Climbing Kili...or How Not to Climb Kili...

In hindsight, my training regimen of karaoke, cigars and martinis probably wasn’t the greatest idea in the world…

This thought, and one that involves my incessant need to pee, cycle through my head as I place one foot in front of the other in the pitch black night – broken only by the headlamps of my guide and I (my climbing partner had long since turned around out of sheer exhaustion), the couple dozen other brave souls, and the breathtaking canopy of stars above us all.  Despite these thoughts and the biting cold, I am focused on one goal – summiting Mt. Kilimanjaro.

You see, a week ago I was frantically packing and gathering last-minute items back home in Indianapolis.  My roommates had kindly endured my three-week occupation of our living room and couch – turning the tiny space into a repository of everything I would need on my year-long trip around the world.  A seven-day trek to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro would be my first stop on the world tour.

I have since come to learn that most people actually plan trips up this nearly 20,000 foot mountain.  For months, and even years, they plot out every detail.  They scour travel guides for the best expeditions, train on Stairmasters while wearing backpacks, and use complex things to simulate the obscenely high altitude.  I, on the other hand, woke up one morning and decided I needed to climb Kili.  In true AJ fashion, I put off the rest of the details until the last few weeks before I actually planned to climb.

Adept at Google, I managed to find a website dedicated to Kilimanjaro sponsored by Bootsnall.com (a sort of do-it-yourself travel website).  There was a message board for folks hoping to climb, and I threw up my contact info in hopes that somebody far more organized than me would take the lead and let me into his or her group.  It turns out that organized people aren’t too keen on letting outsiders into their climbing parties.  I finally ended up getting an email from another person on the site – a New Yorker of Russian and Jewish decent – who proposed we climb together.  He seemed willing to handle the details, so I told him I was on board.  We opted for the budget option on the Machame Route – a significantly more challenging trail than the touristier and well-traversed Marangu Route – aptly called the “Coca-Cola Route” for the vendors selling the soft drink on the way up to the top.  I insisted on the 7-day version of the Machame trek because I heard somewhere that your chances of reaching the summit increase exponentially with every day beyond the first five that you climb.  And, after all, Kili was supposed to be the easiest of the world’s tallest mountains to climb.

After failing to get much of a budget option from a more established company, we were referred to an outfit “more in our price range.”  Moshi Expeditions and Mountaineering, or MEM Tours, offered up a bid under $1,300 including a guide, permits, porters, transportation, lodging before and after the trek, and food!  I was pleased with this result – especially since I had taken more of an advisory role in the planning process.  The trek would run from September 6 to September 12, with Day Three of the climb falling on my 27^th birthday, and our summit attempt coming in the twilight hours of Day Six.

So, less than a month before our anticipated climb, we had a plan.  While I fully intended to run the stairs of the canal in downtown Indianapolis, hike six miles a day with my pack on, and eat like a triathlete in the final weeks before the climb, the appeal of my favorite bar’s martinis and stogies as well as Friday night karaoke at another one of my haunts proved to be too enticing to pass up.  I ran zero miles, didn’t even have my bag packed until literally hours before my flight, and my last meal at home was the deep-fried goodness of Popeye’s Fried Chicken and Biscuits – with a side of red beans and rice…and a Dr. Pepper…

Thirty-two hours after the Popeye’s and after three flights, one lost and found bag of essential gear, and enough phone calls with American Express’ Global Assist team to be on a first-name basis; I was on a shuttle to the trek’s staging ground in Moshi, Tanzania.  Now, it should be known that outside of a fourth grade project on Kenya, a Senegalese roommate in college, a handful of magazine articles, movies and the Cliff’s Notes version of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness – I know nothing about Africa – especially East Africa.  That being said, I felt instantly at home upon my arrival.  For some reason, the continent called to me the moment I decided I had to drop everything I was doing and travel around the world, and being here in the flesh did not disappoint. 

I like to think that the shuttle to Moshi chose the more exciting route.  The hour of asphalt was nice and good for catching up on my attempts to stave off jet lag.  The other five hours of dust, dirt, car-sized potholes, and tooth-rattling speed bumps before and after every village between Nairobi and Moshi proved to me to be a bit more challenging.

At last, I made it to Moshi and my comfy, minimalist room at the Bristol Cottages Inn.  After taking some creativity to figure out how to use my mosquito netting, I slept soundly until some hideous brand of bird combined with the 5:15am morning prayer blasting out from the nearby mosque woke me up.  I took the opportunity to shower and shave for the first time in two days, grabbed breakfast and met a representative from MEM to go join up with my guide for the climb and with the New Yorker.

My climbing partner’s and my acquaintance prior to our first meeting had been primarily through intermittent emails and one fairly brief conversation on the phone – during which I am fairly certain I was hung over.  The New Yorker, I came to find out, was the yin to my yang.  Where I am fairly tall, light haired, and still blessed with remarkably good vision, my partner was short, dark-haired, with thick glasses.  He had an engineering degree from one of the top schools in the country – I took no math or science courses en route to my political science degree from the extremely liberal arts-focused DePauw University.  He admittedly had never really been outdoors, let alone camping – I am an Eagle Scout.  We were definitely the “odd couple” of mountaineering.  Of course neither of us had ever done anything quite like this before.

