Kilimanjaro is considered a strenuous, non-technical climb. However, for a physically fit person it is doable. Recently, Dr. Raja Basu who climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro in December, 2004, took the time to share his experience with me. Here is the entire talk, from the initial idea to his after-thoughts.
Mt. Kilimanjaro
The Idea
Sapna: Why did you pick Mt. Kilimanjaro?
Dr. Basu: Let me just go back a little bit before I answer that question. Physically I am a very active person. I am involved in a lot of different sports. I run, I swim, I bike, I lift weights, so doing something of that sort, was to me, a natural extension of things I do. It was not a life long goal. You know people go on vacations; this is what I decided to do. Now I have done hiking and stuff before but I have never really climbed a mountain. So I guess my decision to climb Kilimanjaro was for two reasons. One was it sounds romantic. There is a lot written about it. And it’s probably a mountain that a lay person can climb. You don’t have to be a proficient technical mountain climber to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro. So I think when I combine my interest in Mt. Kilimanjaro and the fact that I know I can do it and that a lot of people like me have done it, led me to pick Mt. Kilimanjaro vis-à-vis some other mountain.
Sapna: You said you go hiking. Where exactly do you go hiking?
Dr. Basu: Its not that I go hiking every week or weekend but I have been hiking in the Grand Teton. I grew up in India so I have hiked some over there, but in general I am very much into the outdoors. Now the interesting thing is I enjoy hiking and I like the physical part of it but I actually hate camping.
Sapna: Why is that?
Dr. Basu: It’s too much of a hassle. I hate camp food. I don’t particularly care to sleep in a tent, not shower for 6-7 days. All that stuff. Its not the discomfort, it is the way I feel. I really enjoy the actual physical effort involved in doing things but do not like the camping part.
The Research and Planning
Sapna: Did you climb Kilimanjaro with a tour group?
Dr. Basu: Well….Yes and No in the sense that I was there with a guide and I had a team of 4 porters and I contracted them through an outdoor adventure specialist, but I was not there as part of another group of 6-7 other people from all over the world or friends. When you climb Kilimanjaro you have to have a guide and porters, which is required by law in Tanzania.
Kilimanjaro trek starting point.
Sapna: Who was your tour guide?
Dr. Basu: The outfitter or the company?
Sapna: Yes.
Dr. Basu: Here’s the other thing, they hate being called tour guides. The outfitter ….their name is Global Adrenalin and they are based in Illinois.
Sapna: How did you find them?
Dr. Basu: I have friends who do similar stuff, and I talked to one of my friends who climbed with a group called Thomson safaris, that’s another big one out of Boston. I also went on the Internet and checked out some. The reason I picked Global Adrenalin was their references. They had recently, I think last year, taken a group from the MBA program at Duke University and I went to school at Duke. I figured that if Duke thought they were good enough, and then they were probably at least moderately acceptable, they could not be too bad. They also took a Harvard group a couple of years ago. So I felt pity comfortable that they were a legitimate group. I looked at them and Thomson safaris and they were very similar, their prices are similar, the arrangements they make are similar. It is just that Global Adrenalin were better able to accommodate my schedule.
Sapna: Speaking of prices, what should one planning such a trip expect?
Dr. Basu: You are talking about the total price… I was just talking about the land prices being similar. I think everything said and done, depending upon how much of the gear you already have, one should expect about $7000. The gear; your clothes, shoes, sleeping bag etc. can be quite expensive. I don’t think most people realize that, but a sleeping bag made for that kind of weather will run from anything between 500 to 1000 dollars. So if you have absolutely no equipment at all then you should plan on about 7000 dollars. Your equipment will cost you about $2000. So if you already have the equipment you need the trip will cost you $5000 or so.
Sapna: What equipment does your outfitter provide you with?
Dr.Basu: The outfitter provides you with basically your tent, and some climbing gear that’s needed, but things like your sleeping pad, your sleeping bag, your clothes, all those you have to get. They provide the tent though.
Sapna: Where did you buy all the necessary equipment?
Dr.Basu: Again you can go online. There are a couple of places like REI.com I bought a bunch of stuff from them. They are a very good standard issuer of all kinds of equipment. I bought some stuff from Nike. Basically, all I the stuff I had to buy I bought on the internet.
Sapna: How much in advance did you contact the outfitter?
Dr.Basu: My climb was in December so I probably contacted for the very first time; depends on how you look at it; I went on the web page and I checked their web page out and I had a sense of when they have different expeditions that are running and I probably contacted them for information earlier in the year maybe March, April, May but I contacted them and said I want to come some time in august or September.
Sapna: So you committed yourself to that tour in September?
Dr.Basu: That’s right and you almost have to because they want a deposit. They want to make arrangements with their local agent once you give your initial deposit which was not much. It was about 500 dollars.
The Training
Sapna: You said you were a physically active person even before you thought of climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro. Did you do anything differently to train for this climb?
Dr.Basu: Kilimanjaro is not a technical climb so you don’t have to do too much of those ropes and that sort of thing. My typical work out routine is I lift weights about 5 times a week. I do something aerobic for an hour a day four times a week. During that hour I run anywhere from 6 to 7 miles. It’s longer when I bike usually. Anyway that’s my regular workout over a six day span during a week. I usually get about 9 work outs in six days. So there are three days when I get two work outs and on the other 3 days I’ll get a work out in. So I am fairly committed to it on a regular basis. Whether it rains or snows I am up at five and I go run and then right after work I go lift weights. For Kilimanjaro for the last three months I probably got two work outs a day.
Sapna: Do you think you were prepared for the climb?
