Planning Backpacking Tog Trip - Location & Gear Trips

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lcolclough

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Lianne
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Have only been back from Asia 6 months but am itching to get away on another trip.

This time I want to take all my gear with me and get loads images. I'm planning to go next Summer I think but can't make mind up where to go and was hoping you might be able to give some tips on where you've had great photo trips.

Specifically I'm looking at Africa , South America, or India.

Would be gratefull of any advice on
- great locations you've been to
- safety (walking around with camera gear on show)
- people's responsiveness with having pic taken
- general tips on travelling with photo gear

Know I'm asking a lot but whatever responses I do get, I would consolidate and post back.

Thanks in advance!!! :thumbs:
 
I would certainly recommend south India, ie Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Karnataka. The typical small group tour itinerary is shown here:

http://www.explore.co.uk/Explore/UI/Dossier/2008Dossiers/DS.pdf

but obviously staying longer in each of the places on this tour, plus adding various others in, would be a very reasonable starting interary.

Photographically it's superb. The local people are very friendly to the British, English is very widely spoken, everyone likes being photographed and the food is predominantly vegetarian because it's the Hindu rather than Muslim heartland.
 
Thanks that's great. Although much more "commercial" if can call it that, I went to Goa a few years ago and loved it.


It's looking more likely that my trip will be India then up to Nepal and Tibet now. Maybe Bhutan also if I get in!

We'll see.
Thanks!!!
 
Nepal is a fantastic photographic experience - mountainous scenery, temples, people - often all 3 at once! We walked the Annapurna circuit (not a trivial endeavour but certainly achievable by anyone with reasonable walking fitness) and it was an amazing place to be. Tibet, Bhutan etc are by all accounts equally great.

I would also highly recommend Central and South America - a whole bunch of mountains again, plus the people many of whom wear bright "national costume" everyday. The Inka trail & sacred valley, lake titicaca and the salar de uyuni are all photographers dreams, as are mayan ruins and guatemalan people. And there's loads more there I haven't (yet) seen...

Most of the time when travelling I walked around with a camera in my hand and spare lenses etc in my backpack (only in some southern africa cities last year have I put a padlock on the zip!), with no issues - occasionally people you photograph look for money, but most often a meeting of eyes and a nod is all that is needed.

On longer trips dust on the sensor can be a delight you only see when you get home, leading to lots of PP, so take care when changing lenses (camera pointing down, power off, ideally out of the breeze etc) and occasionally bang off a couple of shots of blue sky at high F number and then zoom in on screen to check for dust and use a blower or other cleaning kit if required to remove it (lots of threads on TP on methods and kit).

I dropped a lens at the sun gate on the Inka trail once - I was so pleased that I had a skylight filter on it as that took the impact and broke and the lens was fine, so I'd advocate using one! Also, spare batteries and memory cards are cheap and not heavy, so I carry a pile - you often can't rely on electricity and it would be a pain to run out of battery! For not much you can get battery chargers that run of vehicle cigarette lighters - see ebay. Great if you're doing a truck based trip and generally come with a mains plug too. I also try and make sure that as early as possible I have at least 2 copies of any photo - be it back up to my MP3, a storage device or to CD (some people also use their flickr or picasso, but if you shoot lots and/or raw that uses a lot of upload time and not everywhere has speedy connections!). I keep these back-ups in a separate bag from my memory cards or have even posted copies home - backing up is a religion for many at home and frankly when travelling the odds of loss or theft are higher and you could lose days/weeks of pictures, so it is worth it!

HTH
Dean
 
Lots of great tips there, thanks! It's so difficult to choose when so many fantastic places to go too. I will have a look at the Annapurna Trek though, did some trekking in Thailand and the scenery was truly breathtaking.

You mention backing up religiously. During my last trip I had an adapter which connected to the ipod allowing upload of images. Unfortunately it didn't work and drained the life out of my ipod battery. I resorted to copying images to CD but once home found most of my trek and also Angkor *** had been corrupted.

Next time I think will take a external hard drive!!!

Thanks!
 
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