Fortunately our guide Mahamudu had more than enough experience on Kili.  First as a porter and later as one of the mountain’s certified guides, Mahamudu claims to have lost count of the number of times he has made the trip up and down Africa’s largest peak.  He went through our gear, noted what we lacked (I forgot gloves and a winter hat), and briefed us on the following day’s activities.  We would head to the base of the Machame trail with Mahamudu and our cook.  They would take care of our permits, give us the gear we didn’t already have, and select porters to carry all of our food and gear.  Tanzanian law prohibits porters from carrying more than 20kg of gear up the mountain, and despite my extremely light packing, this meant the New Yorker and I would have six porters, a cook, and a guide accompanying us up the mountain.  This, I later learned, was fairly minimal considering many other climbing parties had upwards of ten or more porters.

The climb itself is pretty spectacular.  We began at the trailhead in the middle of dense jungle.  Wearing only shorts, a t-shirt, and climbing sandals, I pitied the countless other climbers along the same path dressed head-to-toe in parkas, snow pants, and trekking poles.  My minimal clothing proved more than adequate through the end of the first day when jungle gave way to mountain forest which gave way to mountain shrubs.  Despite our fast pace the first day, our porters still beat us to the campsite (as they would every subsequent day) and had our tent set up and waiting for us with tea and dinner on the way.  The first evening’s cool breeze prompted me to switch from my short sleeves and Chacos to a more appropriate mix of mountaineering getup.

The next few days saw us ascend even higher than the first night’s 3000 meters.  Upon reaching camp the second afternoon, the clouds overhead parted and gave us our first look at the top of Kili – Uhuru peak.  Far more broad than any other mountain top I had ever seen, the peak was covered in glacial ice that sparkled with the setting sun.  I stared in awe for quite some time until Mahamudu beckoned me to dinner and promised I would get far better views the coming days.

I spent mow5 or my 27^th birthday huddled in my tent as a cloud that had previously (and quite rudely) dumped pelting snow on us as we passed by the lava Tower found at 4,600 meters, enveloped our entire campsite making everything wet and cold.  Fortunately, this gave me an opportunity to call friends and family (yes, there is sporadic cell phone reception on Kili) to say “hi” and, more importantly, to find out the score of the Colts-Saints game.

After having quite possibly talked through everything the New Yorker and I had in common on the first day and learning that Mahamudu was a man of very very few words despite my many (and likely very annoying questions – i.e. “How do you like being a guide?  Is it fulfilling?  What kind of ants are these?”), I reverted to listening to my old and little-used iPod.  A note to anyone planning on climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro – Bring an iPod or some other type of MP3 player – and a solar charger like the Solio that I brought along.  Nothing is quite as amazing as staring out over hundreds of miles of cloud-covered savannah and jungle below you, listening to Johnny Cash’s cover of U2’s “One.”  It is mesmerizing.  I found my eclectic mix of music ranging from The Killers, to the Old 97’s and John Coltrane actually helped me dance my way up the mountain.  Also, an MP3 collection – for example mine, which may or may not include the Broadway recording of Disney’s The Lion King – is a great way to give your trek a soundtrack – Toto’s “Africa” anyone?  Anyhow, the music, Mahamudu’s words of wisdom (“We go up, then down, then up again for a while and then we are at camp”), and the New Yorker’s self-acknowledged ranting (“Why don’t we have seats with backs?  I think I have malaria.  Why doesn’t Mahamudu say more?”) have got me to this very moment plodding my way to the summit in the pitch black.

I am cold.  I am tired.  My solid family genetics that have allowed me to coast thus far have finally met their match now that I am almost 5 miles in the earth’s atmosphere, walking on ice, with the ghosts of Bombay Sapphire and Cohiba laughing at me.  It doesn’t help that less than 24 hours ago I came down with a nasty case of food poisoning that has left me exhausted and throwing up all over the mountain.  The New Yorker, citing his own exhaustion and weak knees, gave up and turned back a few hours ago.  I also have to stop every fifteen minutes to pee thanks to a combination of the altitude sickness-fighting drug Diamox (which is a diuretic that forces you to urinate), and the four liters of water and fluids I have been taking in every twelve hours.  My orange bandana headband has long-since been replaced with a colorful (and mostly pink) Mickey Mouse ski hat – my punishment for neglecting to pack my own. 

It’s dark, and quiet.  Fellow climbers barely acknowledge each other in passing as every breath is needed to get up the mountain.  We left Barufu camp at 11:00pm to give us time to reach the summit by sunrise at 6:30am.  That was almost seven hours ago, and the sky is certain to open up with the morning light at any moment now.  I have promised myself that I will make it to the top and see the sun rising over Africa.  I take a sip of water, pee, and signal to Mahamudu that this has to be our final push.  I shuffle through the music in my iPod, find the song I’m looking for, and trudge ahead to the top of Africa with the opening bars of Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’” pushing me to my goal.

Comments

[Carole Szentesy]

Congratulations on making the summit. It is a joy to read your travel blog. I haven't been keeping up with your travels, but will from now on. Take care of yourself and we will miss you and send our love at this holiday season.