Dr.Basu: Oh yeah. I was way over prepared. I did not feel fatigue, muscle pain or out of breath at all during the climb. And that was one of the best things about the climb. At about 18,000 feet I had altitude sickness which was severe shortness of breath, but it was because of the thinness of the air, not because I was not conditioned. And you could be physically the fittest person in the world and it will not make any difference because different bodies react differently to altitude sickness. So to answer your question over the last sixty day time period I did not work out for about three days. The rest of the time I worked for one hour in the morning, something aerobic and then an hour after work lifting weights.
Landscape changes
The Trip
Sapna: There are different routes you can take to get to the top which one did you take?
Dr.Basu: I took the Machame Route. It is supposedly the most scenic and the most difficult non-technical route. That’s what my guide told me.
Sapna: How many days and nights was the entire trip?
Dr.Basu: The entire expedition was seven days. It took me five and a half days to get to the top and it took me a day and a half to come down.
Sapna: Do you start on the trek the day that you get there?
Dr.Basu: No. I actually got there late at night. Then I had a day off which is very typical. You have a day off when your guide does an equipment check to make sure everything you have is appropriate because the most important thing in the mountains other than your conditioning is your equipment. The one recommendation I have for people is whatever shoes you are going to wear for your hike make sure they are completely broken in and actually wear them on the flight because if for some reason your stuff does not get there the one thing you cannot do without are your shoes, everything else you will be able to buy last minute.
Climbing Rocks!
Sapna: Tell me something about the actual hike. How much of an incline is it?
Dr.Basu: It is probably better to talk about it in hours. I would climb on average four to five hours a day. We would be climbing … 90 degrees is straight up… and we would be climbing anywhere between a thirty-five and a forty-five degree angle. That’s the steepness of your climb for about five hours a day.
The minute you start, five minutes later you are completely drenched in sweat. You go through five different climate zones to get to the top and when you are first starting you are in the African rainforest, it’s hot, it’s humid, there are animals around you, there are monkeys, there are birds, it’s 80 degrees. Five minutes into it you are absolutely drenched in sweat. But as you get higher and higher it gets nice and cool you are still breathless but it is absolutely spectacular once you pass the rain forest. The trees start to thin out the views are spectacular.
Sapna: Tell me about the food on the hike.
Dr.Basu: They cook for you there. You eat huge amounts. I ate about 5000 calories every day and I lost a pound every day.
Sapna: Did you carry all those power bars and stuff like that?
Dr.Basu: No, No. I don’t usually eat them. I am more than happy to eat whatever somebody cooks up. I just don’t want to carry extra weight.
Sapna: The final ascent; how difficult was that?
Dr.Basu: The final ascent on the last day of your hike is about six hours in complete darkness. You start at mid-night actually and it is timed for you to get there at dawn, for you to see the sun come out. The last camp is at 15,180 feet and you go from that, in complete darkness, up 4000 feet in quite a steep climb to 19,350, which is the summit. In the morning when you look at it you go ‘I can’t believe I did that’ because it is quite treacherous, but you have no way of knowing it, which is why you have to have a really really experienced guide. You essentially just stay directly behind the guide and you follow his foot steps. These people know the mountains like you know your house. My guide had done 100 Kilimanjaro climbs. So he was very experienced, young but experienced.
Kilimanjaro Summit
I summited at 5:41 in the morning on Dec.28. It was still dark when I got up there and just a little later, about 20 minutes later the sun came out. The clouds are all below you when you are at the peak. At first you just see the clouds turning pink, then they start turning orange and then suddenly the sun comes out through the clouds. It’s just a spectacular sight. Every body has the sight that they will never forget in their life. For some people it is the birth of their child, some people it is the first view of the ocean, this is one of those. You will never ever forget it if you ever see it.
Sapna: When you are getting up there in the dark, what are you using for light?
Dr.Basu: You have seen miner’s lamps right? You have miner’s lamps on your head.
Sapna: Did you have any scary moments, the “Oh God please get me out of here safe and I will be a good, good boy” kind of moments?
Dr.Basu: (Laughs.) That’s very funny. Actually No. I didn’t have any really scary moments. I fell eleven times but every one of those times was on the way down. Going up I didn’t find that hard. Unless you are an experienced mountain climber you don’t realize that coming down is much more of an art. You have to know how to half run, half walk, half slide, down steep slopes. Think of yourself on a steep slope, you are sort of bent over and you can climb up. Coming down you are not in control gravity is. So when you are climbing down it is very easy to fall. I realized that people who don’t hurt themselves while coming down are either very experienced so they know how to deal with it or they are just lucky.
After-Thoughts
Sapna: Would you do anything differently the next time you go?
Dr.Basu: Just marginally. I would probably not carry some things. I went sort of blind. I have never done this sort of thing before. Next time I know it will be easier for me, because I know exactly what to expect. I don’t plan on going back to Kilimanjaro. I have another mountain that I am planning on climbing. So probably not a lot different. I know how I trained. I would do that anyway. I won’t train as much as I did for something like this. My regular training regimen was more than enough.
Sapna: What other mountain are you thinking of climbing?
Dr.Basu: My next mountain that I hope to climb is called Mt. Aconcagua. It’s in South America. It’s in the Andes in Argentina and it is the highest mountain in the western hemisphere. Its about 23,000 feet. It is higher than Kilimanjaro. It is a twenty day expedition.
Sapna: The outfitters, Global Adrenalin, would you recommend them?
Dr.Basu: Yes they were very very good. My guide was outstanding. His name, by the way, was Everest!
Dr. Raja Basu is Vice President for Academic Affairs, Oklahoma State University - Tulsa
