Shopping at Kathmandu..

16th and 17th May 2006.

Well, something I would never have done and I don't think will happen in the near future. I, along with Anup and Shantanu, spent the most of 2 whole days shopping! Of course, the shopping included buying/renting equipment gear for the 3 of us, but 2 whole days! I can now realise why females take so long for shopping.

Shopping for a trekking expedition is probably the only thing I love to roam around for and spend all my time for. Trekking and mountaineering being my passion, simply taking a look at the equipment gear gives me tremendous amount of satisfaction. And seeing all possible thing that an Everester would want on his climb, at one place, made me go berserk.

Our equipment shopping included the following items:

• Down sleeping bag (sleeping bag with feathers, sustains winds, snow and protects upto -20 degrees celcius absolute)
• Down jacket (jacket to protect one from cold wind, snow, water and subzero temperatures)
• Down trousers (trousers to protect one from cold wind, snow, water and subzero temperatures, and of Gore-Tex material)
• Down gloves (I know you guessed what this is)
• Gaiters (snow/water proof covering for the bottom half of the legs, in case one has to wade through deep snow)
• Snow goggles (prevents one from UV rays, and covers the eyes completely - visualise swimming goggles with UV protection)
• Shoes (Gore-Tex material, protective from snow, ankle height)
• Sun cap/hat
• Thermoflask (1.0L)
• Woolen socks
• 75 litre backpack

For getting the material that we needed, the person who was our guide for the trek to Everest Base Camp in Nov 2004 (Mr. Anish Rawal a.k.a Rawal bhai) helped us a great deal in locating good shops in Thamel and getting good rates for the items we bought. What took all the time, was getting all the equipment of a specific brand - the name being "The North Face". This brand is a very well known one, and we got more obsessed by this brand because we were approaching Everest from the North side route, which is termed as 'The North Face'. And that should explain the delay.