I recently spent 8 days climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro in Tanzania and the experience shocked me in so many ways.

So, I'm using this and subsequent blog posts to unpack, process, and chronicle the adventure while it's still fresh in my mind. This post will specifically focus on the ancillary support and unseen parts of the trip that made it all possible.

Hopefully, you'll better be able to understand the journey as a result!

Guide Service

It's actually illegal to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro without a licensed guide, and most opt to go for a full-on guide service. As I'll mention later, there are lot of people behind the scenes that make the trek possible.

I climbed with Ultimate Kilimanjaro and found them to be excellent. Our group consisted of 13 climbers, which was on the larger side of most services. On the mountain, I learned that a lot of people tended to hire guides to lead private groups of 3-6.

While that is ideal if you have a group of friends and/or family who want to hike together, doing so puts the cost of the experience on the pricier side. By comparison, Ultimate Kilimanjaro's cost was very reasonable.

Porters

Almost every Kilimanjaro expedition makes use of porters.

Their role is incredibly important to the likelihood of summiting Kilimanjaro. Porters set up camp before you arrive each day.

After you leave for the next camp in the morning, they will break down camp, carry everything on their heads (this part was genuinely impressive), and beat you to the next site to set it all up.

The porters also cook for you and carry a lot of your gear from one camp to the next. All I had to carry with me each day was a day pack containing only the essentials needed for the hike.

Our trip had a 3:1 ratio of porters to climbers. This seemed pretty standard. Initially, I was skeptical of climbing a mountain whereby a bunch of people carry most of your stuff up.

However, I came to realize that doing all that on Kilimanjaro would make things very, very difficult, especially at high elevations as you need to focus on keeping your energy levels up as summit day approaches.

All the porters are acclimatized to the altitude and used to carrying 40+ pounds on their backs while climbing thousands of feet per day.

They are freaking superhuman.

Glamping

I'm used to self-supported backpacking where you have to set up and break down camp and cook your own meals. So I definitely wasn't expecting the comfort of having people do all that for me, nor was I expecting added perks like a communal dining tent, or two toilet tents.

Yes, we had tents with toilets inside. We called them WiFi tents. The code phrase we used when referring to using the restroom was "sending an email."

My own personal tent was a 3-person tent that I didn't have to share with anyone else.

Each day we were served three meals consisting of tons of carbs and never enough protein. Apparently, protein is hard to digest at high altitudes. Nevertheless, I was genuinely impressed at the portion sizes and variety of foods we were served.

I'm used to Mountain Houses and barely edible pasta or chili in the backcountry, but our chefs brought out amazing meal after amazing meal.

The Route

There are a few different routes up Kilimanjaro, ranging in difficulty, scenery, and likelihood of success.

I chose the Lemosho route, which is quickly becoming one of the more popular routes because of its beauty and summit success rate.

Generally speaking, the more time you spend on the mountain, the more acclimatized you will be, and the more likely you are to summit. Lemosho is an 8-day hike, which puts it on the longer side of Kilimanjaro hikes, some of which can be completed in 5-6 days, albeit at a lower success rate.

The People

The experience wouldn't have been nearly as memorable if it weren't for the amazing people it introduced me to. Everyone in our group was accomplished professionally or in some sort of adventure context, and in many cases, both.

Our group had some awesome individuals, including the following people:

• Deb, an anesthesiologist from Australia who hiked to Everest Base Camp a few years ago.
• Matt, a PhD student at Stanford studying the existence of life on other planets. He was using Kilimanjaro as practice for Mt. Aconcagua, the highest peak in South America (23,000 ft), which he is planning on summiting in February.
• Diane, an MBA graduate from INSEAD, the top program in Europe, who now works for McKinsey in Paris. She is also a certified yoga instructor and shared with us her stretch goal of being the first Vietnamese woman to reach the Seven Summits.
• Sahil, Diane's friend from INSEAD, who does consulting in Dubai, has hiked around the Himalayas and is planning on doing Everest Base Camp next year.
• Jeff, an Ironman with plans to run a 50-miler next.
• Steph, an Ironman who is married to Jeff
• Kola, a urologist who was once on a list of the 20 Most Eligible Medical Professionals in New York City, according to Hinge. He said it was a good few years of dating after that.
• Yannick, a doctor-in-training in Quebec and the second-youngest on the trip at 25 years old. Before the trip, he was invited to visit a local African tribe because a guy on the street in Tanzania told him, "I like your shoes," which blossomed into a spontaneous friendship. Unfortunately, according to the tribe, he visited on the wrong day because they weren't using the cow blood until tomorrow.

Workouts

I am still training for the world's toughest event available to civilians, so I had to get some exercise in on the mountain. Besides the day hikes of course.

Every day except for summit day and summit day eve I hit a decent bodyweight workout. I did a combination of push-ups, sit-ups, flutter kicks, burpees, mountain climbers (pun intended), planks, and squat jumps.

It wasn't ideal, but it was the best I could come up with given the circumstances.

It's safe to say no one on the mountain had ever seen someone getting in additional exercise outside of the hikes themselves. Porters, guides, and climbers alike all stopped and stared whenever I got going with it at 10,000, 13,000, and even 15,000 feet of elevation.

Downtime

Given that most of the days had us done hiking by 1 or 2 PM, I thought we'd have loads of downtime.

It turns out we actually had very little. Every meal was multiple courses and routinely lasted over an hour. Almost everyone, myself included, took an afternoon nap after lunch. Finally, dinner would conclude around 7:30/7:45, and everyone would go to sleep almost immediately after.

I probably slept 10-11 hours a day. Between that and prioritizing my workouts and journaling during any free time, my day was pretty much booked up.

I returned to handwritten journal entries for the first time since my gap year and it was amazing. While taking 3 times as long as typing entries, it really forced me to think hard about every sentence and led to some great conclusions about the journey. I wish I could continue handwriting my entries beyond the mountain, but I know I won't have the time.

I'll have to settle for enjoying the opportunity while it was afforded to me.

Random Things Altitude Does to You

It's such a strange feeling being at altitude.

On one hand, everything feels like it should be normal.

On the other, a bunch of random stuff happened to me that was completely out of the ordinary.

Every night I woke up 3-4 times to pee. Like most people on the trip, I was taking Diamox, which is a medicine that helps with altitude. Unfortunately, one of the side effects is that you pee a ton.

I also probably peed every 30-40 minutes on the hikes, partly because of Diamox, but also partly because one of the best things you can do to combat altitude headaches is to drink water. I hydrated so much that my bladder was practically exploding 24/7.

The air was also so dry that I woke up every morning with a dried bloody nose.
Many people in our group reported headaches and loss of appetite as well. I don't think anything could prevent me from having an appetite so that wasn't something that affected me personally.

All of this is in conjunction with not showering for 8 days. As I'm sure you could've guessed, that part didn't affect me at all either. Although I definitely could've used a shave by the end of 8 days.

Now What?

We start climbing, that's what! My next few entries will unpack more of what the climb was like and what I learned in the process.

Until next time!