardwear.com

A great maker of high end outdoor/camping/etc gear: packs, tents, clothes. I will be taking a couple of their windstopper products.

Osprey Packs - www.ospreypacks.com

Great backpacks.

The North Face - www.thenorthface.com

More good gear, some what overpriced at times, but generally pretty good.

Patagonia - www.patagonia.com

More clothing gear, a bit on the pricey side but very nice.

Arc'Teryx - www.arcteryx.com

Another high end gear, pricey gear maker. Taking their shirt.

AirTreks - www.airtreks.com

A great site for finding complicated, multi-stop, international airline fares. They have a nice, intuitive tool that allows you to create your route by clicking on cities and when you're done it will find the best ticket options for you.

TravelTree - www.traveltree.co.uk

A great place to find adventure trips all over the world. The site is primarily gear towards European and Australian students taking a 'gap year', but its a good general resource for hunting down obscure trips to anywhere you'd want to go, ranging from straight adventure travel to overseas volunteer opportunities.

Guerba Adventure Holidays - www.guerba.com

A site for booking pre-packaged adventure holiday trips. Makes things nice and simple, if that's what you're going for, but also a great place to see what type of routes/trips you might want to do and then plan it yourself.

World Nomads - www.worldnomads.com

The best place I've found for international travel insurance, came recommended by both the Travel Independent site as well as personal friends.

Misc. Gear

Now that the big ticket items are all taken care of, it's time to start filling in the gaps with all of the small stuff. I snagged a nifty little spork, by Light My Fire, with a built in knife. Cheap, durable, knife, fork, spoon all in one utensil.

For post-shower dryoff I picked up an REI MultiTowel Lite: an ultralight, super absorbant, quick-drying towel made of microfiber. To organize all of my toiletries I picked up the REI Deluxe Shower Kit: compact, hook for hanging, mirror for shaving, mesh pockets for organization, and removable zippered pouch to carry a few items on short trips.

For the long desert jaunts in the middle of nowhere I've got the MSR Cloudliner Hydration Reservoir for sipping and the Nalgene Wide-Mouth Cantene for holding extra water if need be. Both are made of taste free plastic, and when empty pack down very small. To make sure the water doesn't kill me I'm taking the MSR MIOX Water Purifier, a purifier that uses and electrical current to kill 99% of viruses, bacteria, Giardia and Cryptosporidium.

Sleeping

Sleeping has been another tricky issue: to being a sleeping bag or just a liner? to bring a sleeping pad or no? to bring a bivy sack or no? So far I have decided to take a sleeping bag, liner, and pad, and while I'm leaning against not taking a bivy sack the jury is still out. For the sleeping bag, in keeping with the 'ultralight' theme, I ordered the Western Mountaineering Highlite. This bag is rated for 40 degrees, and amazingly only weighs 1lb. All indications are that this bag is perfect for this kind of trip: light, warm, small, and durable.

To provide some insulation, a little padding and overall make sleeping on the ground just a bit more enjoyable, I also picked up a 3/4 length sleeping pad. Originally I was intent on getting the Therm-a-Rest ProLite 3 due to its small pack size. At the counter however, I was convinced to give the REI Lite-Core a try instead. The Lite-Core is definately very comfortable, and as a bonus it comes with a stuff sack and repair kit, overall saving me ~$40 over the Therma-a-Rest. Unfortunately the Lite-Core is a bit heavier and more bulky to pack, a factor which I'm thinking may out weigh the cost savings and require a return. I'll give it a couple more days.