It took around 6 months of preparations to be ready. First were the obvious - accommodation, car rental, flight tickets. Next - set-up optimization. It was a first of my trips where I have invested significant time in preparations and optimization of equipment - with the main goal of making it lightweight and airline transportable. Still, it took 40kg of checked-in luggage and scope, camera, DSLR etc in hand-held luggage. This time, I have also carefully noted all my "lessons learned", describing what went well and what should be improved for future trips. As a result, I was able to shave a lot of weight for next astronomy trips.

Seen here is the mess created when running final "proof-testing" at home to make sure, that all components (mount, scope, camera, power supplies, cables, focusing, laptop etc) work together and no critical components are missing.