Sea to Summit Gear

28th August, 2025

Testing it out at Thupwang Homestay before the trek

In the recent past I bought a few gear from Sea to Summit India. They are a poncho (this was bought before the Goechala trek but never got a chance to use it before R2T), an air mattress and a two-person tent. These were all bought before the epic Rumtse to Tso Moriri (R2T) trek in Ladakh in August 2025. I call it epic (I normally never describe my own achievement with such self congratulating adjectives) because it is by far the longest trek in my life and also perhaps the toughest for me so far and I was very unsure before the trek if it would be completed. 

I used all these items during the trek and was reasonably happy with their performance. I will first come to the most expensive and the most favourite of my gears so far. The Telos TR2 Plus tent. I used it on the trail on all the six nights when we camped. I will describe the set up first. 

Incidentally I sold my Marmot tent to one Indrajit Basu of Howrah on 13th September, 2025 at Rs 5000. I shall write about that tent later in a different post.

Here is a little walkaround of the tent

First you lay out the ground sheet on the floor and peg the six corners lightly. The Big Foot covers even the vestibule areas on either side of the tent in a triangle. So you need six pegs. The pegs that S2S gives with the tent look very dainty (in fact in Leh I borrowed a few robust pegs from Tashi just in case but they were never really necessary) but as I discovered in the field they are pretty competent. Of course the ground I pitched the tent every afternoon was soft and not rocky. 

Next you lay the actual tent on the ground sheet in proper alignment with the ground sheet. The tent is broader at the head end compared to the leg end and so is the ground sheet. So you have to align properly - broad to broad and narrow to narrow. You place the hooks with the green tabs at the narrower end and the grey ones at the broader side (that is where I keep my head because I need the extra space nex to me for all my this and that like the spects or watch etc). 

Then comes the task of setting up the poles. The entire pole set is integrated into one piece, unlike other dome tents that have two main poles that you keep in an X orientation and hook up from the corners. This makes managing the S2S pole sections a bit tricky. There are three hubs from where the poles go out in different directions. The tent poles are also colour coordinated. You match the green to green and grey to grey and then insert the ends into the grommets. You might need to bend the poles here and think it might break but no. They don't break.

Next you hold the central ridge line (it has some other technical word) pole in a Y shape looking upwards and hook the two sides of the tent body. This Y shape gives the tent extra head room inside. This hooking up is a bloody heavy duty task. You have to pull the loops really hard to engage them. And do it before hooking the tent body up to the poles. Once the central ridge line is set then you can hook up the tent to the poles. Now the tent body is up. 

The bare body tent only before putting the rain fly.

Next you lay the fly sheet over keeping the colour-coded alignment in mind. Again you have to hook the two sides of the tent to the central ridge line. Yet another tough task. But pull really hard and it will engage. There is one other step that I did only once. Engage the velcro tabs to the pole and then engage the four corners to the tent body - again colour coordinated. 

Now peg the corners properly and you are set. If you have never set up the Telos tent this may not make any sense to you. Actually I wrote this out for myself, lest I forget. There is a good video from S2S that I saw several times before the first set up. 

I will perhaps do a video of the set up later. Meanwhile here is a link to a video of the tent set up on the Rumtse Tso Moriri trail. 

Headline Features 

The main thing that strikes you about the tent is its compact size and light weight. They pack the tent in two main stuff sacks. One for the fly and another for the main tent. Yes you do stuff the tent and the fly in, which can be tricky to do with frozen fingers in the morning. It is doubly tough if the fly is wet from the previous night's rain.  If you count the ground sheet that is a third packet and the poles go in one other nylon tube. Apparently this can be hung up with your head torch inside to light up the tent. But I have a Black Diamond torch for that which is quite adequate. And I never used the pole bag as a light. 

And of course there is the small pouch for the tent pegs. These weigh around 2 Kg and you can distribute the weight in two backpacks for a fair share of the load. I kept them all in the duffel bag and off loaded it for the mules to carry. But I am an old man. If I was younger I'd carry it in my sack. On a bike packing trip you can tie them up on the two forks of the bike (but careful about the road dirt). 

I am glad that I was carrying a very thin dry sack (again S2S). I used it for storing the rain fly and the ground sheet when they were wet in the morning, so that they wouldn't make my other stuff in the duffel wet. 

There is a zipped vent in the ceiling for letting the heat out. I used it while making tea inside the tent (it is a very unsafe practice and one should use extreme caution while doing it, if at all).

