‘Don’t do it!’, ‘It hurt so much thought I would die!’, or… ‘It was the worst experience of my life!’ …these were the general comments I got from people at the slightest mention of Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania. Whether friends, acquaintances, people I have vaguely met or travellers I’ve eaves-dropped upon there seemed to be a resounding groan in discussing Kili. Tales of hardship, hell and the harsh realities of climbing the world’s tallest free standing mountain seemed to dominate the memories of their trips. Pleasurable reminiscent thoughts didn’t seem to feature. So when it came to discussing my Africa trip with people, which included visiting Tanzania, any eyebrows questioningly raised at me regarding climbing Mount Kilimanjaro were met with a response of, ‘I’m not that mad!’.
I had always thought anyone attempting the climb was crazy. My poor excuse for not doing it was that I was simply too old, too set in my ways, too used to the heat, too attached to daily showers, etc. for such an adventure. I don’t think I’ve ever uttered such a resolute and determined ‘no’ in all my travel planning vocabulary as I did with Kili! On the other hand, my travel companion - a young, fit, determined and adventurous Australian was not to be deterred. Rob thought climbing Kili was an essential part of our Africa trip. To him stories of hardship and very possible death simply presented themselves as mere challenges to overcome. I refused to budge on this so we arrived at a compromise which went something like this:
After our Serengeti safari Rob would get up bright and early to battle the elements and conquer the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro like a young adventurous Aussie hero. Whilst I, like a true woos, would suffer this worrying week in the cosy comfort of a hotel in Arusha; maybe take myself off on a few trips to see lions, hippos, elephants and giraffes, and enjoy a solitary week catching up on writing and photography. And with this compromise we were both happy bunnies. Sorted!
But things never go to plan… The comment generously made by my friend Glen of: ‘Get up there and don’t be such a big girl’s blouse’, niggled away at me and became a mountain itself until I’d squashed it and taken up the challenge. Rob too started to put the pressure on when he detected the niggle, realising there was a competitive side to me that could be exploited, twisted, manipulated and persuaded to attempt the insane. So I gave in, tossed my fears away and decided to join the mad mountain climbing crew. Three months later, having bought cheap ski jacket, waterproofs and fleeces in Sri Lanka plus begged and borrowed thermals and gloves, there I was standing at the bottom of Mount Kilimanjaro ready for the impossible.
For those of you that are sane enough not to have even thought about climbing Kili let me tell you a few things, as I’ve had some hilarious conversations with folk who think there are hotels at the top, spas half way down, and luxury camp sites scattered across the scree.
Mount Kilimanjaro
Mount Kilimanjaro sits in a national park with nothing on it except the natural flora and fauna of the mountain, plus a few very rickety constructions that function as toilets or camp huts. What does this mean for the traveller? Sleeping in a tent on rock for a week. No shower for a week (no kidding – no shower, no bath, no washing of hair, just a small shallow bucket to rinse your face). Cooped up in a tiny space with your travelling companion/s for a week. Freezing temperatures for a week. Fresh food running out during the week. High probability of altitude sickness increasing over the week. Absolutely no certainty of reaching the summit (in fact many people I met afterwards hadn’t made the top). So how did I, with my terrible phobia of the cold, my extreme independence, and my dislike of small spaces, cope?!!
To be honest by Day 2 bravado had buckled and I just wanted to be beamed the hell out, I was searching high and low for the elevator back down! This was for several reasons and irrational fears but the two main ones were the cold and the early nights. The latter I realise is a strange fear but since the age that my parents stopped dictating what time I went to bed I’ve turned my lights out at around midnight, any earlier and I never seem able to sleep properly and tend to wake at 2am staying uselessly, frustratingly wide awake. On Kili they send you off to bed ridiculously early, around 8pm, which for me was one of my worst nightmares as it meant having to work out a way to stay entertained and awake in a dark, damp, icy tent for about 3 hours before going to sleep. So by Day 2, the fact that I was colder than I had ever been before and that I was struggling with the early night routine was really getting to me. I found it all terribly depressing. However, I didn’t want the others to know I was at the end of my tether, so I silently sulked and shivered in my sleeping bag imagining impossible ways to escape the climb. I needed that elevator bad!!
