Finally, after years of dreaming, months of planning, and weeks of prepping, I’m ready to go.

I’ve read up quite a bit and talked with a number of people that have gone on similar trips and of course I didn’t listen to any of their recommendations. Like usual, I’m going to take the hard route and make mistakes on my own. At least once I did read about a photographer that brings as much equipment with him on his travels, but I’m still really nervous about getting onto the planes with this much heavy and somewhat fragile equipment—we’ll see how this goes

So what’s in my bag?

Quite a lot actually. I’m bringing with me two camera bodies, five lenses, a big tripod, a travel tripod, panorama gear, filters, hard drives, a wireless router, portable speaker, color management device for my monitor, gray card and color profile system for my camera, laptop, head lamp, the list goes on. My backpack is rather heavy and of course it only left me with a rather limited amount of space for my personal effects in my small daypack. I’m determined to have no wheels on this trip and to keep only that which fits into my two backpacks.

Which brings me to my camera backpack. I spent a lot of time looking for a good camera bag. I ended up purchasing or borrowing nearly every interesting and highly rated camera bag that I could through Amazon and then returning them and ended up with the Lowepro Trekker 400 AW. I tried bags from companies like Gura Gear, F-Stop, and Clik Elite, and each one had some problems for me. Either the tripod connection system was just plain bad (such as on the Gura Gear), the length of the bag wasn’t right (as with the F-Stop), or the space utilization just wasn’t good for my needs (like with the Click Elite). I even went through a number of different Lowepro bags before I settled on the Trekker 400 AW.

What’s great about the Trekker 400 AW is that it fits everything, fits relatively comfortably on me (the only way it’d get more comfortable if it were a significantly larger bag with even bigger hip straps), is well constructed, carries a laptop, and has a built-in rain sleeve. Some of the only downsides about this bag is that it doesn’t open that quickly (the zippers are a bit TOO durable) and the tripod sleeve doesn’t fit my tripod that well.

So what am I bringing for myself?

Not that much. I’ve got a few pairs of shorts, a few t-shirts, some underwear and socks, all squeezed down by a pretty great compression bag. Then of course I’ve got some headphones, external battery pack, kindle, various power cables and adapters, malaria pills and other medicines, toiletries, etc. And somehow that all fits in my lovely Crumpler bag

Can’t wait for the flight and to start this trip!