basha/tarp
Good evening Ted, thanks for your other posts, always some useful/ironical input.
I took a tarp and hammock to India last year, I should have taken a small tent too. To sleep in the desert there is a small problem with sand creeping into every opening, lying unsheltered at ground level you get whatever is available. The hammock was useless, if there are two trees nearer each other than fifty kilometres then there are people around, and they are usually gawpers – just stand and stare at you, or worse, try and steal your gear. The only place I used the hammock a tent would have been more suitable.
There is a problem using the bikes as basha supports too, you don’t want the bike falling on you if the ground gives way, or a gust of wind from the wrong direction transforms the tarp to a spinnaker. Maybe peg the line beyond the bike, so the machine is just to give height, not an anchor.
Your set-up sounds good, probably optimal if your inner tent can be erected independently under the basha for ventilation and mosquito protection. Saw you are after Malarone, never used it myself, but it comes well recommended. I had it with me to take if I caught malaria, as I was going through so many zones with different prophylactic medication. Take some “anti-histamine” for bug bites that swell-up too much, also handy as first-aid for poisonous bites too, f.eks scorpion.
Try Google “tarp camping”, enough there to keep you off the streets for a long time. “FAQ-tarp shelters” is for psyko origami freaks, too much of a good thing maybe in real life. For me in Nordic forest, with a lack of flat, dry tent pitches the hammock/tarp works. Above tree line and on snow the tent is more practical.
Safe journey in Africa, it must be the biggest trip.
Peter, in Oslo
|