Skip the ladies program, climb Kilimanjaro!

Last year, when we visited Amboseli, the Kilimanjaro was only a small, far away, snowy peak, barely showing itself among the clouds in the fading sunlight. Now we are seriously preparing ourselves to climb this nearly 6.000m volcanic giant, the highest mountain in Africa. The walk up there is supposed to be doable, even for a non-experienced climber, like myself. The hard part is the altitude and the freezing cold. The right mindset is important, they keep on telling me. We will start off at 30 degrees Celsius but on top it will be minus 30. To get used to the altitude, the walk up will take seven days. I am not a real “Gipfelstürmer”, especially since I broke my knee in a skiing accident. The race down will take only two days. Hopefully my knees will forgive me. Somehow my now fellow climbers managed to convince me that I would not want to miss all this. So we skipped the ladies program and are now joining the guys on the climb. They promised to carry our water bottles though…