Was one of the questions we were commonly asked in the Andes. Conscious as we are of the long stretches we’ll be pushing our bikes this trip in the Himalaya, we assiduously weighed all gear pre-departure on Mrs F’s kitchen scales to eliminate unnecessary luxuries.&nbsp Being armed with this information didn’t prevent some strange looking choices being made – like cutting all labels out of clothes, saving a whopping 15g each, then still packing a 30m rope – but eventually we settled on the packing list below: (Non gear geeks take a look at the photo, but stop reading now!)

So far in India we’ve only been asked how much the bikes cost, and ‘what does this do?’ (yanking hard on the gear levers), but we look forward to being able to provide very accurate answers when the inevitable ‘how much does it weigh?’ question arises. Though it’d probably be easier to just say ‘way too much’.