*I’m catching up on previous posts, so this one comes out of order, from 10 months back in Tanzania. It’s now been a few laps around the world since I summited Kilimanjaro but here I will try to capture the magical week we spent on the mountain.*
Ever since joining the Mountain and Ski Club (aka outdoor group) in my exchange at University of Cape Town in 2020, I’ve had Mt Kilimanjaro on my radar. Honestly, at the time, I wasn’t such a very experienced hiker nor mountaineer and saw Kilimanjaro as something nearly impossible, surely reserved for someone fitter and bolder than me. Now reflecting on this challenging but incredible experience in hindsight, if you want to get as close to 6,000 m altitude as possible, Kili might be one of the *easiest* mountains in the world to accomplish that!
A little bit of background of how I found myself at Uhuru Peak, 19,341 feet above Tanzania, on the highest free standing mountain in the world… When I had to come home early from my semester abroad in Cape Town due to the pandemic, I obviously missed out on several months of travel in South Africa and nearby countries. As a consolation prize to my sad, sad self, I treated myself to a 6 day guided hike up Kilimanjaro with Almighty Kilimanjaro trekking company. Fast forward a few COVID strains later and I ended up pushing back my hike almost a whole year— and invited my dad along to summit on his 60th birthday, in September 2021. The treks are not cheap— we’re talking $200-300 a day for the cheapest companies— but I’m happy to connect you with my guides directly or make recommendations. (One of my travel side hustles has been collaborating with my trekking company to promote their tours!) The thing about this mountain is that everyone on the same route has more or less the same tents, food, and included services, so it’s really not worth it to ball out for the priciest companies… on the contrary, it seemed the most expensive and largest companies had a much less individualized experience as they were literally guiding 50 people up the mountain at once, whereas my dad and I had our own personal team!
After doing extensive research, I opted for the 6-day Machame route which gives you enough time to adjust the altitude but isn't quite as long as 9-10 day offerings (unnecessary )
A lot of talk about guides and trekking companies— believe it or not, it’s illegal to summit Mt Kilimanjaro on your own! Given this is one of the richest tourist attractions in this part of Africa, you have to hire a guide and an accompanying porter crew which actually carry your food, tent, and stuff up the mountain. Hence why I say this might be one of the easiest high summits out there. For scale, my dad and I were just two people climbing, but we had either 11 or 12 people supporting us total!! Many of my friends do not believe this but I swear it is true! My dad and I got a kick out of the guy responsible for the porta-potty. There are outhouses at every camp but we decided to employ one more worker that week by hiring our own private toilet and spared the freezing walk to the public potties at 15,000 feet lol.
Now for your geography lesson on Tanzania. First of all, look up the pronunciation because it’s not pronounced like Tasmania, its pronounced Tanzania with the emphasis on the i. A country of 60 million people, it’s one of the more populated nations in East Africa notably bordered by Kenya and Uganda to the north and Mozambique to the south. Swahili is the language, also happening to be the language of my favorite film (Lion King), so you might recognize the occasional words "hakuna matata"and pumba. A lot of travelers find themselves in Tanzania because of the allure of Zanzibar island’s unique culture, party, and bright blue beaches. Otherwise, plenty of foreigners come for Kilimanjaro and the incredible safari adventures in Tanzania’s national parks and protected spaces, where you can see all the best of safari wildlife but still at a hefty Western cost (coming soon in the next post!)
Arrival and Moshi town
After some 36 hours of airports and travel and a $150 PCR covid test that expired mere hours after landing, we made it to Moshi Tanzania and for the first time in my life I was stoked to have a personal chauffeur waiting for us with our name on the placard at the airport. We were shuttled 45 minutes to Moshi town which is the main entrance to Kilimanjaro. Unfortunately, I have found Tanzanian and Moroccan cities smell really smoky to me, probably because there is lots of burning of garbage and vehicle emissions. Nonetheless, Kilimanjaro stands above the clouds and above the smog. As the highest stand alone mountain in the world, it towers so high in the sky that even the view from Moshi is worth writing home about.
We stayed in the funky Qwine Hotel which did come with a nice included breakfast, but a lacking wifi signal. We quickly discovered the best food and coffee spot in town was Cafe Union, just a few blocks walking from the hotel. Moshi is a touristic city so you do see other trekkers around, but that doesn’t mean we didn’t stick out like a sore thumb--- whispers of Mzungu (white person in Swahili), accompanied us everywhere we went. I did feel safe walking for a couple blocks in the town center just by walking with confidence as is the norm when solo traveling :) After a sleepless night in the hotel due to massive jet lag, we were up early the next day and ready for the adventure of a lifetime!
