After a 40-hour trip, we arrived to Kilimanjaro International Airport. I couldn’t believe it. We made it!
I was very stressed about the travel restrictions, the V’s, the connections, the possibility of things not going the right way. We had been dreaming on going on this trip for a long time, and now that it was finally here, my hopes were high and I was scared that the slightest detail could let us back and not be able to travel.
I told Johannes about my plan to come to Tanzania and climb Kilimanjaro a few months ago, it was meant to happen two years ago before international travel got suspended for a while. He looked at me for a few moments and said, “yeah, let’s do it”. I can’t say I believed him just then. I didn’t even believe it until three weeks ago, when we booked our flights.
So here we were… two years and a half after the originally planned date, about to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro, the highest mountain in Africa. This was the start of the Kilimanjaro Expedition.
So many emotions: excitement, thrill, a bit of fear, all at once. But overall, respect. I had quite a lot of faith in us, but the mountain is humbling, and before attempting anything, we should know we are embarking in a great adventure of great difficulty that requires strength of mind and body.
It was 3.30 am when we decided to stop pretending like we could sleep. We had had a very, very long flight, followed by an even longer layover and another flight after that. It was the middle of the night in Tanzania, but it would be sometime around midday in Australia. Or bodies were very confused by the time change and feeling the excitement of the upcoming expedition.
That fist night, we were determined to stay awake until 9pm, but failed terribly and fell asleep around 7.30pm. Still, we managed to sleep 7 hours or so. We’d be fine for the hike.
A few hours from then the adventure begun. Our team was picking us up at 11am to get our bags ready and start the epic climb.
We were a bit jet lagged but extremely happy. The longing part was over, now it was time to make it happen. Morning breath work, yoga, last emails and calls. Ready to go offline, off grid. I had no desire what so ever to buy a phone chip, this way I could be fully present in every moment, literally every step of the way.
Our guide, Keddy, picked us up and took us to the gate and we started the walk. The previous night we stayed at a hotel at an altitude of 1.800 meters so our bodies could start acclimating to the height. The night before that we were at sea level, and our goal was to get to almost 6.000 meters in three days.
I’ve been asked repeatedly the question about how we trained for it. And, in reality we haven’t really trained for high altitudes, but we have been training for freediving quite a lot. Johannes found a study on how there is a strong connection between mountaineering and freediving, and we were relying on that for this adventure. We have been freediving as often as weather and water pollution allowed in Sydney, pool training and doing heaps of breathwork.
The physiological response of the body to mountaineering and freediving is very similar. The “master switch”, the mammalian dive reflex (MDR) is activated when we dive deep and when we get high on a mountain. I’ll write more about this later. You can also check this post for more information on it here.
Our bodies adapt in a very similar way to the lack of oxygen in the thin air of the mountains, and the limited amount of oxygen to which we expose ourselves when diving. Our spleen generates more red blood cells to carry the scarce gas more efficiently around our bodies into our muscles, and we were counting on that and on breathwork and breath holding exercises to train for the discomfort.
This first day of hiking was easy. We had an amazing team backing us up and cheering us on every step of the way. The African landscapes, so beautiful around us, made it hard to keep our eyes on the track. The great conversation, amazing characters we met along the way and the scenery got us distracted, and the hours walking up the mountain went smoothly and fast.
It was about to get a lot more difficult. We really did not see it coming…
Swahili is such a beautiful language. It’s musical and welcoming, and Tanzanians are always happy to show you their words, songs and customs. Whenever you cross paths with someone, even if you don’t know them, they salute you “Jambo!”. But the word I most said during this trip “Ahsante”, meaning thank you. Our team was always on top of everything, knowing what we needed even before we did, so I’ll say it one more time, and won’t be the last, ahsante sana team! For the smiles, the food, the stories, the service and the spirits!
It should be no surprise that most of the names on the characters of Lion King are real words in suahili. Rafiki means friend, and we made a bunch of them on this trip. It’s hard to find Tanzanians not smiling, even though the work is hard, or the weather is not ideal. They share some sort of natural joy of life with which I feel very close to. Jokes and encouragements flow. When we got to where we needed to get after a long hike through changing landscapes our team of porters and guides surrounded us and started singing cheerful songs of victory. We danced and sang along to lyrics we had no idea what they meant, but sounded so joyous it didn’t really matter.
That morning we did breathwork before the day started, at midday before eating and before going to bed. We had this. We knew how to breathe, we knew how to walk and our minds are strong. Hell we had it!
