Tuesday 28th July 2015, 11.00am (day 1,433)
There are various routes one can take up Kilimanjaro. Ours was known as the Machame route, named for its starting point, one of the gates to the Kilimanjaro National Park. This point stood at 1,800m (just over 5,900 feet), so was already higher than I had ever actually walked before. As you can see, it was popular with these critters, blue monkeys, this one using this information board as a vantage point to scope out the potential for stealing the food of the other critters, the hundreds of walkers, porters and guides getting ready to start on the climb (one thing about Kili — you don’t do it for the solitude).