What got me through to Day 3 was trust in our team and extreme will power. By now I was starting to warm to our guide, Stanley. Rob and I had sort of disliked Stanley when we first met him the night before the climb. Why? He seemed grumpy, disinterested, humourless, and bossy which wasn’t a good start with two people who like to laugh off their fears and who are strong minded and independent. Looking back we were probably being a tad touchy, and, to turn the tables, Stanley probably looked at us in utter horror! Something like this may have gone through his head upon meeting us for the first time:-
• older woman – seemingly terrified of climb, possibly unfit, could be a whinger, may just about lose her marbles.
• younger man – seemingly unprepared with lack of kit, possibly strong willed therefore won’t listen, could continue to ask hundreds of questions each and every day, may make Stanley lose his marbles.
Either Stanley was having a bad day the day we met him or he really did think we would be a nightmare! Anyway, once the climb began we soon saw the good side to him – a strong and caring leader over a group of 10 staff getting us up the mountain. I think he also started to have a little respect for us after Day 1 when we speedily strutted up to the first camp site and he realised we were perhaps more serious about the climb than he’d taken us to be. Rob also stole the show by speaking Kiswahili, learnt the week before, seemingly like someone who’d lived in Tanzania for 6 months. I kept my fears to myself and, surprisingly, mostly did as I was told! So, to get back to the point of my Day 2 trepidations, as I cowered in the cold wondering how I would endure this worrying wobble of faith, full of frantic fear as to when I may get altitude sickness, when I may get frost bite and whether I would ever see a shower again, I decided to trust in my guide.
Day 2 was one of the hardest cases of mind over matter I’ve ever experienced, all I wanted to do was head home, but what could I do 3,500m high up a mountain? Go back down dejected and defeated?! Not I! So I trusted in Stanley, I trusted in Rob and I trusted in Kili to get me to the top. I enjoyed what I could, and endured what I couldn’t.
The Climb
Many of you may wonder just how do you get to the top? How do you climb 5,895m high? For those of you on different measurements that’s 19,340 feet; 3.6 miles or 29.3 furlongs straight up in the air! There are several routes of varying prices and duration. Rob was happy for me to book us onto the Machame (Whisky) route adding in an extra day to the normal package to help us acclimatise to the altitude - which meant more rest on summit day, or maybe it just meant an extra day for me to come up with an excuse to back out! The benefit of this route is that you sleep in tents rather than having to suffer the farting, belching, snoring, sleep talking and sleep walking (and I dread to imagine what else!) of your fellow climbers in a hut. Each day our porters went ahead of us to set up camp – a large communal tent for eating, playing cards, learning Swahili, asking questions, singing, and for the porters to sleep. There were also 2 small tents – one for Rob and I and one for Stanley and Ismail (the cook).
The climb itself is 6 nights 7 days and aside from my Day 2 drama our climb was really quite pleasant. Days 1 to 5 are spent snaking your way around the mountain from camp site to camp site walking approx 4-5 hours a day. On midnight of Day 5 you do your summit attempt, after which you leg it down the mountain as far and fast as possible to the bottom camp where you can enjoy oxygen once again and feel oh so much closer to creature comforts - things you lovingly embrace on Day 7 when you eventually reach the bottom. To break down the climb here’s how it went:
Day 1 was a bit daunting. We registered at the bottom of the mountain in dense, damp fog absorbing an atmosphere that seemed quite surreal whilst the porters weighed in our gear and got prepared for the week ahead. We were surrounded by gung-ho walkers wearing their trendy of-the-moment gear (which Rob and I didn’t have!) who all seemed so much more prepared than us. Our cook had forgotten his ID, so some bribing had to go ahead in order to get him on the trip which took about 3 hours. Then shortly after we had finally set off I lost my silver bracelet (a permanent fixture on my wrist which never normally falls off) – I was happy to continue but Rob kindly and patiently took a couple of porters and walked back to look for it. This took about half an hour as in the end it meant going right back to the misty, murky start where he found it glinting at him from its fallen place in the thick mud. In a way this felt like an omen – if a tiny bracelet can be found in all that mud it had to be a sign that the impossible was possible and I would make it to the top. And it honestly wasn’t a delaying tactic on my part, but it did set us back even further in terms of racing against the fading light to reach the first camp site. Aside from this staccato start we did make it before dark though due to the continuing thick cloud hugging the rain forest it took us and Stanley about an hour to find our porters and our camp! So we settled down to our first night of extreme cold, sleeping on rock and getting to know our team – 12 guys and me!
