The day after we got down from Kilimanjaro our Exodus Travels group had arranged to visit Arusha National Park on the way to the airport. It meant we had to have everything packed and be ready to leave the hotel at 7.30am, when we would be picked up, taken on a quick safari with all our luggage in the back, and then dropped at Kilimanjaro Airport at 3.30pm for our 5.30pm flight. It felt a bit mad to rush about so much the day after getting off the mountain but our whole group agreed that we should make the most of our time in Africa, so we’d booked the safari.
I am so glad we did!
We saw lots of giraffeBaboon families sit and groom each other by the roadsideLunch overlooking a lake in Arusha National ParkA shy bushbuck checked us out
Not only did we see baboons, Colobus monkeys, blue monkeys, giraffe, zebra, water buck, a bushbuck, bee eaters, bulbuls, an African Crowned Eagle, hornbills, sunbirds, and loads more besides; we also found a gorgeous view of flamingo lakes, with Kili in the background (on a clear day), to scatter another fifth of Grandma. I know she’d have loved the vastness of the panorama – even the three teenage lads with us were flabbergasted as they walked up the steps to the viewing platform!
The view over the flamingo lakes which Grandma now gets forever!
And the very last thing that happened as we were speeding back to the exit to head to get to the airport, was that Oscar and Sharon spotted some elephants in the undergrowth. Alex, our driver and guide, quickly backed up and we glimpsed a couple of elephant bums disappearing. Then, suddenly, there was a huge bull elephant on other side of us, staring us down. It flapped it’s ears and started to charge. Alex stepped on the gas (fortunately everyone was holding on!) and we moved far enough away to calm it. The elephant moved into the bush so Alex reversed a little but it came back out into the road and made to charge again, so we moved forward again. It was at this point that we realised more elephants were waiting to cross the road. We stopped and watched as a family, including the tiniest elephant we had ever seen, filed across. What a way to finish an amazing visit to Tanzania.
Didn’t manage to get video of the bull charging but you can see his family here!
So, if everything has gone to plan, we will have got up and packed all our stuff bright and early, to get picked up from our hotel at 7.30am yesterday. A safari vehicle will have taken us for a tour around Arusha National Park – where we’ll hopefully have stayed awake to see some fabulous Tanzanian wildlife – and then dropped us at the airport. As you read this we should be landing at Heathrow Airport!
“At Millenium Camp. Scree all the way here. Did the tipping ceremony with singing and dancing, and gave out all the gifts – T-shirts and children’s books – Sharon and Sheila brought. We did a bit of a speech each – it worked well. Still at 3,500 so still v chilly at night.
Reuben did so well to get to the crater edge – it was very tough and he couldn’t feel his legs but marched on.”
Exodus trip notes: Descend to Arusha
A sustained descent on a well-constructed path through lovely tropical forest alive with birdsong and boasting lush undergrowth with considerable botanical interest. Our route winds down to the National Park gate at Mweka (1650m); and on through coffee and banana farms to Mweka village. The shower, the beer, and the swimming pool are tantalisingly close! We return by bus to Arusha (a distance of about 100km). Approx 4-6 hours walking.
“Done it. With Dan and Sharon. Jez and Reuben turned back at Stella Point. Bloody hard – comparable to childbirth (well Ivor – not Osc!). Much love. Jx”
So she made it to the top, but only three out of the original seven got to the very top! We are SO PROUD that one of them is our Jae. Well done Jae, you legend.
Exodus trip notes: Summit day
We will start our ascent by torchlight around midnight so that we can be up on the Crater rim by sunrise. The steep climb over loose volcanic scree has some well-graded zigzags and a slow but steady pace will take us to Stella Point (5735m), in about five or six hours. We will rest there for a short time to enjoy the sunrise over Mawenzi. Those who are still feeling strong can make the two hour round trip from here along the crater rim to Uhuru Peak (5,895m), passing close to the spectacular glaciers and ice cliffs that still occupy most of the summit area. The descent to Barafu is surprisingly fast, and after some refreshment, we continue to descend to reach our final campsite (3800m) at Millenium camp. Most of us will be too tired to notice the beauty of the forest surrounding the crowded campsite. This is an extremely long and hard day with between 11 and 15 hours of walking at high altitude.
“Just reached camp for today. Did Barranco Wall this morning. All fine. The terrain is much lusher than it has been. Less moon, more desert covered in rocks, yuccas and lobelias.”
