I would be going with a team from my church to India for 15 days to Darjeeling, Asansol and Kolkata in Nov. My job is to record the team's progress and the places we went on video. My goal is to make a video documentary out of the footages that I took. I would be using Panasonic Ag-DVX102BEN camera. So these are my questions.

1. As I just found out that Darjeeling might snow during our trip there, will my camera able to handle the tempreture there? Would it freeze & locked up? What I need to bring or do?

2. I am expecting India would be a country full of free flying road dust. Would the dust enters to my video cam lens? If yes how can I prevent from happening/remove the dust?

3. Where can I get a protective carrying case/bag for my camera? Preferbly strong but light enough for me to hand carry into the plane.

4. Is it adviceable for me to bring a tripod along? I have a manfroto tripod but I think it is too heavy for me to bring along just in case we need to hike for hours to go into a village.

5. Any other experience shooting video in other country and don't mind to share so that I avoid as many pitfalls as I could would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks everybody for your input. I would love to have a LowerPro AW series bag but a quick price check with the KL distributor the bag price itself already more expensive than my entire trip! It is more than RM1.5k! Arrrgghhh!! Any cheaper alternative that you guys know of? I was thinking of putting my cam in a RM300 laptop bag but I don't think it is padded enough.

Thanks. Guess I will have to go to the shop and bring along my cam to test it. Thanks for all your input guys!