It was fun and exciting to wake the next day opening up the tent to clear blue skies, warm sunny rays breaking through the trees and our first glimpse of Kili’s snowy peak in the distance. It felt incredible to finally see the top, though it seemed so very far away! So after our first hearty breakfast we set off and upwards snaking our way towards this distant goal.
Beating the altitude
Walking from Days 2 to 5 involved trekking through endless empty landscape, traversing barren and rocky paths, walking up, down, and across whilst ominously overshadowed by the peak. You are always looking up to wonder just how you are going to make it to the top. Some days we were scrambling up steep rock, pushing, pulling and puffing our way to the next camp site, whilst others meant getting used to the lack of oxygen. For example on Day 3 you go to the height of 4,600 metres, not only do you have to learn to go slow – pole, pole in Swahili – but you also get a small taste of the bitterly cold wind and the thin air you will encounter at the top.
What we had been told from the start is to make sure we had the right attitudes to understand the implications of the altitude, and this third day was an altitude test. Altitude sickness is one of the mountain’s biggest hazards and most climbers get some sort of symptom whether an extreme headache, dizziness, nausea or loss of memory. It’s one of the reasons most people don’t enjoy the Kilimanjaro climb, and the reason it can be dangerous, so it’s really important to trust in your guide to ensure you make it back down. Stanley wouldn’t let us take Diamox (altitude sickness tablets) as he said if we took them he’d have no way of seeing the symptoms if we started to get sick. Although this sent us into blind panic we had to listen to him as we’d heard stories of people ignoring their guides, determined to get to the peak only to come back down in body bags. Yes, that means DEAD. So with the fear of God put up us we behaved, and we were lucky as neither of us got sick except a couple of intensely painful headaches but after that, nothing. Even at the top we were both fighting fit, though drunkenly doolalley from the lack of oxygen!
Inspiration
If the climb ever started to look like it was time for another Day 2 wobble there were always people there to inspire me. In particular:
1) Rob. He was a unique travel companion and had the ‘no fear’ of youth!! At times this was a little worrying – for example on Day 4 he looked across one of the valleys we were passing through and decided to go climbing up a steep wall of rock that looked fairly impossible to scramble up. However, what could I say except ‘good luck’ whilst secretly hoping I wouldn’t have to explain some freak climbing accident to his parents! Even Stanley looked quietly concerned. But aside from Rob’s worrying side distractions which also included teaching the porters how to do martial arts with a large stick (!), it was great to travel with someone that gave encouragement and had determination. He certainly helped me get through the tough times.
2) A Sri Lankan! Yes they do get everywhere! One day we were faced with climbing up a steep section of rock platforms, and as we puffed and panted our way up we passed a Sri Lankan guy with a prosthetic leg who really was putting in all effort and determination to make the climb. He was from the US, a good looking bloke of rugby build, and he reminded me of some of my SL friends. For me this was another incentive to reach the top remembering the folk I’d left behind gunning for me back in Sri Lanka. Plus his bravery was incentive to us all.
3) The Australian Prime Minister’s wife and son (plus their Masai porters). About half way through the week we were joined by a group of Australians who emerged from another mountain route – this huge Aussie party descended upon our campsite at the end of a day’s hike. Their presence couldn’t go unnoticed as the party of 16 had about 80 porters who, like a mountain choir, sang beautiful Masai songs welcoming the group as they entered the camp site. We listened, enchanted, to this magical melody of African voices echoing across Kilimanjaro for an hour or more. A real treat which accompanied us for the rest of the climb. It really was very special, and something we looked forward to hearing each evening. We soon discovered this VIP entertainment was being laid on for the Australian PM’s wife and son, plus their military protectors and a few friends – a really nice group and great fun with all the familiar Aussie humour that helped us with the climb. Though we were a little envious at the end as we watched them greeted with glasses of champagne by their VIP tour company when they reached the bottom.
