At all events I shall probably have to return here in two months,[40] but such a journey for myself and two servants in such a region requires extensive preparations, and I have brought all my own travelling "dodges" into requisition, with a selection of those of other people.
It is considered desirable to carry stores from Isfahan for forty days, except flour and rice, which can be obtained a week's march from here. At the British Legation I was kindly supplied with many tins of preserved meat, and milk, and jam, and besides these I am only taking a quantity of Edwards' Desiccated Soup, portable and excellent, twelve pounds of tea, and ten pounds of candles. The great thing in planning is to think of what one can do without. Two small bottles of saccharin supply the place of forty pounds of sugar.
Two _yekdans_ contain my stores, cooking and table utensils and personal luggage, a waterproof bag my bedding, and a divided packing-case, now empty, goes for the flour and rice. Everything in the _yekdans_ is put up in bags made of the coarse cotton of the country. The tents and tent-poles, which have been socketed for easier transport on crooked mountain paths, and a camp-bed made from a Kashmiri pattern in Tihran, are all packed in covers made from the gunny bags in which sugar is imported, and so are double sets of large and small iron tent-pegs.
Presents for the "savages" are also essential, and I have succeeded in getting 100 thimbles, many gross of small china buttons which, it is said, they like to sew on children's caps, 1000 needles, a quantity of Russian thread, a number of boxes with mirror tops, two dozen double-bladed knives, and the same number of strong scissors, Kashmir _kamarbands_, gay handkerchiefs for women's heads, Isfahan printed "table-cloths," dozens of bead bracelets and necklaces, leather purses and tobacco pouches, and many other things.
I take three tents, including a _shuldari_, five feet square, and only weighing ten pounds. My kit is reduced to very simple elements, a kettle, two copper pots which fit into each other, a frying pan, cooking knife and spoon, a tray instead of a table, a chair, two plates, a teacup and saucer, a soup plate, mug, and teapot, all of course in enamelled iron, a knife, fork, and two spoons. This is ample for one person for any length of time in camp.