I always wanted a Photographer’s fantasy bag which can also be a laptop and trekking bag at the same time. A simple looking excellent piece of engineering which can fool many mundane eyes in crowd. I went through a lot of Bag literature like bagology. I also saw many mountain photographers videos on YouTube.

And then there was one kickstarter project company Shimoda designs which fed me enough for my bag requirements. I zeroed in with Shimoda Explorer 60L with two small core units(Blue nights). But despite of waiting for almost one year none my US friend arrived here. So I thought of ordering it from B & H.

I made an order of 419$ with 43$ shipping. But overnight I realized I will be levying a big chunk of Import duty on it.

But it was too late and then I explored an unknown world of import duty process. I will keep review of Bag in a different post, this article is for all those lame asses who didn’t know below things already and for others you may laugh at us, another day for travesty.

These points refer to order amount greater than 10k rupees.

• Remember while making an international order go through the details of your order amount, doublecheck if it is covering import taxes in addition to regular shipping.
• If shopper is not including the import taxes, it will definitely land up at customs except in few cases.
• There are many sites which help us knowing the approximate custom duty on your buy depending on the categories. Generally it will be somewhere in 30 to 40%.
• Another trick is to see your product in Amazon as they include the import duty while making an order.

• Try to cancel your order upfront if you didn’t realize it while making the orders. You may plead them for canceling it by asking the delivery party.
• Refund policy won’t help as you still have to levy Import duty.