I was recently fortunate enough to visit the country of Nepal for five weeks. The whole trip was amazing as you’d expect, but the only time you want to hear about someone else’s experiences in another country are if they’re family, your mate or if you fancy them, and I’m assuming that you don’t qualify for any of those. But don’t worry I’m not going to babble on about the magnificence of the views, or the kindness of the people, I’m going to talk about their outdoor gear shops.
Prior to the trip I was obviously very excited about the plethora of new places, food and culture I was going to experience as well as being far away from the diabolical summer weather we were having in the UK. But an embarrassing amount of my excitement was fuelled by the prospect of getting my teeth sunk into the outdoor gear available to purchase. With Nepal being famous for trekking due to the largest mountain on the planet residing within it there was sure to be all sorts of waterproof and down-filled big coats on offer, and I was hoping they’d be cheap. There was and they were.
Upon arriving in Kathmandu I was met with reams of shopfronts and I’m not joking when I say about 50% of them bore text similar to BEST YAK TREK or GOLDEN HIMALAYA OUTDOOR. Almost vibrating with excitement from seeing the brightly coloured sleeping bags hang from the exterior of the shop, I began to psyche myself up for all of the vintage Patagonia and North Face I was about to get my hands on.
Upon stepping into the first shop I began to thumb through the rails of clothes but immediately something was off, Patagonia was spelt Patagania and The North Face nuptse’s all looked like they were one bad experience with a doorway from turning into a pile of feathers. The lot of it was fugazi. Thinking that this was probably a one-off I decided to walk three feet down the road and into the next trekking shop, only to find it had all the same kinds of products and none of them were genuine.
Over the course of the next few weeks I decided to mission into every trekking shop that I saw, not only to look for authentic items but also just to browse the rails of fake garb, some of which were pretty convincing and looked to be far better quality than a large proportion of the stuff you see in Decathlon. I don’t know how many trekking shops I went into on the trip, but I estimate it to be at least 50, and very few of them had any genuine items in stock.
Of the handful of genuine items I did see, they were priced even higher than they would be in the UK, as were all the products inside the real North Face & Mountain Hardwear outlet stores, which must make their sole income from wealthy tourists that leave their thermal socks at home.
Like myself, the locals were also keen on the fake produce, observing three blokes all wearing Arkteryx shells riding the same scooter is not an uncommon sight if you hang around one of Kathmandu’s busy streets long enough. After chatting to the Nepali family I was staying with about the counterfeit culture in their country they explained that although the gear is fake, it’s relatively alright quality, very inexpensive and actually somewhat weather resistant. Important attributes considering Nepal is the poorest country in South Asia with a three-month monsoon season.
Some of the more interesting spots I encountered on my crusade was a genuine ’90s RAB jacket, perhaps a British tourist traded it in for 13 pairs of fOakley sunglasses and a fake North Face A5 T-shirt, which is strange because A5 is North Face’s not-that-known-about rock climbing range from the ’90s. From speaking to the men and women who ran the shops they seemed to think that no one wanted North Face anymore and it was all about Arc’teryx now, leaving them with an abundance of stock of the outdoor brand – resulting in slashed prices, you could get some ‘down’ jackets for about £6.
I wish that I’d taken more photos of the peculiar and out there items, despite the NO PHOTO sign featuring in almost every shop. Now the big question is, did I buy anything? The answer is very positively yes and I’ve yet to have any issues with the items. I purchased two ‘down’ gilets, that actually feel like the feathers could be from a duck, not a seagull, a couple of button-up shirts, a T-shirt and a fanny pack.
I believe the general rule of thumb for tourists indulging in Nepal’s counterfeit outdoor gear market is to not buy stuff that your life depends on. So if you’ve read this and are planning to go up Everest in a £6 down jacket you buy when you land in Kathmandu, you might want to rethink that plan. Otherwise, if you do find yourself in the very beautiful part of the world, make sure to take in the scenery, enjoy the food, chat to the people and go inside every GOLDEN YAK OUTDOOR shop you see.
