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The next two days are going to blend, in 36 hours we will have added over 6K feet in altitude to reach Kilimanjaro summit/Uhuru Peak and descend another 6-7K feet. All of this will be done with maybe 3-4 hours sleep.
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“Day four! Half way done”. This is the first line in my notebook that I wrote in my tent knackered after quite a day climbing to Lava Tower. And on the Kilimanjaro tour company website, it’s described as the “last of the ‘easy days’”. Easy days?!
Despite the claims of an ‘easy day’ it was going to be one of the longest days and the peak altitude would take us above 14K feet for the first time. With the landscape changing the paths widened as well and we found ourselves less single-file.
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There are several different routes to take up Kilimanjaro, our Lemosho route is the most scenic route, and at 8 days is one of the longer routes. People come here without proper training and try and do it in 5 days – what’s the point? Throughout the Kili hike, EBC was a reference for me, it is my only other high-altitude hike, but one of the best things about that trip was the scenery and the journey (will try not to talk about the worst things!).
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“Let me know what you think about Kilimanjaro and if you’d be up for it in Feb 2023”. That was just over a year ago in January 2022 when Beth messaged me. Back in 2016 I, along with 6 others, climbed Everest Base Camp. The aim was to create another small group to do Kili.
“It looks really good, very tempted”
Kilimanjaro was going to be nearly 2K feet higher than Everest Base Camp, which gave me some thought. I’d struggled with the altitude at times on EBC , as had another member of the original EBC crew. In the end, our Kili group was 8 people, Beth, Ollie, and myself part of the same crew from 2016. Now it was time to kick off the preparation.
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Colorado was our third summer trip in just two months (after Chicago and Vegas) and my 17th State. It promised to be a great trip with mountains and beer featuring prominently on the itinerary. To boot, we had Danielle’s best friend Melissa and her husband, Stephen, as our excellent local tour guides.
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We’ve been back three of weeks now, a weird few weeks. When we left the city as still firmly in lockdown, the streets were deserted, and we were getting groceries delivered and left outside our door. A lot of things changed while we were upstate: cases went down a lot, the state started reopening in certain areas, summer arrived and George Floyd was killed. I’ve already reflected a bit on that first week back with the protests, riots and curfew. My next post will be a chance to reflect more on what the city is like now we’re back but I’ll look back at our couple of weeks upstate here.
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I compare it to when there’s something such as a restaurant/café so close to where you live you never go there – “It’ll always be here, could go anytime, let’s go there instead”. It’s been just over five years since I moved to New York, in that time I’ve visited 13 US states/districts and 10 countries. More than once I’d taken a journey totaling over 20 hours flying time. What I had never done was fly one hour north and visit Canada.
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Sydney Opera House at night
I started a travel writing course late last year, one of the first assignments was to identify some potential ‘hooks’. Hooks are stories, events, key dates – something you can hang a story on to increase its relevance at the time of publishing. As I was scratching my head for some hooks I was also planning the trip to Australia.
While Melbourne became the main destination, Sydney had always captured my imagination and particularly Sydney’s Opera House. Thinking back as to why, firstly I remember watching NYE celebrations on the TV, Sydney always being one of the first countries to ring in the new year and so seeing all the fireworks go off with the Opera House in the foreground. Always leading the celebrations and a distinctive setting. Then, secondly, that distinctive setting, distinctive design, more so than a tower, a clock or a bridge and an existing part of the landscape – unlike a ball.
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Torquay Beach
Torquay, some may recognize the name as a seaside town in Devon, England. It also happens to be the name of a small town near Melbourne, population of only 10,000 with significant surfing heritage. Two of the biggest surfwear companies RipCurl and Quicksilver were both founded in the town.
On this occasion, as we got out of the van and climbed over the ridge to face the sea, we were not here to surf. Torquay is also known as the Gateway to the Great Ocean Road and this was the order of the day. Indeed, we were not carrying surfboards but rather a cup of tea, as we made the first stop for morning tea and cake. I had joined a tour run by a local company “Go West”, we were going to travel the Great Ocean Road making several stops along the way and then returning express in the evening.
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I’ve written several posts on the hike to Everest Base Camp, and most of them I wrote while hiking and still on the mountain. In an effort to not increase worry and anxiety amongst some of the readership of this blog, I decided to omit certain details about the hike while I was still in Nepal. Since I have now been back to England and provided in-person evidence of the fact I’m not missing any limbs, it’s time to document the outtakes. In roughly order of occurrence here goes..