Introduction

Welcome to my blog, that seems like a reasonably easy place to start.

I haven’t done anything like this before, I am reasonably competent at using a computer (however I am also hoping that this gets automatically spell checked before getting posted) and a member (probably not that much of a user though) of Facebook but generally the internet is used just to keep up to date with what is going on in the world (and definitely not to look at porn....).

The idea of trekking Kilimanjaro started just over a year ago, I wanted to go skiing but could not find anyone I knew to go with (another story), I booked a holiday through a web site that arranged activity holidays for people on their own (now that I am typing it it does sound kind of sad…) and met some people there that had already climbed Kilimanjaro. Over a few beers in a bar (as most life changing decisions are made) they proceeded to tell me about how the trek on Kilimanjaro had been the hardest thing that they had done in their lives, the final walk to the summit involved them walking ten paces then having to stop for a rest and after taking a paracetomol to stop the headache they were then counting down the minutes until they could take the next one. Anyway this sounded like it had the makings of a great holiday so I decided that I would like to try it! They did also mention some of the good points like the view of the sunrise from the summit and also that the suffering was really all worth it at the end for the sense of achievement (hopefully I can let you know about that in the future…).

Once I got back home I started talking to various friends about my plan and got invariably the same response of I must be mad. I carried out some research and found that it was going to cost around £2000 to do the trek and then some (actually a lot as you will see later) more money to purchase trekking clothes and equipment to get to the top.

A couple of weeks after I got home from the skiing trip there was a program on TV about a celebrity attempt to trek Kilimanjaro in aid of Comic Relief, it ran through the training they were all doing along with physicals and the actual trek. The celebrities were Chris Moyles, Kimberly Walsh and Cheryl Cole(from Girls Aloud), Denise van Outen, Gary Barlow and a few others that I don’t remember or just don’t know their names. The program showed a lot of detail of the sights they could see and how they felt. Including as I had been told the lack of breath at the top of the mountain. They also seemed to be complaining a lot despite getting a lot of extra help with a dedicated trip doctor and some of them having their personal day bags carried, from what I’ve read so far I can’t really see that happening on a trek for mere mortals……

For those of you that don’t know Kilimanjaro is the highest mountain in the world that can be trekked (rather than others that are higher but need climbing experience rather than just walking), it is also the highest freestanding mountain in the world (as opposed to other mountains that are within a range of other mountains – I had to look up what a freestanding mountain is so I thought I would help you out). It is the highest point in Africa and is located within the country of Tanzania close to the Kenyan border.

So despite the fact that most of the people I talked to about the idea of trekking Kilimnjaro thought I was mad I also managed to find a couple of friends that were interested in joining me, better still one of them had another friend that was also interested, now we were a team of 4!