Camping is great fun. I've done a lot of it, but rarely in "proper" camp sites, with a bar, showers, toilet block, cafe, and all the rest of it.

The type of camping I've mostly done is the middle-of-nowhere, roughing-it kind of outdoor life. And nothing can compare. I spent 10 weeks camping all over outer Mongolia, for example - from the Gobi desert, via the central-Mongolian grasslands, up to the northern Taiga forest, near Lake Hovsgol.

Camping in a place where you can see and hear not a single trace of humanity is a very special experience. No roads, no buildings, no fences, no domesticated animals, and no people. Most of Mongolia is like that, open and public land, with wild horses, camels, deer, and many other animals.

Spectacular as the experience was, digging a hole in the ground to go to the toilet, washing (and swimming) in rivers and lakes to get clean, going to bed when the sun sets, and cooking on a gas camping stove can get a bit tiresome.

Our camping experience was in 2000. Taking devices such as camping lights which needed batteries wasn't much of an option - as well as being environmentally dodgy, there was no chance of charging batteries (no electricity for weeks) and throw-away batteries would have been both expensive and wasteful. So we had a torch, a camping stove, and that was that.

Technology has moved on significantly since then, and there are some fantastic solar-powered camping kits which allow you to use the natural solar energy to have a warm shower, to cook, or to light up your evenings.

This article looks at some of those products, how they work, and which ones are more trouble than they are worth. Solar powered camping has a great future!

