Two policies, not one
Travel insurance and gear insurance solve different failures and rarely combine well. Travel policies cover you — cancellation, medical, evacuation — and treat your cameras as an afterthought with per-item caps that wouldn't replace a kit lens. Gear policies (standalone, or scheduled onto household cover) insure the equipment properly, worldwide, including the theft-from-vehicle scenarios travel policies love to exclude.
Read your existing cover before buying anything: the gap is usually specific, and specific gaps are cheap to close.
The clauses workshops actually require
Our remote itineraries mandate covers for honest reasons: helicopter evacuation for the treks (a Khumbu extraction bills in five figures and negotiates with no one), water-sports riders for surf and reef weeks (standard policies exclude exactly the activities those workshops are), and winter-driving cover where the itinerary is the road.
The verification at booking isn't bureaucracy — it's the difference between a bad day and a bankrupting one, checked while checking is free.
Reading the exclusions like an editor
The policy's truth lives in its exclusions: altitude ceilings (many exclude above 4,000m — most of our trek photography happens above it), 'unattended' definitions (the bag beside your tripod may legally be unattended), professional-use clauses (selling one print has voided hobbyist gear claims), and the adventure-activities list, which is where drones, boats, and glaciers live.
Ten minutes with the exclusions beats any comparison site's star rating.
Claims are won at the scene
The claim that pays is documented within hours: police report numbers for theft (required almost universally, obtainable almost everywhere), photographs of damage, receipts or the pre-trip gear schedule with serial numbers. Build the schedule now — serials, purchase dates, one photo of the kit laid out — and the worst day of a trip becomes paperwork instead of arithmetic.
And the unglamorous corollary: claims for gear that sleeps in checked luggage are declined by standing tradition. The insert never checks in.