Tibet Tourism Info > Facts For The Visitor > Equipment
Equipment
This section is intended to provide details about various items one may to equip oneself for during a visit to Tibet, including electronics, camping items, clothing, and other items. In contrast to the Packing List, this offers more than a simple checklist and instead offers substantial details on each item.
Clothing
You will be best served by getting technical clothes, i.e. clothes that use technical material which is wrinkle-free, quick, drying, light, compact to pack, and stain resistant. Such clothing will come in handy on the road, and be easy to maintain. In general, you also want clothes that can be easily worn and taken off in layers, to cope with the way in which temperature rapidly changes in the course of a single day in Tibet. Also you should prioritize comfort over fashion! In general, the basic requirements simply involve a good, comfortable, pair of walking shoes comfortable pants, a set of long underwear, and a couple layers of light to heavy sweaters/fleece and a windproof jacket. There are plenty of clothing stores in Lhasa ranging over the fashionable, traditional, and trekking domains, but items in larger sizes may sometimes be difficult to find.
Hiking boots: should be water resistant and light weight so that you can easily carry them in your backpack if necessary, and so that if the weather turns hot in the afternoon they don't drag you down with weight. In addition, if you will be in rural areas, get hiking boots which cover your ankle since crossing streams and going through muddy roads will be likely. Unless you are doing some specialized travel to glaciers or climbing mountains, mountaineering boots are not necessary – though standard hiking boots can be very helpful in almost all contexts unless you are simply going to a few of the major cities.
Pants: field pants with zipped and multiple pockets, and also possibly zip off lower part to make shorts, are recommended. Jeans are heavy, and slow to dry, and are not recommended.
Toiletries
TBA.
Electronic Equipment
The most important electronic equipment bring is without doubt a camera, since Tibet is one of the most photogenic places you will ever visit. You may also want to bring a video camera, though keep it light. A laptop can come in great use if you want to catalog your images while you travel, do work, or whatever else you typically rely upon a laptop to do. The main consideration is keeping your luggage relatively light and compact, as well as minimizing delicate and expensive items that you have to constantly worry about in terms of theft and damage.
Also keep in mind that all electronic equipment must match the 220 voltage used in China, as well as have plugs that fit into Chinese wall sockets. While 220 V is common all over the world, the US relies upon 120 V - plugging such equipment into 220 V sockets will ruin them. However, most laptops and many other items may very well have automatic coverage of 120-220V and will thus work fine. If you absolutely have to have a piece of equipment which is 110 V only, then you will have to bring a "transformer" that converts 220 V electricity to 110 V electricity for the item to use as such. However, fitting the plugs into Chinese outlets is another issue, though in most cases, a US plug with its two flat prongs will fit into a Chinese outlets; in other cases, a simple small plug adapter that has two round prongs will do he trick. See 
http://kropla.com/electric.htm for more information on this topic.
For thirty dollars or so, you can get a small light box which plugs into the cigarette lighter of a car to give you plugs that you can use for your equipment while driving (such as sold by Black and Decker). You can also buy a much smaller adapter from your computer, etc. but the disadvantage if that even if they have tips they may not cover all your electronic devices you may want to recharge or run within the car.
Cameras
Digital cameras have become the norm, but keep in mind that you need a way to store all those images you are taking since cards rapidly fill up. You could buy many memory cards, and do it that way. Otherwise you need a computer to offload the memory card contents to a hard drive or DVDs, so you can reuse the cards to take new pictures. There are also special hard drives that directly interface with your memory card to avoid a computer, though they are somewhat expensive. You can try searching for "digital wallet", "date storage wallet", "memory card reader", or other such keywords to find a specific model. In short, they are portable self-sufficient hard drives that don't require computers and have an interface that allows you to connect memory cards. The questions to ask are how big the hard drive is, what memory card formats they support, and how long the battery power lasts. In the summer of 2007, a few brands we noticed as "SmartDisk PhotoBank", and "Wolverine Datea FlashPac 7-in-1 Memory Card Reader" or its more expensive version "Wloverine Data Flash Pro Portable Storage Drive". You could also try to use a portable video player, but you have to make sure there is a way the device's storage capacity can be linked directly to the memory card without using a computer as an intermediary.
Camping & Rough Accommodations Equipment
You only need camping equipment if you are going camping, since any town of sizable extent will have hotels.In addition, if you going as part of an organized tour, the company may provide you much if not all of what you need, so check with them first. You may, however, want to bring some items even there to cope with hotels that have crude facilities. Hence this section provides guidance both both situations.
Food and Drinks
You may or may not find these things locally and if you can pack it, bring it! Of course part of the pleasure of traveling in new areas is exploring new cuisines, so don't pack up your suitcase trying to eat like you eat at home. However, if you have a favorite drink or snackfood that is easy to transport in packets, such little creature comforts can make all the difference on a trying day where you go through an extended stretch without access to decent food, or you just need a little burst of home.
Vitamins: bring vitamins for any lengthy trip, since you will need the extra nutrition as you often have to settle for less than ideal food or skip meals on extended trips.
Packet drinks: if you have a favorite tea or drink mix which is sold in easy to transport packets, bring them! Examples might be a favorite tea in bags, or even a prepared mix with tea and dry milk.
Compact food: the same goes for dried or compact things like power bars. Chinese and Tibetan breakfasts outside of big hotels, and often even in big hotels, is not what you would expect from an American or European diet, so you may want to bring a comfort food like oatmeal if it is easy to carry. Chinese stores typically have a variety of breakfast cereal type things in packets, and decent oatmeal is not that hard to find.
Miscellaneous Issues