“Get Me Off This Mountain”: An Ascent of Mount Kilimanjaro – Part One

Day 0

It was in a standstill line-up at Doha International Airport at around 2am local time when I started to actually consider the possibility that I might not make it to Tanzania in time to climb Mount Kilimanjaro. It hadn’t been worth thinking about earlier – not properly, anyway. Not when I had to haul myself through the centre of London with my duffel bag strapped to my back, with no idea if it’d make it further than the Middle East. Not when I was standing in the seven-layer deep line for check-in at Gatwick, surrounded by people and their stacks of suitcases going on holiday.

Because that was the thing. I wasn’t going on holiday, not really. This wasn’t something I could rebook for the next day, or an inconvenience that would cost me a day of sightseeing.

This is what I told the smiling man at the customer service desk when I finally reached it. My sleep-deprived eyes bored into his as he tried to assure me that I didn’t need to worry, as I’d been booked onto the next direct flight to Kilimanjaro airport.

“Right,” I said, trying not to look as though I was about to scream, “but that’s… Tomorrow, isn’t it?”

“Yes!” he replied brightly. “Tomorrow morning.”

“The thing is,” I said, tapping my passport against the desk. “The thing is, it’s sort of a I get there today, or I don’t climb Mount Kilimanjaro deal.”

He considered this. “Big, isn’t it?” he asked hesitantly. “Mount Kilimanjaro?”

“Pretty big.”

He nodded. “I’ll get my manager.”

That’s how I found myself with two new boarding passes: one to Zanzibar later that morning, and one from Zanzibar to Kilimanjaro for late that night. It wasn’t how I’d wanted to spend the day before the biggest physical and mental challenge of my life to date.

The bright lights of a deserted, early morning Doha airport made me feel dizzy. It wasn’t so much an airport as it was a shopping mall that planes happened to go from. I walked in dazed circles in search for a bathroom as security guards hovered by the doors to designer boutiques. I was exhausted, unclean, and limping from walking through airports in bad shoes on my dodgy foot (a good start to any hiking expedition). I steered well clear of the glass windows.

Under the shadow of the airport train, I curled up on a seat with my backpack for a pillow and closed by eyes. I must have slept, on and off, for an hour or two, the airport quiet save for the gentle swoosh of the train going by over my head every so often. When I awoke, the seats around me were crowded, the shopping mall awoken from its slumber. Some planes were even taking off once in a while.

I slept most of the way to Zanzibar, awaking only to accept a plate of fresh fruit, dates, and warm bread from the flight attendant. It would be my last real “meal” of the day, if you could even call it as much.

Zanzibar was baking hot, especially after the carefully controlled airflow I’d been existing under for nearly a day at that point. I walked outside into the fresh air, shielding my eyes against the intense sunshine. Palm trees lined the road, leading down to the older terminal, a rundown concrete bunker outside which a dozen drivers shouted at arriving passengers, offering their services.

There was nowhere to go – not in this heat, weighed down with everything I needed to survive up the mountain. I had, at least, made a friend – another woman who had been following the same tedious journey from Gatwick and was due to start her climb the next day, in a different group. We sat outside for as long as we could bear it, until sweat was pooling at the nape of our necks and behind our knees, and we once again had to seek shelter inside the air-conditioned new terminal.

The real irony was how close we were. When it finally came time to enter the old airport – airport being a somewhat generous term for what was essentially a bus stop with a metal detector, from which we walked straight onto the tarmac – it was dark outside, the heat lingering even in the night. We were barely airborne for half an hour, just time to choke back a hot cup of tea to try to keep myself awake long enough to make it to the hotel. The whole time, we’d been a stone’s throw from our destination, trapped in the endless purgatory of Zanzibar airport.

After a day of waiting, we finally departed for Kilimanjaro.

I said goodbye to my new friend at baggage reclaim. We expected to see one another at one of the camps along the way, although we never did. Each camp above the clouds was like a small, functioning village, and I rarely saw anyone outside of my own group that I even recognised from the trail. But, we’ll get there.

Outside, one of my guides was awaiting me; he and a driver there to bring me to the hotel. The roads were pitch dark, and we passed less people than unexplained fires on the way.

“Are you tired? You can sleep, if you want,” my guide offered. “We’ll be there in an hour.”

I shook my head, even though sleep was dragging at my eyelids and my whole body was slumped into the seat. I wasn’t falling asleep in a car with two strangers, in the dark, in an unfamiliar country where I knew no one. Even as a young woman travelling alone, I always try to give people and places the benefit of the doubt. To go into every situation scared, to always look for the risks, causes more anxiety than it’s worth.

But every now and again there are moments, like when you’re speeding through the dark with two strange men – one of which had jokingly asked, “where to?” when I got in the car, as though I was supposed to know the way – supposedly from a tour company that you’ve exchanged maybe six emails total with prior to your trip, when you realise: I could be in trouble, here.

