A journey to the top of Mt. Kilimanjaro with Abercrombie & Kent
By Katie Tarbox
Kilimanjaro, the world’s tallest free-standing mountain, inspires 25,000 climbers to make the seven-day trek each year.
I summated at 8:00 a.m. on a Thursday morning. I was hallucinating by the end, having traversed 15,000 to 19,340 feet over the eight-hour hike. I was so happy that I cried; however, it was so cold that my eyes immediately froze shut. The week-long climb was so demanding that I couldn’t even open my mouth. My last rational thought was that I had done something I had never believed possible.
We rode the long, winding dirt roads from the Arusha Mountain Lodge to the Machame Gates in Range Rovers. Motion sickness meant that my eyes were firmly shut for most of the trip toward the 19,000-foot tall mountain. On the flight from Nairobi, upon hearing that the airplane was flying at a lower altitude than the mountain, I began to seriously question my audacity.