During the hikes our guides would tell us all the time “Pole, pole”. Meaning, “slowly, slowly”. We were going fast, fast, fast up the mountain. Especially Johannes, who has the strongest lungs I know, and is also so tall that every step he gives might be equivalent to one and a half steps of our guides. And, you know me, I want to keep up, so I did. Keeping a short distance behind him moving my little legs as fast as I could, always watching that I could breathe in and out from my nose, with my mouth shut. Whenever I fell behind I tried to do a little run to catch up.
We got to Kibo camp in minimal clothing, and as a welcome we had beautiful white snow falling on us. This was a good omen. Muzungu kichaa (crazy white/western people) they called us. I loved it. Why do you want to climb Kilimanjaro in shorts? Because we can!
Before our tenth step of the day on Kibo hut, just after waking up, we saw a group of porters running down the mountain carrying another porter in some sort of cart. He was either asleep or barely conscious, probably with altitude sickness. Things were getting real. Up to now the trek had been fun and easy. Of course, we could feel the lack of oxygen. Every step was harder than at sea level, but nothing too crazy. Our oximeters read about 75%. I managed to only breathe through my nose the whole way up. Our guides already thought we were kichaa (crazy) because of our fast pace and odd choice of clothing. This day they were certain of it when we kept on hiking in swimmers, even though it rained, hailed and snowed (yes!, all three!) along the way.
We kind of knew that night at Kibo Camp was going to be hard, at 4.720 meters of altitude. Early, after midday, we got there. We had plenty time to rest, but the challenge was going to be how to sleep. For starters, we needed to wake up at 1.30 am to start the attempt to summit the next day, and from what I had experienced before, it’s very hard to sleep at high altitudes.
We had cucumber soup for dinner at 3pm, and went to bed at 4pm. If we rested for 9 hours it should be ok for our bodes to acclimate to that altitude. Every step along the way was a challenge to our bodies. We might have not known it but our bodies were doing so much work. Breathing thin air with little oxygen. The oxymters read about 65 to 70% oxygen that afternoon. Our bodies felt it, and the technology confirmed it.
We rested in bed most of the time we were at the camps, read our books, did our breathwork and some light stretching. But as soon as we needed to go to the toilet, or get up our hearts raced. Just from standing up our heart rates went from 75 BPM to as high as 210 BPM. Just from standing up… At high altitude, our heart rates drop at rest, but as soon as there is any sort of physical activity it spikes right up.
We took a glance at the path for the next day. It was steep. We were just starting to realise what a challenge we were going to face the next day.
We had a horrible night. Went to bed at 4pm so we could get 9 hours of rest before our summit attempt. The night was so cold I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t heat up, I couldn’t breathe. I closed my sleeping bag in such a way that only my nose poked out of it and still I was shivering. A couple of times I panicked I was going to suffocate because I turned around, fell asleep, then couldn’t breathe because my breathing hole was somewhere behind my head and not over my nose. Freezing but suffocating.
Every time I turned around I found another area of my body was freezing, my shoulders were pulled up towards my ears to try to get my neck some warmth, and in that failed attempt to be more comfortable all I did was generate tension in my neck and my jaw.
My mind was racing, thinking of how hard the next day would be, about how hard it was going to be on my trapezius to carry my backpack with all the tension I was self-inflicting in a failed effort to stay warm. Some doubts arose, and I started visualising us getting to the peak, celebrating with a miniature bottle of Jack Daniel’s I’d brought along. For short periods of time I did manage to fall asleep but nightmares tormented my rest. I started breath holding and meditating, that way I could put my mind at ease. Snores and yelling were heard from our neighbours. It was truly very hard to sleep. I looked at my watch and the time never seemed to pass.
I had been nauseous since dinner and my stomach was killing me. Later I realised that on top of being exposed to such extreme conditions, the soups that I had, had milk in them and my lactose intolerant body was quite upset about it all. All I could think was “Great! More challenges, just what I need at more than 5.000 meters of altitude”.
The oximeter read 65% around 10pm. Some more breath holding would be good. Let’s keep this up, and try to fall asleep, I still had time to rest until 1.30am.
“I’m a strong minded, driven, decided, tough woman and I can make it. I’ve got this!”, is what I repeat to myself every time I face a challenge. That wasn’t in my mind all the time that day.
Summit day was hard. I doubted I could do it for a while. Every step was hard. Harder than I ever thought. Our guides had great trust in us, so we left 3 hours later than the other groups. We had had a great pace the previous days, led by Johannes’s great lung and muscle strength. So, our guide reckoned we could rest a few more hours and still make it to the peak and down.