Exodus trip notes: To Karanga
A short steep climb up the famed Barranco Wall leads us to an undulating trail on the south-eastern flank of Kibo, with superb vistas of the Southern Icefields. The terrain changes to volcanic scree, with pockets of lush vegetation in sheltered hollows, and a powerful sense of mountain wilderness. Our next camp is at Karanga (4000m) a short distance away, the valley floor has the last water point on the approach to Barafu, whilst we camp on the higher sides of the valley with views towards the glaciers of the southern icefields. Approx 4-5 hours walking.
A morning of gentle ascent and panoramic views, walking on lava ridges beneath the glaciers of the Western Breach. After lunch near the Lava Tower junction (4550m), we descend to the bottom of the Great Barranco Valley (3900m), sheltered by towering cliffs and with extensive views of the plains far below. Approx 5-7 hours walking.
A day to help acclimatisation and to explore the grassy moorland and the volcanic rock formations of the plateau. We walk to the summit of Shira Cathedral, a huge buttress of rock surrounded by steep spires and pinnacles. There is a tangible sense of wilderness here (especially when the afternoon mists come in!) and the views from our camp near Shira Hut (3840m) of Mt. Meru floating on the clouds are simply unforgettable. The afternoon is free to relax. Approx 4-5 hours walking.
The trail starts out in the lush rich montane forest before ascending into the moorland zone of giant heather. The trail climbs steadily with views across the plains opening out as we reach the rim of the Shira Plateau. There is a tangible sense of wilderness especially if the afternoon mists come in. We camp in the centre of the plateau at Shira One (3550 m). Approx 6-7 hours walking.
In the morning we transfer to Londorossi (2250 m), passing between the slopes of Kilimanjaro and the horseshoe-shaped volcanic crater of Mt. Meru (a distance of about 120 km). After completing the necessary registration formalities, we drive on for a short distance through farmland and plantations to reach the Lemosho roadhead. The last 5 km of the road to the park gate is of poor quality, particularly after rain, and the drive there should be considered part of the adventure. We often have our lunch in the glades before starting to walk. It is an easy day of walking up a small path through beautiful and lush forest, this area has a variety of game including buffalo. We camp at Lemosho Forest camp (2650 m). Approx 3-4 hours walking.
GWEN’S LIVE UPDATE: I’ve heard from the team. ‘We are at the Moivaro Coffee Lodge. It’s fabulous – individual huts in amongst coffee and banana plants. Currently in the bar before dinner. Everything is packed for a 7.30am start tomorrow.’
JAE’S PRE-WRITTEN POST: So the big day is actually here. It’s today that we start climbing the biggest free-standing mountain in the world – Mount Kilimanjaro – after six months of wittering on about it!
The plan is that each day there will be a post which tells you, very briefly, what we’ve done the day before (courtesy of Exodus Travel’s trip notes). Where there is any signal at all I will try to text Litlun in Australia to tell her how we’re doing. If she recieves a text she will share its content with you in the next day’s post.
Litlun (Gwen Blake) has access to the blog and the Facebook page too – so send her a message on Facebook – www.facebook.com/3GKiliClimb if you have any useful info, or any questions.
I hope it all works while we’re away and you get daily updates.
As Sheila, Jae and Oscar get ready to fly off later today for their adventure on the slopes of Kilmanjaro, I find I have been thinking of toilets a lot. As well as reading about them in Sheila’s blog posts, I seem to be seeing little articles in papers and magazines. Apparently almost forty per cent of people travelling on holiday worry about finding toilets en route and there – and even more then worry about the possible absence of loo paper. At least Sheila, Jae and Oscar know that there will be toilet tents on their holiday.
Indoor toilet from Ancient Greece
All this got me thinking about my various holidays; recently I saw some indoor toilets, with running water, amidst the ruins of Ancient Greece. Some years earlier I had to chuckle at the chumminess of the communal, running water latrines in ancient Rome. I wonder how many deals were settled over a communal evacuation?
