Tanzania rhymes with Tasmania.
I spend two days with my cousin in Nairobi. It is great to be with family. The news from home is not good. Victoria burns. The hottest day on record brings bushfires. Hundreds die. For now I don't know whom. I haven't been able to check my most recent emails.
At Nairobi airport there are three flights leaving from each gate. On the other side of the gate it is a bit of a free for all. There are a multitude of planes on the tarmac being boarded. I am directed to "follow those ladies". I board a plane from the rear stairwell. There is no stewardess to greet me so I check with a fellow passenger that I am on the correct flight.
Forty minutes later I am in Tanzania at the Kilimanjaro airport. I am met at the airport. As we drive away the sun has set and a beautiful full moon hovers over the horizon. Kilimanjaro is hidden behind clouds. I can just make out the lower slopes either side.
Forty minutes later I am at a beautiful hotel.
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The next day.
As we start up the mountain we pass through a beautiful temperate rain forest. Ferns, tree ferns and large trees covered in thick moss. It looks similar to many places in Australia. It especially reminds me of the Ballroom Forest at the edge of Dove Lake near Cradle mountain in Tasmania.
I see our guide Freddy is carrying something long in his pack which at first glance I mistake for a rifle. It is only an umbrella. This tells me there are no dangerous animals in the area. I ask to make sure. No, not even mosquitoes.
I then ask about any safe animals that might be in the area. There are two types of monkeys. There are also some jackals and wild dogs but they are rare and we aren't likely to see them.
I ask "what do the jackals and dogs eat? Monkeys?"
He says there are also some small antelope but they are rare and we aren't likely to see them.
I ask if we will encounter snow on the summit. No, just ice.
We walk consistently up. It is a mild slope. After lunch the trees start to thin out. I start to see some of that wispy moss hanging from the trees like I saw in the Himalayas. There is an ultra light rain, hardly more than a mist. This turns into a light shower.
We set up camp. Actually the porters and crew set up camp. Our contribution is merely unrolling our sleeping mats and sleeping bags. It is cloudy and we can't see Kilimanjaro. We discuss whether it is really there or not. Perhaps we have been tricked into walking another remote area. We have some brief rain.
I am travelling with two Canadian brothers, a father and son from Melbourne and an Englishman. I was the last to join the party and the rest of the group were expecting a woman. James, the son, was particularly disappointed as he had an intricate romantic scenario all planned out. Then I show up to ruin his plans.
Nature calls at 5am. Kilimanjaro is eerie in the light of the full moon. It doesn't hang over us in the sky the way the mountains do in Nepal. it is still distant. I can see a great deal of ice on the approach to the summit. I hope I will be able to make it. After my altitude problems at Everest I began this walk knowing full well I might not reach the top.
We get up at 6:30 and the summit is still clearly visible. Some clouds quickly rise and obscure it but after a while they disappear. We leave at 8:30. This is an hour earlier than scheduled but Freddy wants to reach the campsite before lunchtime in case it rains. It will be better to have lunch in the tents than to be caught in rain.
Someone has a plastic cup left from a morning cup of tea. It is returned to the porters so they can pack it away. We pretend that the porters have been greatly distressed by the missing cup and that this is what they have been discussing heatedly in Swahili. "We are missing a cup". "We will have to fill in a form to requisition a new one." "Who will pay for the new cup?" "It was your responsibility. It will come out of your salary." "I am not responsible for the cups. I just carry them. You distribute them."
This becomes a running joke for the trip. Whenever we hear animated discussions in Swahili we pretend the porters are discussing care and maintenance of cups.
The track is quite muddy and rocky and we head up a steeper trail than the day before. The morning quickly warms up. It is sunny and glaring as we head north easterly with the rising sun shining into our eyes. The summit drifts in and out of view among the clouds. As we ascend the trees thin out. The mist behind us thickens and billows. Tanzania disappears. We are now above the clouds.
The world is now just us and the mountain.
"Us" is quite a lot of people. Over 30,000 visitors climb Kilimanjaro each year and maybe twice as many porters. There are many groups walking the same route and camping in the same area. I can't distinguish our porters from any of the others.
I ask Freddy what percentage of people make it to the top. He says 85%. And how many of us will make it to top? 100% he assures me. Can he usually tell who will be in the 15%? No, he can never tell.
