Thanks Kevin, this was the only time we hiked NOT in our Merrells, if we’d been heading home afterwards we would have bought a pukka pair, as it was we felt comfortable having our merrells as a backup in our packs 🙂

Sorry but I’m going to strongly disagree with one aspect of your otherwise enjoyable post ! Don’t buy fake boots.

After living 22 years living as an expat in China I always, *always* now buy the genuine article after having two pairs fail on local hikes (I’d never trust them anyway to multi-day international hikes). Imagine when you’re at 5,000m and -20C and your boots fail (this exact scenario happened to one partner on one of my trips).
Luckily I always have Duct Tape wrapped around my hiking poles for emergencies (so I don’t have to go into my bag for it and I don’t care about the aesthetics – ha!) and that managed to suffice until we got back down to Namche Bazaar.

You can check them all you want but when you’re putting 20-30K steps a day, on rock, on them if they are not well built they will fail (or poor build quality means they rub and give you very painful blisters spoiling the whole trek. You will then curse yourself for not paying an extra $100-150 for a pair of genuine mountain hiking boots.

Hi there Guy, your best bet would be to make contact with someone you trekked with or stayed with and ask them to help you. if it was legitimate branded gear then you’d be best trying to contact the brand and doing it that way. The alternatives are to find someone travelling there from your current location and do a deal with them.

The poles and waterproof trousers were bought as part of a bundle from Shonas – I haven’t got it broken down, but with all of it, I do remember thinking that it wasn’t expensive. The waterproof trousers were amazing, the open to the knee is superb. Since Nepal we’ve gone for z-type carbon poles (the ones at Shona we just went for cheap and cheerful), as they can now fit in my RTW backpack when we fy anywhere. The poles we bought at Shonas were heavy and did not fold/come apart. The light jacket I took with me from the UK, it was a cheap stowaway that cost me around US$10 equiv, and I used it for 3 years before the seams went, so I went back (it was from Go Outdoors in the UK) and bought the exact same jacket again… different colour of course!

Thanks for the great post. I’ll be sure to share it on my Twiter feed.

Hi there, sorry for the delay, I was going back through my notes to make sure that I had a full list for you.

I’m afraid I haven’t got a clue how you tell a Nepalese fake from a Chinese fake, all I can say is that we checked seams, looked at soles and generally tried to check the quality. All the gear we bought from Shonas was excellent. We still wear some of it today. The boots that we bought lasted until the end of the trek, although the soles were looking as though they might need help staying on the boots at the end.
We bought the following: Note that this is EACH – per person.
CLOTHES & BOOTS
Fake Salewa hiking boots (seriously comfortable – and I hate boots that protect my ankle, I usually find them unbearable! – and no blisters despite not wearing them in), thermal tops x 2, thermal bottoms x 2, 1 pair of hiking socks, 35 litre daypack, crampons, gaiters, waterproof trousers with zip to the knee, fleecy beanie hat, buff, head torch with spare batteries,.
TREKKING GEAR, HEAD TORCHES, WATER BOTTLES
We also bought tissues, toilet paper, solar charger, trekking pole (each), 2 packets of wet wipes, chocolate, candies and mints, cold remedy, suncream, superglue, notepad, widemouthed Nalgene bottle
Plus Nigel bought a thick zip-up fleece.
We paid US$260 in total for everything. Pretty much everything came from Shona’s apart from the boots, the solar charger and the candies.
I hope this is helpful – you can find the full list of what we bought in our TREK GEAR LIST post as well.

Can’t you share the list of items you bought with the prices you paid?