I wasn’t. My guide who dropped me off at the hotel would be the same guide to hug me at the summit, and to see me safely down again. The hotel were expecting me, even if the polished floors and grand reception weren’t expecting my bedraggled appearance. (It was nothing compared to how I’d look when I returned here, post-hike.)

It was after midnight when I made it to my hotel room, a mere 16 hours later than I should have. I tried to kick my brain into gear enough to rearrange my kit bags, taking a luxurious, hot shower before collapsing into the bed, savouring the feel of pillows and sheets that I wouldn’t know for the next week.

Well, I thought as my eyes closed, at least I made it. The hard part was over. Now, I just had to get up and walk for the next eight days. How hard could that be?

Stats

Distance walked through airports: 11.7 km

Day 1

I sat alone at breakfast, peering around at the other tables. Almost everyone was dressed like I was – hiking pants and loose shirts. I tried to guess who might be in my group, who I might get along with. The woman reading while she sipped her coffee, who spoke kindly to the waiter as he came by. The man with the warm smile who put away several plates of food, as if storing it up ahead of the climb. The family of four, their two teenage sons looking like they would rather be anywhere else.

I hadn’t much appetite, even though I should have been ravenous, even though I tried my best to eat as much as I could. I was jittery, nervous in a way I couldn’t explain. Nervous to say goodbye to my family over text, knowing that it would be over a week before I could next contact them. Nervous to leave behind the comforts that I am so used to, like running water and a flushable toilet. Nervous to introduce myself to a group of strangers whom I would have to spend the week with, whether we liked one another or not.

But I was lucky, and I saw that the moment I sat down with my group, the round of introductions assuring me that these were good people. These were my kind of people.

It was a slow morning of unexpected hold-ups. I would come to learn that much of the country operated this way. Hurry up and wait, became the joke amongst us as our guides would hustle us along in the mornings only to disappear to talk in fast-paced Swahili while we rocked on our heels, packs on, awaiting further instruction.

The drive to the starting point was over an hour, the town thinning out into rural plains. We came to the narrow track that led to the starting point, our little bus struggling through the thick mud. It had rained a lot recently, wet season still very much in play, and more than once, we became stuck. More than once, the boys from the nearby field would run up to the road to push us out, the bus ladened with us hikers, a dozen of our porters, and all of our heavy bags.

It was drizzling by the time we made it to the entrance point for lunch, the light rain turning to a downpour as we sat under the covered benches and cast furtive glances at the entry point to the trail. It was nondescript, really, a break in the grasses with a sign advertising helicopter rescues.

With the soft sound of the rain and the light breeze, I was tired. Exhausted, and we hadn’t so much as taken a step on the trail yet, with several hours of hiking between us and that night’s camp. It was nearly four by the time we started to walk, disappearing quickly into the thick of the rainforest.

There, nestled in the trees, was the real starting point to the trail. A heavy wooden sign welcomed us to the Lemosho route, mapping out the distances to each of the camps that lay between us and Uhuru Peak – the summit. We soon came to learn that both the distances and times listed on those signs had to be taken with a heavy grain of salt. The paths changed with the nature around them and often sent us looping around, adding as much as several kilometres to our routes on some days.

Today was not one of those days, but we still had seven kilometres to camp, and the vain hope of getting there before dark. The mud was what set us back, our feet sinking into the worst of it, taking all of our energy to haul ourselves out and onto the next section.

The sun was beginning to set on the horizon, casting a beautiful golden glow over the canopy of the rainforest. We still had an hour to go, perhaps more, and we began to speed up. The twisting tree roots and slippery, steep muddy sections were hard enough when we could see what we were doing, let alone in the dark.

But in those quiet moments before it grew dark, the rainforest seemed to come alive. The rich smell of the foliage was like nothing else I had ever experienced, fresh and calming from the day’s rain. The trees swayed gently, the soft chirp of bugs in the undergrowth as the birds quietened down for the evening, and the monkeys prepared themselves to badger us all night.

It was dark when we arrived at camp, just. Those of us that had them to hand pulled out our headlamps, navigating ourselves through the maze of tents. Every camp was something of a village but no more so than the first night, tents in every direction the eye could see, taking seemingly every piece of flat land.

We were in the far corner, furthest from the trail, as a result of our late start, and the porters were in disarray. We huddled together, trying to make sense of what we were supposed to do next as they yelled at each other in Swahili. It was the first and only night that our arrival into camp would be so chaotic, but after a day in which I had to both hike and acclimatise to being in rural Africa, I was exhausted.

There was no better feeling than taking off my boots that night, of washing the mud from my palms with the warm water I was brought, or of the first bowl of hot soup we began our evening meal with.