Days on the mountain
Day one we went about 6 miles to Machame camp which took about the whole day. My dad was overzealous about the altitude and basically convinced himself he had altitude sickness symptoms when in theory he was drinking more water than necessary and it was all in his head!! It was still too low to really experience any symptoms. Since the porters had to carry our stuff as their job, we only had our daypacks on us for our whole climb. We arrived at our camp around sunset and couldn't believe we had warm tea and coffee, biscuits, and a full personal tent set up for us! Mt Kilimanjaro treks are quite the luxury-- probably the fanciest, best-serviced camping I'll have in my life! The crew warmed us up some water to wash ourselves and made the hugest dinner with multiple courses. We tried to eat everything they gave us but our stomachs quickly filled up with yummy soup, eggs, and rice. (Several big, filling meals later, we realized they just make us more food than we need so that we never go hungry, and then the crew will gladly finish off any leftovers.. needless to say, we stopped overfilling our tummies when we realized they were gonna keep us well-fed all week). We went to bed under the stars and under the beautiful face of Kilimanjaro. Finally, our sleep schedule matched up after jet lag.
Day two we had another decently easy trek up to Shira Camp, which had the best view of the mountain in my opinion. Since we arrived in the early afternoon, they took us on a light dayhike from camp to better acclimatize. We were now at proper altitude -- about 12,500 ft-- so my dad was actually feeling a bit winded for good reason. On this day, our awesome head guide Innocent "Inno" started taking our oxygen measurements to make sure our bodies were taking the altitude alright. With everything looking good and a tough next day on the horizon, we enjoyed more delicious food, made friends with the local trekkers in our camp "neighborhood," and got to bed early before the cold got to us.
Day three was when the trek started to hurt! As part of our acclimitazation, we hiked up to Lava Tower Camp and I was officially higher than I had ever been in my life at around 15,200 feet! At this height you really do start putting one foot in front of the other. My dad and I were lucky enough to have not one, but two personal guides! Inno took charge over my dad and kept him at a good pace, but I had the only female guide on the mountain, the wonderful Diana. She was a guide in-training so in a few years she will be able to lead her own treks. This woman was my savior in many parts of the climb, but most noticeably in the tough moments she never failed to cheer us with the Kilimanjaro song which goes "pole, pole, hakuna matata..." aka "slowly, slowly, no worries!" (I told you hakuna matata is a well loved phrase in Swahili). This part of the mountain got very cloudy but we didn't stop at Lava Tower camp long, just enough to eat another hot lunch and check our vital signs at this new height.
There is a saying "climb high, sleep low" for slowly adjusting your body to altitude, so we actually hiked downhill after lunch to Barranco camp. Now we were at 13,000 feet for the night, surrounded by these trees endemic to the mountain which really closely resemble joshua trees! The wildlife coming down to this camp was so beautiful, with these trees, wildflowers, and little creeks streaming through. On Kilimanjaro, you go through 4 or 5 different "ecological climate zones" which is what makes this trek extra special. This has to do with it being the highest stand alone mountain, not belonging to a mountain range.
Day four was looming over us for a while since the first portion was hiking the Barranco wall, a 800 foot vertical face. We had read about it and were a bit nervous, but it proved not to be a problem at all, thanks to our porters carrying our packs over the sketchiest parts. Other than a few little scrambling portions, Barranco wall was a breeze and we were done in under 90 minutes. The view from the top of the wall really got us excited because the summit finally felt like it was only a small distance away. The rest of the day the hiking was a long slog to Karanga camp. I remember feeling some kind of altitude sickness here but was overall feeling in good shape-- my dad all the while was at his own pace with his guide Inno but he made it all the same :) At this point we had made good friends with our guides and some of the other folks trekking the mountain, which is good because there's a lot of downtime on the mountain since you're only hiking about 4 hours everyday and the rest you're just chilling. My dad and I got a proper addiction to the instant coffee of"Africafe" and downed endless cups with powdered creamer under our cozy tent. They really pull out all the stops for ya!
Day five was just a short hike to base camp! At this point, the wildlife wasn't around at this altitude and we were left in the clouds with just some rocks around us. We got to base camp early in the day and were told to eat and rest as much as possible. Before our 6pm bed times, we got a pep talk from Inno about what the next day was going to entail with the summit. We were so nervous because we knew it was gonna be a push, but we managed to still sleep as much as possible before an early early wake up.
