So I'm soon gonna write a summary about what sort of stuff we have brought with ourselves, 'cause who knows our numerous times rethinked packlist might be useful for other travellers too. But for now here is a short list about those trekking equipments we've got from Mountex (the biggest Hungarian outdoors company).
On one of those right-before-the-start days while we were having breakfast, my friend Balazs Latorczai very kindly post-advised me that I should have recorded my five-minute happy-dance around the tent we got cause I could have saved some marketing expense for Mountex as this could have been played uncut in the TVShop :) Nothing surprising in it, very easy to be overenthusiastic about way-too-good stuff.
What is weird for me is that although the things Mountex sponsoring us with are painfully expensive, after playing around with them for a while I've become pretty certain that using these for months and months I won't ever buy any sort of second bests as these are simply and utterly too good.
Ok, this is just my first impression (well second... my first was something like "What the hell costs a hundred dollars on a T-shirt?!?"). Will turn out in the long run for how many weeks/months these will endure and how useful and functional are these in reality.
So let's name The Things, shall we, below is a short list of them:
Tent. MSR Hubba Hubba. A miracle really. It looks like this when a homeless guy tries to steal our vodka from it:
I set it up in my living room, it hardly fit there. This is a 2.1 kg tent (with all the piles and pegs and case included), and it's enormous - considering it's for only 2 persons. An average 2 persons tent is usually 2.5-3 kg, and if I lie down in it I'd strech it to the limits. But in this one not only I can strech myself out pretty comfortably but it's gigantic vertically as well and you can moon along in it easily. It took roughly 30 seconds to put together the complicated looking tent frame and practically it's weightless (must be some sort of Aluminium alloy), just like the pegs which look so good - I mean as good as pegs could look - that I don't even want to hit them with a stone. It's sort of a design tent :)
So if someone asked me why such tent cost $500 I wouldn't have any clue, would have probably thought that carrying 200 gramms less weight for an additional $100 is only important to the really obsessed ones, but must say not at all. Then again, will see how much time it takes for it to be torn to two.
Clothes. I've got Icebreaker things, to be more exact 1 jumper, 2 T-shirts and 2 pairs of underwear. The T-shirts are like this:
These look awesome, light as a feather (one T-shirt is only 96 gramms unlike a normal T-shirt weighting approx. 200 gramms), feels very comfy wearing them and there is a bar code on each of these so anyone can look up which New-Zeelandese sheep's wool was used for it. This is pretty funny stuff :) There is only one problem with them, I've already lost 50% of it (i.e. one of the two). Will find it soon I'm sure :)
I've got trekking shoes and 2 awesome trousers which legs can be zipped off. The shoes look like this, will have a good use of them in the Indian jungle:
We have also got for bargain price 2 Hannah Summer sleeping bags and I've got a pair of Teva sandals which look like this:
Well, almost, mine is brown but I couldn't find a picture of such.
All stuff we got look really awesome, I'll write about their functionalities as well, just for now let's just leave this short entry as it is, a tribute to Mountex, how supportive and great the guys were helping me with all these things. :)
Funny story a végére: Gödöllő szélén a benzinkútnál szinte rögtön felvett minket a Mountex egyik partnercégének munkatársa (vezetője, tulajdonosa?), Weiner Csaba, aki bár Gyöngyösnél lefordult, de hihetetlen jóarc volt, és egy kúton átpasszolt az egyik barátjához, [...] Zsolthoz, aki mindössze 1 km-rel előtte ment a kocsival, és ő elvitt egész egy Mezőkeresztes-környéki benzinkútig :) Ő szintén a túrabizniszben utazik, a Nomád Sport vezetője. (Raktam linket, nehogy valaki azt mondja, hogy részrehajló vagyok a Mountex felé...) Szóval meglepő koincidencia volt épp velük utazni. :)
Funny story to finish with: at the petrol station just after 30 kms from our start an employee (or CEO/owner...?) of one of Mountex's partner company picked us up almost immediately, and when he left the highway he passed us to his friend who was driving only 1 km ahead of him and he drove us a lot further :) And he is also in the outdoor business, he is the CEO of Nomad Sport, another Hungarian outdoor company. So it indeed was a surprising coincidence travelling with them. :)
(translated by Dóri - thanks a lot! :)