Roman Latrines (at Ephesus)
So I began to think that the availability of decent toilet facilities had to be an indicator of civilisation. In that case, Japan must be the most civilised country in the world with their amazing Toto toilets. They have little jets that can wash you back or front; some even have a jet of hot air to dry you. Think of it, going to the loo for a wash and blow dry! Beside each Toto there is a control panel with which you can set the temperature of the heated seat, chose the temperature and pressure of the various jets – some even play music to cover the rude noises one might make. My mind ran riot over the choice of music – ‘Music for the Royal Fireworks’ or the ‘Trout Quintet’.
Toto panel
Then memories of China killed that theory. For centuries before their Revolution, China was a heavily structured and civilised society (if you can forget the conditions under which ordinary people lived). However their toilet arrangements were far from advanced. Rich and poor alike used chamber pots and the poor paid the rich for the privilege of collecting the contents each day to spread on their fields. Read Pearl Buck’s Pulitzer Prize winning ‘The Good Earth’ in which Mrs Buck describes the indignity of a child walking round with a gradually filling up container of slops on their backs, with a piece of sacking tucked round the neck to try to stop things sloshing down their neck. Yes, I know, too much information! With that within human memory, maybe that explains why the Chinese are not squeamish about smelly toilets. I wonder what excuse the French, another very civilised country, has? And then the Chinese take sharing to extremes – like public ladies toilets with no doors – and squat toilets.
In Southern Africa, where so many poor people live in shanty towns without sanitation, the authorities have put in blocks of porta-loos such as we have at big outdoor events. I saw several blocks carefully painted, a letter on each cubicle, reading ‘dehumanising’. Our guide said that many of the residents were used to living in wide, open spaces where heat and insects rapidly recycled waste. It’s the same in India where, despite the authorities putting communal toilet blocks in the poorer areas of towns, people still prefer to keep up their old practice of ‘fertilising the soil’ – even if it is no more than going behind the bushes by the roadside.
But it doesn’t do to be smug about primitive toilet arrangements. Even closer to my home near Edinburgh, we weren’t that civilised. A couple of hundred years ago, Edinburgh was fondly called Auld Reekie. Reek means smelly, but chimneys also reek smoke. The twee people of Edinburgh (and there are plenty of those) still insist that Reekie was a reference to the smoke, while other know full well that it was the smell of waste in the streets. In the Old Town of Edinburgh, with its insanitary ancient buildings people were allowed to throw their waste into the streets for one hour each evening, after which a sweeper would clear the detritus for sale to farmers in the surrounding land. The residents were obliged to shout a warning to any person who may have chosen to walk the fragrant streets. This warning was “Gardyloo”, a corruption of the French ‘beware of water’ – and whatever else. These days are over, thank goodness. But the call lived on until the end of the twentieth century, if somewhat ironically. After Edinburgh modernised, they had sewage pipes with a fairly inadequate sewage treatment facility. The ‘treatment plant’ was on the edge of the Firth of Forth, into which the liquid waste was released. The sludge was another easily solved problem; a specially constructed ship, grandly named MV Gardyloo left each day with its cargo of sludge to deposit it in the North Sea.
Gardyloo
A trip on the Gardyloo actually became a fairly popular tourist attraction – maybe not for the type of people who are flowing into Edinburgh for the International, Fringe and Book festivals at present. And the Chinese practice continued in rural parts of Scotland well into the twentieth century. An elderly friend remembers when he was about ten, his Grandmother was given, by her brother, a bag full of giant, prizewinning vegetables that had won all the prizes at the local show. Back home from the show Charlie was sent to put the vegetables in the dustbin – his grandmother’s explanation was that she knew where her brother emptied his chamber pot. Charlie chuckled as he said they would now be sold as ‘Organic’.
So what is ahead of the happy trio on the toilet front? One thing I was worried about was that, in keeping with the Kili principle of what goes up must come down, porters would carry the toilet contents uphill and down with the gang having to walk behind the ‘toilet’ porters; I remember how embarrassed our dogs used to be walking behind us as we gently (always gently) swung the little bag of poo. Sheila has reassured me that the ‘contents’ get buried.
And with that, what more can I do but to wish Sheila, Jae and Oscar a remarkable, memorable and enjoyable experience. Best wishes and love.
Jae’s boys – and indeed husband David – have pressured Jae for years to allow them to have a dog, and to date she has managed to resist the pressure. All the boys love dogs, but Jae is not convinced that they would show the commitment necessary to look after a dog properly, particularly in light of their involvement with their various football teams and the amount of time devoted to that sport.
