What They Don’t Tell You About Hiking Kilimanjaro
There’s an avalanche of information that takes over your inbox as you prepare to hike Mount Kilimanjaro. You’re given everything from packing lists, detailed itineraries, recommended vaccinations, tips & tricks to help you train, and tons of other fun activities to build into your trip to Tanzania post-hike. It’s all incredibly helpful but it is a lot to sift through.
While all the information they provide will assist in preparation as well as to accomplish the hike there are a few things that they don’t tell you!
You Won’t Sleep
It’s not because you’re not given the opportunity, but you just will not sleep. Maybe it’s the altitude that messes with your system or the whole notion that a body in motion stays in motion and that all of the hiking boosts your body’s energy so you don’t need as much sleep…IDK I’M NOT A DOCTOR!!! But I can tell you, nobody slept! It was 8 hours of tossing and turning in the hopes of just a few solid minutes of shut eye. Every morning as one of our guides greeted us with coffee and tea, we’d all discuss how little sleep we managed to achieve. No advice here but just be ready!
You CAN Drink Coffee
Speaking of morning coffee, you can have coffee!!! Again, I’m no doctor, I’m speaking of my own personal experience. Digging myself through the avalanche of information over the 10+ months leading up to the hike, there was plenty of notes suggesting or stating that there will not be coffee on the mountains. Not sure why, perhaps it has to do with heart rates at high altitudes. I was fully prepared to enter a 6-7 day cleansing of the magical beans. Well, due to the lack of sleep…I NEEDED coffee and they happily provided. It was honestly one of the highlights of the trip having coffee served to me as an alarm where I enjoyed the cup in bed before I would finish it up outside overlooking Tanzania.
Tea & Soup, Soup & Tea
If coffee ain’t your thang, they do have tea! In fact, they have so much tea and practically force you to drink so much tea, you’ll be begging to never have another sip again. I’m kidding…kind of. In an effort to ensure you stay hydrated, they lean on tea as well as soup to keep you pumped full of liquids. Yes, they encourage tons of water consumption but it can get a little old so they turn to tea and soup to help keep you levels up throughout the day. So with every meal, they provide soup and tea. The nice thing about the soup, is there was a decent variety where as the tea there was 3. The black tea had caffeine so kind of limited when you could have it, the peppermint tea was solid, and the hibiscus was voted to taste like cough syrup.
Pack a Game or Book
It’s all about saving weight and optimizing space. I totally get that. Whatever you want to bring, you’re stuck carrying for 6+ days or you’re adding it to the backs of the porters. They implement max weights, and your backpack gets filled with what are deemed the essentials. I would argue that a game and or book should be considered an essential. The hiking days are long but you are left with a decent amount of down time. In my case, we had an acclimitization day which involved a morning, 4 hour hike. So, we pretty much had the entire day after lunch at noon to do whatever we wanted. No wifi, no cellular, no nothing. Unfortunately, nobody brought cards or dice. This left music, napping, talking, or meditating as really the only things to do. Considering you spend most the time chatting on the hikes, you could cross that off the list. I highly recommend a book and cards.