As I got into my sleeping bag that night, I expected to fall asleep in moments. But my body was not accustomed to sleeping with the world going on right outside my tent, our camp so tightly packed in that every brush of someone walking past set me on edge, every sound of a zip opening so loud that I was sure it was my own. Above the forest that shielded the stars from view, the monkeys chattered back and forth.

I curled into my side and squeezed my eyes tightly shut. Morning would come too soon.

Stats

Signposted distance: 7 km
Actual distance walked: 7.2 km
Elevation gained: 550 m

Day 2

I awoke before dawn to the sounds of the camp preparing for breakfast. It took me a moment or two to remember where I was, nestled in the warm cocoon of my sleeping bag with the rainforest on the other side of the tent. The summit felt impossibly far away – although we had climbed a steady amount the day before, we had yet to see any peaks or much of a view to speak of, stuck within the dense cluster of the trees.

We left camp not long after sunrise although we still weren’t the first ones on the trail, the camp coming down as fast as it must have gone up the day before. The humidity of the rainforest wouldn’t be with us for long that day and we soon emerged from the tree line into the third of the five vegetation zones we would pass through: the moorlands.

Here, came the peaks, the view stretching out around us as the sky opened up over our heads. Here, we could start to feel some semblance of progress, to understand that we had already walked so far as to be removed from the world below and a day-to-day so different from how we lived up here.

We spoke among us while we walked but I especially would often fall into a meditative silence on the trail. It felt as though there had been a permanent buzzing that had existed in my mind for as long as I can remember, this constant thread of then now next, of all the things I was supposed to remember and to do and to keep track of. A buzz that no amount of travelling nor “holidays” could ever fix, that chattered away endlessly at all times.

Now, for maybe the first time in my adult life at least, the buzzing had quietened down. Up here, I was responsible only for getting up each morning and putting one foot in front of the other. Up here, I could not tackle any other of life’s challenges or niggles. Up here, even the mundane day-to-day of needing to put food on the table or take out the bins didn’t exist. No one could ask anymore of me than to keep myself alive and moving and that was a novelty I had never known.

I also thought often on my family as I was up there, about the past generations who had come before me and their own adventures or journeys. I thought about my late grandfather, who had spent a lot of time in Africa, and what he might have thought of my expedition. I thought of my parents, at home and thinking of me in return, wondering how I was.

We came to learn that the rain and fog would come in toward the middle of the day and our arrival to camp was often beset by the elements. It began to pour when we were not far from camp, a long, flat stretch of moorland between us and our destination. With my hood pulled up over my head, rain lashing down my back, I could have as well been home in Scotland, trudging through the dense heath with the very faint outline of a hill in the distance.

After lunch at camp, we would have time to rest. I would try to stretch, or read, or write a little. More often than not, I ended up snoozing to the rustling of the tent around me in the afternoon breeze.

It was still light out when I awoke for tea and popcorn in the tent. I shuffled my way out of the tent as gracefully as possible (so, not at all) and looked out over the far horizon. The clouds had burned off into the early evening and I could now see past the other tents toward where we had begun, the town lost somewhere below the edge of the ridge.

I turned slightly, shivering in the cooling air and my breath caught. Before me, a mountain rose up, the ridge snow-covered. I looked around as some of my group emerged from their own tents.

“Hey, is that…?” I trailed off, almost nervous to say it.

We stood around for a while, staring at the horizon until we agreed – yes. That was it. That was Kilimanjaro. That was where we were going.

It seemed far away and yet closer than I could imagine. Sat, awaiting us, as we looked on in awe and reverence.

We continued to steal glances of it from the entrance to the mess tent as we ate, sure it would disappear into the night once darkness fell. What we didn’t realise was that the best view of all would come once the sun had set, when the moon’s light reflected off the roof of Africa, a blanket of constellations above us to map our way.

I was transfixed, torn between the cold and exhaustion that was driving me back toward my tent, and the desperate urge to lie out under the stars for as long as possible.

The cold won. The exhaustion won. Yet, that night, I wouldn’t sleep. My brain couldn’t turn off – it wasn’t the buzzing that I was used to, but yet it chattered, relentlessly, as the hours passed and my body’s exhaustion grew, and grew, and grew.

Stats

Signposted distance: 7 km
Actual distance walked: 11.3 km
Elevation gained: 850 m

Day 3

Between travelling and an unsettled first couple of nights in the tent, I hadn’t had a good sleep in five days. Those five days were obvious to look at me, my eyes puffy that morning as I squinted against the bright sunshine. The mountain awaited in the distance but, that morning, I didn’t know that my body had the power to get there.

