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Cooking Gear Recommendations for hiking and trekking in India

There are not many options for good quality, compact camping stoves available in India.

And there's a plenty of cheap but unreliable and potentially dangerous stoves. Those that are reliable are too bulky in my opnion.

Camping stoves available in India

  • Primus Essential Trail stove. [Available on Amazon India] I haven't used this one. But I own a Primus multi-fuel stove (Omni) and have used a friend's Primus Mimer, which is very similar in design to the essential stove.
  • 360 degrees Furno stove. Available on Flipkart. I have used a friend's stove and he uses it regularly with his Mocha pot. Pretty reliable. (I am not sure if this product as any affiliation with SeaToSummit, because they don't sell stoves in other regions.)
  • Firemaple Hornet 2 [Available via AlpineHiker.in]. I haven't used it but has good reviews on Amazon US. [Note about AlpineHiker.in: I have bought multiple products from them and I am acquianted with the hiker who runs it. Trusted website to buy gear.]
  • Please don't buy the cheap, unreliable, dangerous and bulky stoves! I have a really bad experience with those. If these stoves are out of your budget, please consider learning how to build a wood-fueled fire to cook in the outdoors.
  • ❌ Also don't buy the Coleman FyreLite stove. Because the plastic part melts and fuses with the pot supports and doesn't let them fold. If it wasn't for this dumb flaw it would have been a decent choice.

Stove recommendations from abroad

  • Soto Amicus. [Amazon US] Super compact. Meant for small pots (coffee/single meal). Best pick for 1-2 hikers looking for am untralight stove. I own one.
  • Soto Windmaster. [Amazon US] Meant for slightly bigger pots. Slightly bigger. Pot supports are detachable. Similar or cheaper in price as compared to the MSR Pocket Rocket Deluxe. Best wind resistance in the list. I own one.
  • MSR Pocket Rocket 2. [Amazon US] Pretty good. Several friends have this one or the older model. Doesn't have a built-in ignitor.
  • MSR Pocket Rocket Deluxe. [Amazon US] Pretty good. Has ignitor, but ignitor is not reliable. More efficient than Soto Windmaster.

Camping Utensils available in India

  • You don't need to buy utensils meant specifically for camping. You can just carry stuff from your own kitchen (just match the utensil sizes to your stove supports). One pot/pan and one spork and a bowl/tiffin for each person should be sufficient. Among friends, we sometimes optimise by eating directly from the pot, so we don't need a personal bowl/tiffin. But tiffins are handy for carrying leftovers on multi-day trips.
  • There are a few pots options available at Decathlon. I personally choose stainless steel over aluminium. I like the pot in this set. Slightly better than home utensils because of the foldable handle.
  • Ultralight Titanium pots are available in India via AlpineHiker. I bought a 1600 ml capacity pot from them and it's at par with the quality of the 750 ml Toaks pot I bought from the US, and the alpine hiker pot is cheaper. 750 ml pot is for 1 person/meal. 1600 ml is good for upto 2-3 people.
  • I also like and carry the foldable titanium spork for how light and compact it is.

Fuel canisters

  • Any of the screw-on type butane-propane fuel blend from Hans Paramount or Coleman are fine.
  • ❌ Don't buy the incompatible and proprietary cans from Campingaz (for the stoves recommended above)

Questions?

Reach out to me at shreshthmohan@hey.com