Big Ticket Items

For Sumon, the trip has in a way already started. He left the comforts of home Sunday morning for...the comforts of Snow's home in Massachusetts.

There's still a lot of work to be done, so we decided to use this last week for some of the big tickets items. Snow had found a pack for Sumon at a great price, so she picked it up for him. It's a great pack, definitely a keeper. She had also found a SteriPen, which is a cool little water purfier. We haven't heard good things about the state of the drinking water in a lot of the countries we're going to, so a good water purifier was an absolute must. We were originally thinking of iodine tablets, but we'd need a lot of them, which could have gotten expensive and unwieldy, and we didn't want to turn orange by the end of the trip. We researched this SteriPen pretty extensively, and we saw a lot of good reviews, so we decided to give it a shot. We bought one, but we had to exchange it as it was defective. The second one seemed to work a lot better, or at least as described. Of course, since we lack any lab equipment, the only way to really test out if it works or not is to actually use it and see if we get sick. We're pretty confident that it works just fine, but cross your fingers for us anyway. The cool thing about the SteriPen is that it comes with rechargeable batteries and a solar charger, so all we really need now to keep this thing working is the sun.

Sumon also decided to get a new pair of shoes. He was worried about his feet having problems in 120 degree heat, so he decided to carry a pair of sandals along with his sneakers. We stopped off at REI to look at sandals, but the sales associate there talked him out of getting them, as she didn't think they'd offer the right kind of support for backpacking. She instead pointed him in the direction of trail running shoes, particularly a pair that breathe better than standard hiking boots and wick sweat and moisture away. The shoes were pretty comfortable, and seemed like they'd do a good job, so Sumon went with those instead.

Now, before you think that this is going to turn into another post about Sumon and his clothes, we also picked up permethrin from REI. Permethrin is a chemical that repels insects. We spray the stuff on our clothes and mosquito netting to keep the little buggers away. Combined with DEET, which is sprayed onto exposed skin, this will hopefully keep us safe from malaria-carrying mosquitoes and other insects. Speaking of disease prevention, Sumon's father, who is thankfully a physician, was able to provide us with a lot of the medication we'll need. We'll be taking doxycyclene almost everyday for malaria, and we also have a few courses of several antibiotics, just in case. Again, cross your fingers...

Some of you have pointed out the lack of pictures on this blog. Well fine, you've got us there. The blog isn't much to look at right now, but once we get our camera, which is the final big ticket item we need before we leave, you won't be able to escape our happy and delightful faces. We're hoping to get that tomorrow. That should put an end to the major shopping. There are still a few odds and ends that we'll need to pick up, such as sunblock, a money belt for Snow, and maybe a few other things. After that we pack, and then we're off!