Gear

This section explains what we took with us for 60 days abroad.

Clothes

As anyone who has traveled more than a week in a row knows – when you travel for longer than 7 days, you still pack the same and wash it how ever many weeks you are on the road. However, our trip has special needs because we are changing timezones and summer/winter zones (or rather Autumn/Spring zones) while traveling.

Shorinji Kempo gear

The first real issue for me is the Shorinji Kempo gear. I am going to train four days in Hombu, which is the headquarters of SK in the world. This means extensive need for two dogis (fighting outfit). One cannot survive the 10 hour days we will have in the summer camp conditions. So the plan is to wash one every night and wear one every day. I will bring one dogi with me and buy one from Japan and after the camp, I will send at least one of them home. The other one I might send to Australia, where I will be training the next, in a month from that time. Of course training gear doesn’t only include the dogi, but other items like sports bras and such. They will travel with the according dogis.

Photogear

-The old faitful Canon 30D as the main camera
-17-40mm/4L as the main lens
-Thinking about purchasing some additional ones such as 50mm/1.8, Sigma 8mm fisheye, 24-105/4L (or 24-70/2.8L) All around lens (I’m not really into carrying a big lens with me, since I don’t do sports or animals photography, the only place that it would come in handy would be stalking people/details in cities, which I admit can be hard with the lenses I’ve got. However, stalking people with a lens that would come up with shaky pictures anyways… Not my idea of fun. With a telephoto, you always need the tripod and if you’ve got it, the moment has probably passed… So I don’t expect 70-200mm/4L to come into the purchase list anytime soon, even if it does zoom in far.
-Polaroid and ND filters for all lenses (and light blockers)
-Cleaning Kit for the censor and the lenses (my censor is a huge dust magnet)

Other technology

Laptop – I use Toshiba Satelite Pro U200 at the moment, and my husband thinking about Samsung NG-10 for a backup laptop.  Laptop is vital for many reasons:
1. Uploading pictures, backing them up
2. Communicating with the ‘real world’, work & family & friends
3. Updating the blog (because let’s face it, if you don’t do it on the way, you’ll never do it – experienced this the hard way)
4. Finding new travel routes and other info that you don’t really want to carry with you (extra amount of paper is a bitch)
5. Entertainment when bored (my husband and I watch a ton of tv and films anyways, that’s good to be done via laptop when on the way
These things really make travelling very easy, I can’t really part with my laptop for more than a couple of hours. Someone thinks that this is keeping me from living my life… That’s not true. Part of my life is just via this machine… Not everyone can live less than 1000 kilometres away from their husband…

Two portable hard drives (320Gb or so each), for packing up *everything*. I could make dvds and send them home, but to be honest, I trust dvds so little and I can easily take 5Gb of pictures in one day… better to go with the hard drives and keep them in waterproof bags in different luggage.

Bags

I will be travelling with my Tamrac backpack, which carries both the laptop and the photogear + emergency medicine & other vital gadgets. We’ll go through Japan with only one shared carrier with us, but then we’ll probably buy a suitcase for Ausrtalia/America. That’s when the bigger clothes need to be available as well. As you see, we are not packbaggers, that just is not our thing.