Welcome Photoflex

The Digital Trekker would like to welcome Photoflex to our growing list of sponsors. Photoflex is a world leading manufacturer of lighting and studio equipment for the photographic, film, and video industries. Professionals of all specialities are using Photoflex products to produce exceptional results.

The folks of Photoflex have a great website, very helpful and full of tips and tricks. Check it out.

In other news. We are packing up our house as we get ready to leave Kashmir for England. It is going to be tough. You don’t live in a place for 13 years and leave with out some pain.

Yesterday morning our local power transformer blew up. This means no power for a long time. When a transformer blows it could take a month or two to get it repaired! What does this mean for us? It means packing our house in the coldest part of winter.

We are better off than most but it is still frustrating. We had just started packing the house in earnest. So now we pack in little or no light. When we want to stay warm we move into the hamum (ha’ mum). This is a room that the floor is heated with a fire (really just live coals, a fire burns too quick and waste wood). Ancient technology, but it keeps us warm. We have a generator but it is costly to run and can only give us light, we can’t run heaters off of it. We also have an inverter. This is a little gadget that inverts the power from two large truck batteries to light our small power saving florescent light bulbs so we can pack in the evening. When the batteries die we run the generator and recharge them, sort of a cycle of power. We also have some propane heaters. But the road into Kashmir is closed and propane is costly and hard to come by this time of year.

So, as I stated we are better of than others but it is going to get much colder as the days progress. The house will get colder and the refrigerator will defrost and all our food will have to be eaten or thrown out. Want to come over for a BBQ? We just might be packing with gloves on soon.