Mustang Trek: What Worked

I have just returned back from the 3-week trek to Upper Mustang and this is a great moment to revisit the A-Z list of gadgets published last week. Actually the post with gadgets was written a month ago, as I did not have access to the Internet while crossing the Kingdom of Lo. Honestly, this was my longest OTG experience since the Internet was invented :)

The absolute gold award goes to the Sawyer water filter (W). Drinking water is at the very bottom of the hierarchy of needs and the Sawyer works like a miracle, delivering an abundance of purified drinking water. It does not require any energy source either, other than squeezing a bladder (X).

The silver award goes to the Garmin smartwatch (O). It proved extremely useful, tracking our progress every second and providing many useful statistics such as altitude and distance. It is also very helpful during long ascends and descends to control the pace and remaining distance. As our schedule was typically around 10 hours of walking daily, I kept recharging it using an aftermarket cradle (P) powered by the Innergie powerbank (S). The 6000 mAh provided 14 daily top-ups and the powerbank itself was topped-up twice using the Yolk solar paper (R) attached to my backpack.

The bronze award goes to the Peak Design Capture Pro camera clip - the almost seamless way to carry a heavy DSLR on the go.

Items (almost) never used are listed below. I'm removing them from the trekking gadgets list.

• The wide angle lens (B) - there was too much dust around to risk exposing the sensor while changing the lens,
• The Nikon battery charger (D) - two batteries lasted for the whole trek, the 3rd was a backup and the charger was not needed at all. The beauty of a DSLR is it lasts much lunger compared to mirror-less.
• The 5-port USB charger (M). With no WiFi nor cell coverage the only powered devices were the watch and the camera. A single powerbank (+solar cells) and a spare camera battery were enough to keep them going for 3 weeks. 
• The HTC Desire (N). At places where a phone signal was present, we could easily find WiFi, so probably the era of local SIM cards is over now.