However, it seems that Oscar may have a chance of meeting up with a four footed friend on Kilimanjaro. It seems that a rust-coloured dog has been seen on the mountain a few times in recent years.
A couple of years ago four climbers had a surprise waiting for them when they approached the top of the mountain, known as Uhuru Peak. Antoine Galloudec said that he needed to heed the call of nature and stepped off to the side of the trail. He was shocked to find the dog lying on a rock no more than a meter away. The group was careful not to disturb the adventurous pooch, choosing to instead snap a couple of photos using a mobile phone. When they later showed those photos to one of their guides, he told them that the same dog had been spotted at one of Kili’s lower camps ten years ago. Why the dog is still on the mountain, and how it has survived so long, remains a mystery.
Dog spotted at the top of Kilimanjaro
High winds and cold temperatures are a common occurrence on Kilimanjaro, although it is the thin air that is usually the most difficult condition for people and animals, to adapt to. If this really is the same dog that was spotted on the mountain a decade ago, he has probably become quite acclimatised to life at altitude. Finding food is most likely a bigger challenge; there are plenty of small rodents, even high up, and perhaps the dog could find scraps left behind at some of the camps as well.
Four striped grass mouse – they scamper everywhere in the camps!
The sighting has baffled animal scientists who have questioned what motivated the dog to scale such heights and how he could have survived without a proper food source on the desert-like, stony plains of the volcanic mountain. One veterinary expert suggested that the dog might be rabid – one explanation for his mountaineering inclination – and warned other climbers to keep a safe distance.
The part of the mountain where the dog was found is so high that the temperatures usually remain below freezing and climbers are warned about the severe effects of altitude sickness.
Dog who lives on Vesuvius
It would be really exciting for Oscar and the other youngsters on the trip to meet up with a (hopefully, non-rabid) mountain dog. Jae and I had the pleasure of following a dog up Vesuvius earlier this year (see blog post 2nd May) and my sister-in-law Mary (5th July) describes being led on a walk by two beautiful dogs. It would be a real excitement for us all to meet up with such a hardy animal on the mountain – especially one who would take responsibility for consuming any rodents which might be in the vicinity! I really do not want to encounter any rats or mice in my tent.
Note from Jae: You’ll remember Ben & Alex’s lovely blog post last week. They are Sheila’s great nephews, and Louise is their mum. Today we have a contribution by their dad, Nigel – which now means their entire family has written for the blog. Thanks for the support Lou, Nigel, Ben and Alex!
Nigel, Lou, Ben and Alex (at Xativa April 2014)
A few months ago now there was a piece from Sheila about possible books (or E-readers!) to take with you up Kilimanjaro – which included a succinct plot summary of the Hollywood version of Ernest Hemingway’s ‘The Snows of Kilimanjaro’ and an allusion to Gregory Peck’s blue eyes and rugged jaw-line. The conclusion was there was no sense in taking heavy volumes to this remote and inhospitable place where what you carry needs to be reduced to the bare necessities of life (cue ‘Jungle Book’, also set in Africa?) And as for E-readers, well there would be no possibility of charging them so they can be discounted. In any case it could rightly be assumed that everyone would be far too knackered at the end of each day’s walk to consider doing anything other than having dinner, brushing one’s teeth and turning in for the night. Clearly a very sensible decision.
Bare Necesseties
But stop a minute. Try taking a giant nano-technology leap forward. Imagine that each of you were taking with you up the mountain a featherlite 14th generation Kindle Extrema (Severe Sports model) with wire-less micro solar panel attached to your climbing hat. Imagine also that much of the rest of your gear is similarly scaled down in weight and dimensions by the now-taken-for-granted new materials from which they are made (knocked up by the portable 3D printer you left back at base camp). So you can look forward to skimming an hour off the old daily walking time as you skip up the mountain pursued by your porters ( I suspect life would still be hard graft for them….) Yes, you have time for a little after-dinner recreation, and for some an opportunity to catch up on your reading.
Let us therefore extrapolate a Desert Island Discs moment. Instead of having to choose eight records to listen to as a solitary castaway, what you have to do for this exercise is decide on just one book to download on to your micro e-reader – and maybe even share with the rest of the party? What’s it to be then? Radio 4 regulars will of course know that this is one of the final questions asked of the interviewee, but there’s nothing wrong with lifting someone else’s good idea.