My verdict

If you can afford it just go for it. The space inside is fabulous, particularly the vertical space. The tent was tested in high wind and heavy downpour. It held out fine against them. The Plus version has a heavier duty floor for better water resistance. 

The pitching might seem a bit intimidating at first but it's okay. If I can do it in less than ten minutes you should be able to do it in five perhaps. In fact by the fifth day I got better and faster at it. But the main clincher is its packability and light weight. I also love the understated green colour. It merges so well with the green environment that you find in most camp sites.

One last word about Sea to Summit and their customer service. I had bought a dry sack from Amsterdam some seven years ago when S2S was not even available in India. Recently I found its seam tape inside had come unstuck and its waterproofness was gone. I asked S2S if they could help me repair it. They said send it to our Delhi office and we will see what we can do about it. Within a week they sent me a new dry sack, which is actually better than the original I had. Completely free of charge.

I was simply dumbfounded by this kind gesture. They have replaced another dry back pack when its seam tape came loose after one trek. In fact they gave me a much more expensive bag as a replacement without any extra charge. 

The Poncho

Sea to Summit has two ponchos. I bought the cheaper one. This is a poncho cum tarp. I have used it only as a poncho during the R2T trek. It proved to be very competent. I did not sweat at all and was totally dry. It is large enough to accomodate my backpack. I have yet to use it as a tarp. I have seen several videos and am reasonably sure I can quite use it as one. But I will need shorter guy lines for it. I have to do a few trials before trying to use it on the field. Problem is if I wear it as a poncho I cannot have the guylines hanging from the guy out points. I will look a bit crazy and funny with guy lines hanging out from various corners of the tarp.

I have stored it spread out in a plastic sheet, hoping to add more life to it. This I am doing with my tent, rainfly and sleeping mat also. They are all spread out inside transparent plastic sheets (essentially plastic tubes).

The Sleeping Mat

The sleeping mat. A luxury I thought I would gift myself

I bought the lightest sleeping mat from S2S (Ultralight Air Sleeping Mat). It is a beautiful lemony yellow mat (though in the picture it looks almost orange). It packs into the size of a 1 litre water bottle or perhaps smaller. It does not offer much thermal insulation, which is fine. The light weight is a priority and so is the relatively chepaer price. They have a more thermal version of this same model but it is heavier with a larger pack size.

The mat is inflated by its own stuf sac/bag which you have to blow into a baloon like thing and then the air is routed into the bag. It takes a few blows into the bag to fill it up and then three or four bag full of air to pump up the mat properly. I was not too sure how I would do it at high altitude and that too after a long trek. But it was not a problem at all. It takes a few minutes only and does not leave me tired. 

I will make a video of it later explaining how it is done. Very simple. 

The cushy feeling of the bag is very nice to sleep or sit on. It is an expensive option, relative to the other cheaper options that are there for spreading on the floor but packability is the main reason why I bought it for more than 12K. The other options are much bulkier. I felt extremely cold one night while sleeping on it on the R2T trail. But at that particular camp site we were very close to the river and there was water almost two feet below the ground. So we were all virtually sleeping on water. This mat is not equipped to handle that kind of cold, which is fine. The ones that offer good thermal insulation cost upwards of Rs 20K and pack much larger than my bag. 

If I ever have to sleep regularly on glaciers or snow then this bag will of course not be of much help. But I don't foresee too much of that in the foreseeable future. If I have to, I will put a foam sheet (borrowed from the agency) below this mat. That should suffice.

Packing the mat is also quite easy. The folds are quite prominent and it's easy to fold it up along the lines. I don't think it can be randomly stuffed. I folded it every day and rolled it in. It was very easy to do it. Quite happy with this purchase though it is quite expensive. 

Sea to Summit also has a luxury pillow to go with this mat. In fact they have several models. But I gave it a miss. A because of its price and B because of the extra space and weight it will take in my bag. I keep my under wear and other hosiery items in a very thin S2S dry bag which doubles up as my pillow. And I have never had a problem sleeping with this. If necessary I also put my down jacket in that to make it even more comfortable. You might think that's a negligible space or weight. But such small items add up. 

I have often wondered if at home I should sleep in the tent. Because on treks I sleep a lot more peacefully than at home. Every morning I wake up feeling fresh and ready for the day from the word go. That is hardly ever the case at home. So I wonder .....