Champagne certainly wasn’t on our camp menu! However, considering the fact that all our food had to be carried with us our cook Ismail did a great job which is just as well as we were force fed several times a day! I have never eaten so much in my life. Food is supposedly one of the best ways to prevent altitude sickness and store up enough energy for the final climb. Stews, soups and spaghetti, rice, chips and pancakes, and endless porridge, porridge, porridge!! Though we did get a little tired of it, it got us to the peak and as compensation we did have lots of chocolate:) On the afternoon of the summit climb for our last supper we had fried chicken and chips which at the time seemed like a Michelin star contender!
Everything was cooked inside our bright yellow communal tent. Ismail would sit on a large upside down white plastic bucket working over a one-ring gas stove with the porters sitting on bags chopping and chatting. The communal tent was fun and symbolised warmth. When we woke in the mornings that’s where we would dart for our hot chocolate, tea or coffee to huddle together trying to avoid the drip drip of the ice melting from the walls as the rising sun started to thaw us all out.
Determination
The best sunrise was, unsurprisingly, from the top of Mount Kilimanjaro! But to reach the peak was a gruelling test of grit and determination, by far the hardest day of the climb - it was challenging, cold and exhausting, yet exhilarating! At the time I made a mental note to myself absolutely promising NEVER to forget that climbing to the summit was the HARDEST thing I have ever done. I promised not to lie, not to say it was the best thing I’ve ever done, not to pretend it was a breeze, but to be honest and remember that climbing to the top of Mount Kilimanjaro took all my will power, all my patience, every bone in my body to be strong and determined to reach the top.
So how does summit day work, and just how did I make it? You arrive at Barafu camp - the final campsite, 4,600m high, at around 11am. Then sleep, eat lunch, sleep, eat dinner, sleep again until 11pm, then get up for summit time. Here are the steps to getting ready:-
11pm: donning the clothes. I wore 7 layers of clothing on top, 3 on the bottom, 2 pairs of gloves, 2 pairs of socks, 2 hats, 2 scarves, one balaclava, and a jacket tied around my waist to ensure my bum didn’t freeze off (this was to make up for the fact that my Sri Lankan bought ski jacket was a little on the short side!). And the most essential piece of kit - the all important head lamp to light the way.
11.30pm: packing the day bag with camera, extra clothes (!), water (which froze) and camera battery. The latter had to be safely tucked into my bra! Camera batteries freeze in those temperatures so you have to keep them close to you, only when you get to the top can you put the battery in the camera. A complete challenge at 5,895m high, with very little oxygen and hands so cold they don’t function.
11.55pm: heading to the communal tent to drink as much hot chocolate as possible, but making sure not too much as there was no way in this world I was going to swerve off the path to pee in temperatures of -15 degrees!
12.15am: beginning the climb by saying a fond farewell to the porters, strapping on bags and headlamp, taking a huge deep breath of bravery and starting to snake our way through the camp site to the path that would lead us to the top of Mount Kilimanjaro. The porters stayed in the camp whilst we set off with Stanley and one other unlucky soul from the team who got the short straw to trudge up there with us!
The start was spectacular as we followed a rather beautiful scene ahead watching the glow of climbers’ headlamps bobbing their way up the mountain path into the darkness beyond. Stanley estimated that the climb would take us about 6 hours, thereby leaving just after midnight we aimed to reach the peak at 6.15am in time for sunrise. However, due to my aversion to the cold and consequent refusal to stop for too long, refusal to speak to anyone, and gritty determination that the faster we got there the faster we’d get back down again we actually made it to the top early. We arrived at 5.35am – the second team to reach the summit that morning.
If this makes it sound like a breeze - it wasn’t! It felt like trudging heavily for 5 hours up a vertical sand dune, the sort of sticky footwork you only ever encounter in nightmares when you can’t get away from the monsters of your dreams. We had so little oxygen that every step was an effort, and the wind chill was so biting it felt as though I formed icicles on my eye lashes. Added to this my fingers were so cold I couldn’t clutch my walking poles to help me climb. However, once you’ve done the worst of it - snaking up the mountain in the pitch black, exhausted by the vertical scree to the point that you don’t feel you can walk any further, you arrive at Stella Point – the crater rim. Although knackered beyond belief at this stage you know that there’s only half an hour to go from here walking on relatively flat ground, and suddenly it all felt OK.