Summit day
For my dad, he had a 10:00 pm wake up and a 10:30 summit start which meant he was the first person to attempt the summit that day. I was a full 90 minutes behind with my guide for a midnight start, but the idea was that we would catch up to each other and summit together at sunrise! Did I mention that this was the morning of my dad's 60th birthday? On September 3, 2022 was the most physical challenge I had ever experienced and nothing could have really prepared me for the push. Thank goodness the endless switchbacks, 3 miles of one foot in front of the other, and 3,500 ft elevation gain were done in the dark-- I don't know if I could have mentally gotten through it had I seen how much was left. I took a couple Ibuprofen to subside the headache from the altitude and I did some crying, not gonna lie, because when it's only 3 AM and you're not even halfway there, it's rough.
My whole team was pretty concerned about how I would handle the temperatures at the top of Kili since I am a weakling with the cold, but that ended up being the least of my concerns as I just tried to get the mental stamina to keep going up. That being said, I did wear three layers of pants and three jackets, but luckily my toes and fingers were spared from the cold because we got a surprisingly warm night and beautiful weather.
the most magical sunrise of my life, 5:00 AM on the crater rim
Around 4:30 or 5 AM, our bobbing headlamps finally caught up to my dad and Inno and they were going along slowly but surely. We got a nice surprise of hot tea and got to take a 15 minute rest break before the last push to the top. I probably definitely cried a few more times, and asked to turn around (I told you, I am weak) but we finally arrived, miraculously, to Stella Point. Kilimanjaro is a volcano so this is when you first reach the crater rim. We were so happy to arrive, almost exactly at first light because now that we had made it to Stella's we knew we were gonna make the summit. All that remained was about an hour of walking along the crater, no more uphill, just to get to Uhuru Peak, the highest point of the crater.
This hour walk along the crater was slow, but one of the most memorable hours of my life. Since summiting was really our finally goal for the whole week we'd been on the mountain, and a dream of ours for so long, and something that seemed nearly impossible to me and my dad, it was truly the blessing of a lifetime to watch the sunrise over all of Africa. We passed by glaciers which are melting so fast they won't exist in 10 or 15 years... we watched as the sun came up and cast a shadow miles long of the beautiful Kili across Tanzania. It was too cold for me to capture many photos but these shots are thanks to my dad and our good Canadian friend and fellow trekker, Omar.
When we arrived at Uhuru Peak we got it all to ourselves for a whole hour! The story goes that lots of trekkers only stay at the top for 10-15 minutes because of bad or cold weather, but it was glorious for us, blue skies and sunshine, and we had a proper photo shoot. While our porters stayed down at base camp in the morning, we summited with our guides and with our awesome cook, who gave my dad the best bday surprise at the top: a bottle of champagne and birthday cake! If you guys saw what it took to get to the summit, you would also be amazed they brought an intact cake to that height... we cried some tears of joy and relief, sang the Kilimanjaro song and happy birthday to my dad. We felt (we were) on top of the world!
the sweetest birthday surprise and the best crew
The rest of the day was brutal. It took a good 3 or 4 hours to get back down to base camp, and our bodies were bonking from the exhaustion and altitude. We had a little snack box for some energy to keep us going but I really could've gone for an ice cold Guayaki yerba mate or any caffeine to make it back before collapsing. Since we had done the uphill in the dark, we didn't realize how much slippery loose rock we had hiked on and it was scary to just keep slipping downhill when our legs were ready to give out. I just wanted to sit down so I scrambled ahead of my dad, got a big congrats from all the porters at base camp and thanked them for all of it, and took a fat nap.
In the early afternoon we had to get going again, but this time it was a moderate hike downhill to our last camp. Most of our friends ended up going all the way down the mountain this day, but that is NOT the trek we signed up before. I don't know if we would have made it after the long summit day already. We were so grateful and exhausted by the experience and enjoyed our last plushy night of camping in our tents.
The aftermath
The final day we just had a light hike back to Machame gate, maybe some 2-3 hours of walking in the forest, and the first thing I bought at the end was a Kilimanjaro beer! Our whole huge crew piled into the van and back to our hotel in Moshi. We tipped our crew generously for helping make our dreams come true, exchanged contacts with our awesome guides and new lifelong friends, and took a glorious shower. We hopped on wifi for a few minutes to tell our relatives we made it and we're alive! And that's the story of how we found ourselves at the highest point in Africa, 5895 meters above sea level.
Asante sana Kilimanjaro and to all our crew at Almighty Kilimanjaro. They were the real mountain climbers!