We had a long day ahead of us – a long, flat, winding path that wove its way toward the base of the mountain. There was no shade, the sun growing more and more intense the further we went. It seemed as though we were getting no closer with every kilometre we covered, our boots crunching against the rocky terrain.

In the distance, we saw our first helicopter, a spec against the bright sun heading away from the summit. It was our first tangible reminder of how dangerous the mountain could be, if we weren’t careful. If we stopped paying attention. If we grew exhausted. There were no guarantees up here, certainly not from one day to the next.

The exhaustion was sinking deep into my feet, each step heavy as we continued on. I just needed to get to camp. I just needed to get a good night’s sleep. Then, I would be all right. Then, I could keep going.

We reached our uphill climb of the day: an uneven section of loose rocks that required scrambling. I was out of breath by the time I reached the top, the palms of my hands aching.

That was where the headache started. It was like no other headache I’d experienced, a pulsating sensation from temple to temple, as though my brain was swelling, trying to break free of my skull. I blinked the pain away as best as I could and kept going.

Our group began to separate that day as the terrain grew harder and the first of us began to feel the effects of the altitude. Myself and one other climber fell back from the main group, too far ahead still of the tail-end that we couldn’t wait for the others but kept going as a two, with a guide leading us on. Even at this slower pace, I could feel my body shutting down – whether it was the exhaustion, the altitude, something I’d eaten, or some combination of the lot, I was feeling worse and worse with every step.

It was a relief to get to camp, where I collapsed immediately, hot and aching with my headache pulsing behind my eyes. But the relief was only so much when I felt no better to be sitting than I had to be walking.

I struggled through lunch before falling back into my tent. Sleep wasn’t an option – I was too fearful I wouldn’t sleep that night, sure that my nap the day before had thrown me off. And I had to sleep that night.

In the quiet of my tent, I started to cry. My shoulders and back were aching, my feet sore, the headache relentless, and my stomach tilting this way and that like I was on a ship. I couldn’t climb the mountain like this. I could barely function like this.

That afternoon’s acclimatisation hike was optional, an extra 100 metre stint to help our bodies adjust to the altitude. I pushed through and joined those going, although I began to feel unsteady already by the time I’d hauled myself up huge sheet of rock onto the start of the path to the ridge. I wasn’t taking altitude medication so every little bit of acclimatisation I could naturally obtain was crucial. It was the difference between making it and not.

This was our first experience with the moon dust-like terrain that we would become used to in the coming days. The fine, loose dirt was a nightmare to walk on – two steps forward and one step back as your boots struggled to gain traction on the ground.

“Trust your boots,” our guide would call back. “Trust your boots, trust yourself.”

It was hard to trust your boots when you slipped constantly but we kept on, rewarded by the view at the top. The summit of Kilimanjaro to one side, and the mountains below to the other.

I sat on a rock in the afternoon light and closed by eyes to the view, struggling to regain my breath. Struggling not to hurl up the little lunch I’d managed to eat. I sat as long as I could – ten minutes or so, not the ideal amount for acclimatisation but something, at least.

“I think I need to go down,” I admitted finally, “or I’m going to be sick.”

One of our guides walked me down while the rest of the group waited it out. She talked to me the whole way, clearly trying to keep my mind off my stomach, her stories of the mountain making my little bout of altitude sickness seem pitiful.

“Thank you for bringing me down,” I said to her as we returned to camp. My stomach was churning and cramping but the need to be sick had passed, at least.

“No, my dear! Thank you for bringing me down,” she told me with her permanently cheery smile.

I continued to feel worse as the evening progressed. As our immense group of guides and support staff sang their team songs, even as we returned to the mess tent for birthday cake to celebrate one of our group. I laughed with the others as the guides sang the longest version of happy birthday known to man, while the birthday boy tried to cut the cake as fast as possible so it would all be over, but my body felt as though it was crumbling. I had never trusted my body less to do what I needed of it, and there was still several days’ of walking between me and the summit.

I managed a small bit of cake, offering up my fondant frosting to the only other person with as sweet a tooth as mine, who was feeling at least marginally better than I was. I ate a bite or two of spaghetti – hardly enough to supplement the hours I had walked that day.

That was the first day I was conscious of not having an appetite, of feeling as though my stomach could not possibly take anything more inside of it, despite running on empty. Only when I got down from the mountain would I realise how bad my appetite had been every day of the trail – how little I really ate in comparison to being at sea level. Not enough to sustain a normal day, let alone a day hiking at high altitude when you’re burning extra calories just to stay alive.

The stars were no less impressive that night but I had no energy for them. I crawled into my tent and hugged my arms around my aching stomach.

Please, I begged of the stars or the moon or the mountain, or whoever could hear me. Please, just let me sleep.

Stats

Signposted distance: 10 km
Actual distance walked: 15.6 km
Elevation gained: 640 m + 100 m acclimatisation hike