Lacking oxygen Rob and I wobbled and weaved our way along this final straight like a couple of old drunks, both in our own little worlds of determination. Rob went a bit doolalley, and I silently giggled and cried with absolute elation that I had made it. I’d achieved something I vowed never to do! Woohoo! So we’d reached the peak at 5.35am, a little dizzy and dotty, fingers, feet and noses totally numb, with bodies and faces completely swollen like a bunch of Michelin men, but none the less all in one piece. We hung around for another 30 or 40 minutes - as we’d climbed it too fast we had to wait for the sun to come up! Not usually recommended at altitude, most groups stay at the top for as little time as possible and then leg it!
When we eventually started the trek back down we watched mesmerised with the beauty surrounding us as the sun started to light up the dark mysterious horizon. This was an incredible sight as light revealed itself before the small dot of the sun itself appeared – we were treated to seeing a long narrow luminous strip bordering the horizon like a neon light shining through the blackness. This line of light changed from a cool white glow to a deep orange lining from which the sun gradually rose as it popped its way through the fluffy cloud and started to reveal the most beautiful views. What we had been oblivious to as we ascended is that we’d walked past big glaciers – it the morning light they looked magnificent reflecting pale pinks, blues and distant purples - spectacularly beautiful. The views were incomparable to any I had seen before. Rob was literally stunned and zigzagged his way back down to our base camp as if in a trance. I think we both felt a bit tripped out by the whole experience.
Downwards
It takes 5 / 6 days to reach the top, and only 1.5 days to get back down again and the downhill bit was shattering. My right toe painfully throbbed from trekking down steep slopes and I was utterly, utterly shattered. After peaking we took a couple of hours to get back to our tent, enjoyed a couple of hours kip, then limped down to the lowest camp site on the mountain enduring another painful 4 hours of walking. This last night, when you expect to be full of joy, was actually the worst: we’d reached the peak, ticking off a rather large box for making it to the top of Mount Kilimanjaro, and we just wanted to be out of a tent, in a hotel, eating decent food and having much needed showers and cold, cold beers. Suddenly my incredible tolerance of mountain toilets, so windy that what you dropped down them often came blowing back up again, so dirty that you had to close your eyes and block your nose to what you were standing on, disappeared. As did any tolerance of using wet-wipes to wash with! So, having not minded in the least about all the horrible things for almost a week, another night on the mountain felt quite torturous. But, keeping ourselves to ourselves, we crashed and burned and soon awoke to the final day – the end was in sight as were showers, space and sanity.
Climbing Mount Kilimanjaro ended up being the highlight of the Africa trip for both of us. I’d never do it again but I’m glad I got myself physically and psychologically fit enough to go for it, overcome a few fears, and feel the adrenaline of achieving what to me had previously seemed simply impossible.
Tribute to the porters
As usual I did a huge amount of research before booking our Kili trip. After a lot of emailing, checking out reviews and the all important Trip Advisor tips I decided to go with an excellent company called Basecamp. Whilst doing this research many people sent warnings about greedy porters pretending to be poor and trying to rip you off. Honestly, if they did they really bloody deserved whatever they got out of the people that made these comments as they would have earned every penny they got out of them. So here’s a little tribute to them... Apollo, Karim, Adam, John, Emanuel, Pasco, Iubo, Hasan, and Ibrahim.
The porters that take you and your things up Kilimanjaro are legends. They climb as you do but they climb carrying your heavy bags, your tents, your gas cooker, your cooking gear, your food, your water and your chocolate. All this gear is very heavy, but imagine carrying it on your head at altitude and at speed? Often in knackered old shoes and gear? We had nothing but total respect for these guys.
At the end of our trip we did a lucky dip for our porters giving away some of our stuff. This seemed a good idea as we didn’t want to lug our heavy gear all around Africa, and I’d bought my stuff very cheap in Sri Lanka. So we labelled 9 things with numbers, putting into the pot anything from my ski jacket, to my water proof pants, to a pair of Rob’s old socks! The porters drew a number to get their lucky dip - some were lucky, some were less so but they all seemed happy.
It was a fun end to our trip, and after we’d lightened our load of gear and had one final song with the porters, we left the mountain totally exhausted, totally exhilarated, and excited that Mount Kilimanjaro had been all we’d hoped and more.
Photos on flickr.
Kilimanjaro: be killed or conquer?
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