Planning,preparation,practice

As Indian travelers, the most difficult thing for us in any kind of foreign travel is acquiring a travel visa, gets more difficult with a developed country/region like Scandinavia. Gets even tougher for special people like us,with no solid jobs,nor a steady income to come back to :), and still wanna travel for months in a row...

Anyway, we some how managed our way around it with whatever income. A few long and painful interviews with the visa officer and generous help from our friends in Europe and India... (tip:always back yourself with solid prof with the stuff written on your application letter ) 

With the visa and tickets sorted (thanx to Meenu), the count down has begun... :)Its that time of the year which is the most busiest for us, yes planning a super tight budget trip with no means of planned transport and full time wild camping and cooking is not as dreamy and poetic as it sounds,hence  practicality and planning is at the forefront for keeping us happy, safe and warm...This doubles up when your headed to the most expensive part of the world with winter like temperatures in summer, and with loads of rain anticipated.. Remember therz the artik circle there.. :)

Coming back to the planning part..Our check lists were ready long back, as most of the stuff we need to carry comes from our previous two self supported bicycle trips acros south east asia https://www.crazyguyonabike.com/doc/?doc_id=17107 , https://www.crazyguyonabike.com/doc/?o=tS&doc_id=18095&v=61 , so some editing to that list was required,with a massive addition of camping, cooking, winter and waterproof gear..

Like always, our go to gear is all Decathlon,cause its economical, dependable, easily available and works perfectly for entry level expedition trips like ours..:).However, we tried just that lil bit to keep our gear light, but its still heavy for normal standards..eg. our ultralight trekking tent for 3 is 3.4kg! lol :), sleeping bags are super bulky n heavy at 1.6kg or so...anyway, we take what we have and is easily available,that's always the mantra..

For the stove and solar panel, we went for MSR whisperlite universal and Anker for ease of use and reliability, didn't go for goal zero as i hate to pay for brand labels.....both items procured by a friend from US..big thank you.. 

Its quite difficult to find good gear here in India and if you do ,then is mostly overpriced...it gets even harder for us here in Bir without a reliable courier service..

For the back packs, we will be using what we already  have,Meenu is carrying a 65liter Quechua and me a 80 liter ATI Tahoe..nothing fancy...

Next is testing the set up, stove ,packs, tent etc...

currently this process is in progress and stuff seems to be working quite well...

We did a short camping trip just last week and were quite pleased how swift we were with our set up speed i.e. waterproofing our packs and other stuff scattered at the camp, pitching up the tent, 10liters of back up water for cooking n cleaning filled in the bladder,fire wood collected for camp and tucked in under our ponchos aganist rain and a quick temproary night shelter set up for eddie(dog)..

We didn't have a choice but to do this at lighting speed because there was a storm cloud brewing right over our head...our paragliding experience certainly helps us both in assessing weather conditions fairly easy...

while we were nicely tucked in our tents to weather the storm(howling winds and hail n rain)Eddie was getting mothered under his shelter, which for sure was not meant for such conditions..hence his face had become long with endless shivering :)...this made us feel very guilty and we thought it was not right to put him out there in this state..so we assessed the weather to check if it was worthwhile hanging around for the weather to clear up, cauz for sure we couldn't continue into the night with Eddie wet n cold..basis our assessment, we decided to break camp and go back home..next challenge was to wrap everything up in pouring rain under the tent outer skin without getting wet...and were happy to execute it flawlessly .. :), so all in all a very good practice day..





Finally on reaching home, there was no regret, we had taken the right decision for us and mainly Eddie, as it continued to rain into the night..

oh yes, just a couple of weeks ago i had an emergency paragliding landing in the back mountains here in Dauladhar range (Himalayas), while this was in all in all a very serious adventure, i got some required training with some serious hiking for almost two days, carrying a paragliding kit on my back :)





Anyway,coming back to the upcoming trip, below is our rough route,starting from Copenhagen and ending at Helsinki....and of course therz loads of action on the way :) Eg..we are volunteering at the ekstreme sports festival in Voss Norway( https://ekstremsportveko.com ) , and then hitchhiking along the coast to the epic beauty of the lofoten islands(artik circle),then on to the Swedish lap lands and to Stockholm from where we take a ferry to Helsinki and try and make a small loop in Finland..



Next few steps into the prep are making flags of Norway,Sweden and Finland,this should make it a touch easier to hitch a ride as per experienced hitchhikers and hitchwiki.org ,so got those made at a local tailor shop..nicely done, three in one, later can be converted into a pillow case..all of it under 3$..



Next on the practice agenda is a week long mountain trek to the Kullu valley in the Himalayas, so some more training, conditioning and gear testing..

stay tuned here for more info and photoz on that...

p.s. Eddie,hez a 10yr old friends lab from the city ,now adopted by us for his old age,that's his long face again..play time :)