We reach higher, flatter ground. There are lovely pink and white wild-flowers that look like they belong on cacti. We reach camp in an open rocky area. We are pretty much above the tree line. Tents are scattered sparsely around and it is as noisy as a caravan park. The peak is hidden in the mists. We aren't sure which direction it is in and we offer different opinions.
In the twilight around sunset the peak appears, just where I said it would be, hovering brightly over the darkening foreground. Directly opposite the rocky ground drops away to a panorama of clouds. Normal looking clouds are drifting in from the left and the right. below them and us is a thick bed of fluffy clouds. They glow orange as they are lit from underneath by an unseen sunset.
I wish you were here.
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In the morning, the summit is clearly visible. (When I talk about "the summit" or "the peak" I am talking about that section of the mountain which rises up covered in ice and snow. We have been walking upon Kilimanjaro for days but when we ask "Where's Kilimanjaro?" we are asking about this distinctive section which sits like a mountain on top of another mountain.)
The tent is covered with fine frozen water droplets. Frost is frozen on the ground and crunches beneath our feet. We head straight towards the summit. It looks like it is just over the next ridge. But the ridge flattens out slightly with another ridge beyond it and there is another ridge beyond that and so on.
Beside a stream - little more than a ditch - thick frost is composed of closely packed fine parallel threads of ice 2cm long. During the day any moisture on the surface is dried by the sun and the wind. It is still moist under the dirt. This is where the frost begins and it grows overnight pushing up the surface dirt and small stones like mushrooms
As we slowly ascend the ice disappears in the sun. There are no trees. The land is rocky with tufts of wiry grass. There is a long trail of people going up the mountain. We branch off the main trail and head for "lava tower". We pass a small stream which has carved a 4 metre deep channel in soft soil. It looks unusually young. Freddy explains the area used to be covered in snow. These days it snows occasionally but the snow always melts. Freddy has been climbing the mountain for 17 years and has seen the glaciers disappearing. He expects them to be gone in another 10 years.
We have lunch about 800 metres before Lava Tower. It is a large lump of rock about the size of a five story building. The mist has risen and visibility is poor. We go up around the tower to reach a height of 4600m. This is important for acclimatisation.
As we descend I lose sight of the others in the mist. Weird plants looking something like those branching cacti of North American deserts start appearing. As we get lower they get larger until they are tall like trees reaching about seven metres.
We get to camp just as it starts to rain. The summit is lost beneath the mist.
In the night the summit appears in the opposite direction of where I expect. It is much closer now. We are almost at the base of it. It looms over us under a waning gibbous moon.
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In all the walking has been a lot easier than in Nepal. It is a steady, gradual ascent and not with the ups and downs of the Himalayas.
I get out of breath occasionally and feel slightly nauseous. I now recognise this as a reaction to the altitude.
I am not battling a cold. I get tired but there is none of that "I must endure" or "I struggle to put one foot in front of the other". This may come later, on the final ascent.
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In the morning we set off walking up a steep rock cliff. It is bright and sunny. It gets a bit slow in some sections. There is a need to clamber up some rocks and this can be difficult for the porters. The result is a traffic jam of trekkers.
Clouds come in. Today is a series of ups and downs more like walks in Nepal.
At one point I am walking along a flat barren stretch, Mist hides any features of the landscape. I imagine this is what purgatory must be like.
We reach our camp before lunch. We are 50 metres higher than the night before but the heights we reached will help in our acclimatisation.
In the evening the mist clears. Kilimanjaro appears in a totally different direction to what I was expecting. In retrospect I don't know why. The peak has been consistently uphill. The lights of Moshi are bright below us.
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I wake up early. I think the sunrise will look good from a nearby ridge so I decide to take a look-see. It is further than it looks so I don't make it. As I return I take photos of the light changing on the mountain as the sun rises. I also see a couple of dark brown large mice.
We walk to base camp. Up , down, flat, up. We get there. We meet happy people who have just come down from the summit.
We are at 4600m. There is very little grass at this altitude. There are numerous light brown mice that have three dark brown stripes down their backs. They dart under rocks and around the tents. They are almost rat size.
The area is a mix of volcanic rock, boulders, stones and dirt and plates of slate stone that clink beneath our feet like glass.
I sleep for about an hour in the afternoon. We have dinner at 5.30 and try to get some sleep. I have a couple of hours dozing and a couple of hours sleep before being woken at 11pm. We pack for our climb, have tea and biscuits and depart at quarter past midnight.
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