The Bible (should you want it) and the complete works of Shakespeare are already on your wondrously tiny device. So what are you going to take? Me? Well, actually I’m a bit of a short story fan. I’ve been in a U3A Short Story reading group for the past 4 years, and I did write a few myself for an evening class in Leeds about 30 years ago. I also lead a Creative Writing group at the mental health recovery project in Crawley where I work four days a week. The astonishing facility of some of the group members to knock off some really accomplished stories or pieces of poetry in about 25 minutes never ceases to amaze me.
So what is it about anthologies of short stories by writers with something to say which butters my parsnips? Well, I guess it’s partly because the format by definition has a short structure so even someone like me who is a slow reader can finish it in one sitting, and maybe go back and read some of it again in order to work out what the author was trying to achieve. Or instead you could go out for a run and mull over some of the ideas thrown up by the writer. Actually I know someone in Horsham who runs with heavy metal on his iPod which he seems to find relaxing, but that’s another story….
So I’m going to suggest the book that my U3A group is currently working its way through (as some of you will know U3A groups are very systematic in these things) partly because I think it’s an excellent anthology of work in that format by some great writers, but mainly because I think it touches on many of the issues that Sheila and Leslie and some of the other contributors to this blog have identified over the last few months.
A World of Difference book
The book (should you wish to order it from your local library, or even get it from Amazon) is ‘A World of Difference’: an anthology of short stories from five continents edited by someone called Lynda Prescott. There are 15 stories so that future Kilimanjaro trekker would be hard put to finish them all by the time he or she gets back to base. However most of the stories are about 15 pages or less, and don’t forget your E-reader’s back-lit screen should allow you to read on into the small hours of the African night without disturbing your daughter/ grandson/ mum or any other member of the family who’s come along for the ride. Yes, I know it’s a walk but let’s not be pedantic about it…..
Each writer seems to have something that is interesting or profound (perhaps even funny /touching/ tragic) to say about the experiences of migration or uprooting or dislocation from a person’s homeland or cultural traditions, missing one’s home and then finding that what you thought was home has changed when you return after a long time away. One or two of the stories are I think more about how we as observers see differences in others, while failing to recognise the similarities that can draw us together if only we identify them, and water and nurture them.
And is there a story about Africa? Well actually there is just one. It’s called ‘The Ultimate Safari’ and it’s by Nadine Gordimer a white South African writer, brought up in the apartheid era, whose books and stories tried to deal with some of the complex issues thrown up by that hideous regime. She died in 2014 having won the Booker Prize in 1974 and the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1991.
Nadine Gordimer
The Ultimate Safari is told in the voice of a nine year old girl who is orphaned by the violence that swept Mozambique in the 70s and 80s. She finds herself taken care of by her grandmother with whom she joins a small group of starving refugees who try to escape the conflict and likelihood of their own death by crossing over into South Africa. What they encounter in the nine pages of the story is the seemingly bountiful wild life (reference Jean Wilson’s recent contribution) to be found in the Kruger National Park as they seek some kind of safety. They see “elephants too big to need to run from anyone”. The girl says “I lay on my back and saw those ugly birds with hooked beaks and plucked necks flying round and round above us….. I saw our grandmother, who sat up all the time with my little brother on her lap, was seeing them too”.
Eventually they arrive at a refugee camp and are allowed to stay. The girl describes “ a very big tent, bigger than a church or a school, tied down to the ground….Inside, even when the sun is bright, it’s dark and there’s a kind of whole village in there. Instead of houses, each family has a little place closed off with sacks or cardboard from boxes … to show the other families it’s yours….”
According to her Wikipedia entry Nadine Gordimer believed that “ the short story is the form for our age, …. where contact is more like the flash of fireflies, in and out, now here, now there, in darkness. Short-story writers see by the light of the flash …..”
So that’s it. If you haven’t already, you might want to give short stories like that one a go. Or if you want to load your gleaming little device with something a little lighter you couldn’t go far wrong with the Just William stories. He would have found himself quite at home on a trek for the duration of which he wasn’t expected to wash very much, or to be well behaved when his Aunt Agatha came round for afternoon tea.
Happy trekking (if not reading) to all involved in the expedition. This family greatly admires your spirit of adventure, the fantastic level of preparation (at least on Sheila’s part but no doubt by the other two as well!), and your determination to go through with it – and no doubt have many laughs on the way.
