Day 2 ended at Shira Camp, 3,810m (12,500 feet, or 2.37 miles) above sea level. It probably looks nicer than this in decent weather, but most of the second half of this day was spent in the rain, a slightly dispiriting experience. Should you ever climb Kili, don’t necessarily expect it to take place in some kind of glorious African sunshine — a lot of the time the weather was rather reminiscent of the Lake District.
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).
The tour company that organised our hike up Kili (Zara Tours) look after their porters and generally seem to support the local community, including this orphanage in Moshi, which we visited while spending a rest day before beginning the hike. I know it’s easy for such pictures to seem exploitative but I hope this one isn’t, it is just meant to represent the fact that although basic I thought this seemed an essentially happy place. Most of the orphans are that way because of HIV, though apparently rates of infection in Tanzania are declining from their peak of a few years ago, which is good news.
From sunset in Turkey to sunrise the following morning in Tanzania. Taken from the back of the minibus into which I and seventeen of my fellow walkers were packed, on our ten-hour journey north to the Kilimanjaro region. No idea where we are at this point, so the records will have to show the location as “unspecified”, but the beautiful landscapes we passed through boded well for the walk to come.
We flew to Tanzania on Turkish Airlines so changed planes in Istanbul, allowing this city to get onto the blog a second time following my trip to Beirut two years ago. Who knows, one day I might even leave the airport here — it’s a city I’ve never properly visited. This was taken from the plane as we taxied to the second take-off of the day.
Well, I’m back from Kilimanjaro, and yes I did make the summit, but you will have to wait a short while to see it because I have several hundred photos to get through this morning. No excitement with this first one however, as I waited out a Friday night in one of the massive and anonymous hotels sitting just outside the boundary fence of London’s Heathrow airport. In such places, everyone is just waiting it out, aren’t they, including these three, with the bloke on the right ruminating about how much like Simon Cowell he looks, only without his cash (or why would he be in this hotel?). It will get more interesting… I promise.
OK, we’re finally here. I’m off tomorrow for the first stages of a trip that on Sunday 2nd August should culminate with me reaching the summit of Kilimanjaro, at 19,340 feet (5,895 meters). I’m not taking the laptop so there will be a two-week hiatus in the blogging, but hopefully not in the picture-taking — I have a backup camera just in case… I’m certainly ready, in fact I feel like I am just hanging around and am very keen to get on with it. So let’s do it. I’m back late on 6th August, will probably be spending all day on the 7th sorting out the social media, so expect to hear from me again then. In the mean time, if you would like to support my fundraising cause, the Calder Valley Search and Rescue Team, feel free to visit my sponsorship page: every little helps and all monies raised will go to the CVSRT.
Downtown Bradford has been a hole for a while now, a big building site that carved out the centre of the city and then stopped evolving for years, because the money ran out. But there seems to have been some movement on it lately, which is good for Bradford’s sake and also because it generally indicates that public infrastructure projects have not yet quite died a death in this country — though perhaps this one was just too embarrassing to leave half-completed.
Estate agents would describe this as ‘in a highly desirable location with a world-class view, but in need of renovation and lacking certain amenities’. In other words it isn’t on a road and doesn’t have mains anything, which is probably why it’s been abandoned for many years. This is Clough Head Farm, off the Widdop road above Hardcastle Crags near Hebden Bridge. I’m still in training for the walk I will begin a week from today.
First weekday of Joe’s school summer holiday and first weekday of my break too. Took him to York. This is Clifford’s Tower, which in 1190 was the scene of a notorious suicide/massacre by hundreds of persecuted Jews, and has been more-or-less in ruins since someone accidentally set fire to it in 1684. Today, venue for a school party of Americans to be conducted by their teacher (below) in a rendition of ‘Happy Birthday’. Tuneless — as ‘Happy Birthday’ always is when sung, fewer tunes are massacred more often.
Being 42 