Day 1

The Big Adventure began for real early on the Saturday morning. The chief guide (Jonas) collected us from our hotel and we (along with our kit) piled onto the bus along with the other 2 guides, the 2 cooks and the 20 something porters.

You have a choice of routes for climbing Kilimanjaro, and ours was the Rongai route. This involved a 5.5 hour journey around the mountain to the north eastern slopes on the Kenyan border. Not deal, but this route offers high success rates as it allows adequate acclimatisation along the way and reduces the chances of climbers being beaten by altitude sickness.

After a quick lunch at the Rongai gate to the National Park, we set off on a 3 hour trek to our first camp.