We started the walk at 3am. Churning stomach, dizziness, exhaustion, nausea and headaches. Altitude was taking a toll on us, and we never saw it coming. Tiny steps, “tole tole” (slowly, slowly in Swahili). Walking in the pitch-black night with our head torches on. Keddy was leading the way. I could barely keep up with the pace. My heart raced with every step, I wanted to open my mouth to take huge gulps of air, but it was in vain. The oxygen hunger derived from each tiny movement I made was bigger than what a normal breath could satiate. But “this is what we train for!”, that is my motto. There was no backing out. I wanted to space out, then come back to myself once the suffering was over, but there was no easy way.
I wanted to be present for this bit so I wasn’t even listening to music or an audiobook. Maybe I shuld have. I was suffering every step of the way, and self-doubt started to kick in.
It had been an hour and a half of walking up the hill in the dark, and it was so hard, I can’t even describe it. I’ve read a bunch of books on mountaineering, how altitude sickness feels, how it’s hard to breathe, how it’s exhausting to take a step or get out of a sleeping bag, but until you’re not there, you don’t realize the magnitude of how hard it is. You read about it and think “yea, it sucks”. But I don’t think you can dimension how much it sucks until you’re actually there. I started thinking, why do I do this to myself? Why don’t I want to go for a holiday to Bora Bora instead of choosing this challenge? How is it that I forget how much this sucks?
I really don’t know how I forget how much it sucks, but I assume it’s because reaching the goal and acknowledging your strength and determination after finishing a challenge like this feels so great that the rest gets obliterated and turned into nonsense.
But I wasn’t past this point yet. I was not even a quarter past that first day’s hike and I was feeling defeated. Johannes was feeling so sick he was walking with his eyes closed, I got so dizzy sometimes my foot crossed over the other, and I couldn’t have been more thankful to have bought those walking sticks (everyone I previously judged for hiking with walking sticks, I take it back, you were right the whole time, I’m sorry, won’t happen again).
I don’t even know how the time passed. Maybe I did space out, just focusing on my breath, trying to breathe through my nose, and trying out different inhale to exhale ratios and techniques to bring my heart rate down and calm my mind.
It started getting better around 6am, when we saw the most beautiful sunrise I’ve ever witnessed. Towers of clouds popping from the mountains in colours of brown, red and orange. Not even the photos can make justice to such a magnificent view or experience.
Walking in the black of the night was discouraging for us. As people who are used to (and like to) be in control, it was difficult not to be able where we were going, not knowing for how long or how much more. We knew nothing, and were asked once more to trust the process. Once the sun started to peep from behind the clouds we could see where we were going, but it wasn’t a lot better: still a long way to go, and the road so, so steep…
It had been 5 hours of walking up the mountain, with our heart rates pumping over 185 BPM constantly. We rested twice for about 10 minutes, but we had to keep on going because the wind was cold, and the moon didn’t provide any warmth.
We arrived to Gilman’s point around 6.30am. 5.685 meters/18.652 ft of altitude. When we saw the sign we just plummeted to the ground. Dizzy, nauseous and out of breath. When our guides told us it still was going to be an hour and a half to two hours to get to the summit we almost fainted. Was it possible to keep on walking? Doubts, mind chatter, exhaustion… Could we do it? Before that day I would have said we were able to do anything, but after the night we had and those painful hours of hiking made us doubt.
I felt defeated. Keddy pointed at the next sign: Stella point. It was visible. My heart lit: it looked doable. The mountain didn’t look as steep anymore, and we could see the sign. I drew a smile on my lips and said out loud: we’ve got this. This time I believed it.
With our spirits completely lifted, this time Johannes led the way, at his habitual fast pace. I could keep up, a bit behind, but strong and steady. I think I speak for all of us when I say that now, time flew. In 35 minutes or so we reached Stella point, the next stop was Uruhu Peak. We didn’t even stop at Stella point. The snow, adorning the landscape lifted our hopes and spirits. So close.
At 8.50am we reached the roof of Africa: Uruhu Peak, the summit of Mt. Kilimanjaro. We completed our goal, cheered and sang, we forgot about our pains and fears. We celebrated and cheered. Thank you team, for supporting us and taking us up the mountain and back down safely.
5.895 meters/19.341 ft of altitude in minimal clothing. Why? Because YES we CAN, and so YES we WILL!
It was an experience of a lifetime. Let’s go again! We are launching a new expedition, with the Breathless crew to summit this beautiful mountain. Go deep, get high. Ups and downs. Join us for a new Kilimanjaro expedition!
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