Gear Review

I packed well and my gear held up.
+ The Eagle Creek Cross Roads Convertible Pack was a good choice. It wheeled down the aisles of trains, fit in overhead compartments, squeezed through bus windows, never spilled its contents, easily converted to a backpack when we needed to hike 7 kilometers across the border from China to Nepal, and expanded to fit my tea and other souvenirs for the plan ride home.
+ North Face shirts, REI travel underwear, Columbia pants and sun shirt, REI trekking pants, Merrill XTR oxfords, Crocs -- no problems. I did wear out two of the shirts and threw them away.
+ Tilley Hat worked great at blocking sun. About a week ago while we were staying at a nice hotel in Delhi, I noticed it had gotten dirty with sunblock, sweat and dirt. It cleaned up easily with soap and a fingernail brush. Just yesterday, someone asked if he could take my photo with my hat on and then asked to borrow my hat and had me take his photo.
+ EMS packable rain jacket. I used it once as an outer layer at Everest and then lost it in a hotel room somewhere....
+REI down jacket, North Face fleece, LaFuma ultralight sleeping bag all worked great and kept me warm.
+ Photo Gear, Nikon D200 and accessories all worked fine. My Wolverines hard disk drives functioned at altitudes over 4,000 meters. 50mm f/1.4 lens added a whole new dimension for museums and temples. Never really used my filters. I like the photos I've taken with the 12-24mm lens and wish I had used it more, ditto for Bogen/RRS tripod and remote release. I'm really glad I took cleaning supplies for lenses, chamber and sensor. I had a "squiggly" on my sensor that hampered dozens of photos before I fixed it. If I hadn't cleaned the sensor, hundreds of photos would require touch-up. I probably should have cleaned chamber and sensor a second time.