The Route Less Traveled

I woke up this morning thinking I was about to climb the world’s highest free standing mountain, only 19,380 vertical feet to go. Then I thought I feel older today and wondered if I should have attempted this years ago. I quickly dumped that from my mind, I feel great and now is the time for me to conquer Kilimanjaro, I know I am ready. In order to get ready I jumped in the shower and found that there was no hot water available, there was a hot water knob, however no matter if it was turned all the way to the right or all the way to the left, it did not matter, this was ice cold water. It’s really quite amazing how fast you can clean yourself with proper motivation.

A van arrived to pick us up and we headed to the local MKSC office (Mount Kilimanjaro Safari Club). The driver did not speak much English but once we got there he motioned to us to get out. We then saw some guys move our luggage to a new van. I looked around and saw an old gas truck badly in need of repair, another guy working on his car, and a bunch of non-English speaking people who I assumed are our porters.






I then saw the van with all our stuff in it drive off, two thoughts raced through my mind. First, well there goes all our stuff, and second, I wonder how much more time I have to live. Then Honest appeared from the building and a third thought entered my mind. I realized what a mistake I had made with my first two thoughts. In Africa this was a legitimate business, it was only through my eyes that it became criminal. A mistake that I would try hard not to repeat. Honest greeted us and let us know that they were only going to get fuel. And they did return shortly, we all piled in to two vans and headed out. Two vans were required because for the 2 of us Ben and I had 2 guides and 8 porters, so if you do the math we each had a support team of 5 helping us up the mountain. OK that may sound like we are a bunch of wussies, but I’d like to see anyone reading this to haul all their own tent and food equipment up nearly 20,000 feet.

Mount Kilimanjaro is a dormant volcano, which means it is not suppose to blow up on you when you are climbing it. The climb is really more of a hike until the last day when you find yourself climbing over rocks which often involve a few last minute scrambles. When working with Lark Tours we told them we wanted the less traveled, non-tourist route, and they really delivered on this by sending us up the Rongai route and down the Marangu route. This path really gives you the best of both options because you get to see everything on one side of the mountain going up and then see everything on the other side of the mountain going down. Because the Rongai route is less traveled you actually get to see wild life that is missed on the more crowded routes. We would be making our summit attempt in 5 days, which was a bit risky when it comes to acclimating to the altitude as 6 days are preferred but we were trying to pack a lot in to only a few days so it was a risk worth taking.

I once took a bus from Lao Cai to Sapa, Vietnam on what at the time I would have said was the world’s worst road, now I know better. The road from the Marangu Gate, where we had to get our permits, to Nale Moru village, the start of the Rongai route is the leading candidate for the world’s worst road. It’s not that far but still took us over 2 hours to get there, and boy was I happy to see a wash closet once we got there.


Along the way we got our first glimpse of the mountain and I actually thought “hmm, I thought it was bigger than this”, of course not taking in to account perspective and how far away we still were.






Once we were on the other side of the mountain we stopped for lunch, this seemed like a good place.


I of course ordered the Chris Burger. The Chris burger is not that great, a very dry burger from some kind of animal with a fried egg on top. But here I was in a local village restaurant just a few kilometers away from the Kenyan border, getting ready to climb to the highest point in all of Africa, with the exception of Ben, not another white person around for miles, so it tasted great and I was overcome with emotion. I realized that this was what I was looking for a year ago when I began researching an African trip, however I still had no idea what to do now that I found it.


Being so close to the Kenyan boarder and realizing that we were from the United States, the locals all greeted us with one word, “Obama”. With Obama’s father being from Kenya they told us that we were not from the United States but rather “From Obama”. I’m not sure I can fully understand the experience yet, but it was nice to finally be so warmly greeted.


After lunch we made our way to the start of the Rongai route.


The time had come, so we put on our day packs and headed out. There would be five different climate zones that we would be passing through, we started out in the Bushland and worked our way through rain forests to the Moorland zone.


Passing a local farmer along the way.


Along our journey we encountered a porter escorting a woman down off the mountain. Our guide spoke Swahili to him and it turns out that she had trouble with the altitude at the second cave (around 12,000 feet) and had to descend. You could see the disappointment on her face and she looked a little out of shape. However I have to congratulate her, she was out here at least attempting it, which is more than most people do. Each person has their own summit and each person has their own challenges, it’s not about who gets to the top, or who is the fastest, it is about you and the mountain, and nothing else. So I hope she takes pride in what she accomplished.


It was not long before we saw our first wild life. Because of a language barrier between us and our guide we originally thought we were looking at Cannabis monkeys, however as I type up this blog I checked the www-dot-internet thing and in fact we were actually seeing the Colobus monkey.




After about two hours we could finally see that we were making progress, we were higher then when we started.


Before we started our guide said that we would be going “pole pole” (pronounce the “e” and it means slowly, slowly), this gives your body more time to slowly accumulate as you slowly rise in an effort to fight off altitude sickness.


Just another 30 minutes and we would be at our first camp, today would be the easiest day and we were only at 8,530 feet, a nice way to start. Our porters were already there and had our tent setup with dinner cooking.


I can’t tell you the meaning of life. But today, today I think I know why I am here, it’s simply to stand here and watch the sun go down on Kilimanjaro. I can feel the energy of the mountain, its beauty, its size, its power radiates through me and I can feel the little hairs on my arm stand up. I don’t know why or what emotion I am feeling, but everything is right in the world at this very moment. Yeah, today I think I know why I am here, today I think I know why the dog howls at the moon.


We sat down to dinner which was pretty good until our guide, Romlie, came in and told us to eat more. He said we have to force ourselves to eat so we can store energy for our final accent. I looked at the roughly ten pounds of mashed potatoes that had been set before Ben and I and thought if I eat more I might throw up and lose everything I already have stored. I choked down a little more and was finished.

I have to apologize for this next picture, my intent was to show the facilities, basically a sheltered hole in the ground with no door for privacy. However when I took the picture the flash on my camera illumined the inner depths of the hole, and well, there is some nasty shit down. I know what you are all thinking, would Ben break his previous record set on the Inca trail? You will just have to keep reading.


Ben said the smell made him gag, but I only had one option and it was not going to wait until morning. So I grabbed my headlamp as it was dark, the skies were beautiful by the way, so clear you could see everything, the Milky Way, satellites crossing overhead, and of course the seven sisters (or Pleiades constellation). Anyway I had two door less sheltered holes to choose from and apparently the previous user of both did not have a headlamp because they both had misfired and apparently did not see the broom that was used to clean up such a misfire. There are things in life that you don’t like to do, things you don’t want to do, but sometimes they have to be done. So with my headlamp illuminating the area I assumed the cannonball position being careful to hold my shorts up and thus avoid any contamination with the misfire, and let nature take its course. My legs were a little sore and twitched so I shifted my weight and then the whole shelter tilted a little bit. I thought "I don’t have enough antibiotics if I fall in this thing". Fortunately my body sensed the urgency of the situation and jettison its remaining cargo, and I got out of there. After Ben and I had a few laughs over the recent events I settled in for the night.