Kilimanjaro

I climbed Kilimanjaro two weeks ago and the memory of it is already slipping away. As if, every time I tell its story, it is cheapened somehow, diminished to an anecdote.

I wrote a story about it that'll be published in January. My first draft was probably my truest version. Every subsequent draft and the version that you will find in print will be much less of me and much more of an identity this new magazine is trying to build. Or whatever the editor's taste is.

So let me tell you the truth of it here; that it made me feel invincible, that it made me feel the proudest I've ever felt in a long time. But that it's like happiness, in the way that happiness is not an end-goal but a continuous journey. It is through the moments of pain and fatigue that I felt the most proud. It is the ability to continue when the body says no but the mind convinces it of just one step more, at the end of every last step.

I think it a blessing that we made the summit ascent in the dark. I think the ignorance of the climb ahead allowed us to trudge along like blinkered horses. Though even this blinkered horse needed chocolates, extra water (I realised I could function on a litre a day, whilst hiking for 6 or 7 hours), dance music and the self-conjured mantra of being a bad-ass.

Then of course there was the ex-military man who gave me the best tip I'd give to anyone who wants to climb a steep mountain; pace. Match the length of your strides and just keep on going. Keep a measured and steady pace and you will get a lot less tired a lot less soon and feel a lot more persevering. He was also very stingy with the amount of time he let me rest for. Which at first was difficult but after I learned how to pace myself, I didn't need to stop so much anyway. And I thanked him in the end for it.

The goal is to reach the crater rim if not the summit by sunrise. I made it to the rim. And though the summit was less than 300m away, I felt the fatigue of the climb and the thinness of the air tax my body as I leaned on my guide before speeding up to the wooden post that attests to Uhuru peak as being the highest peak in Africa and the highest free-standing mountain in the world :)

I cried there. Even as they dragged me back down because they said the altitude would tire me, I felt I needed to witness this achievement with more than a photograph. And so I cried! Tears of pure and honest joy not only because of surmounting the physical challenge but also because of the beauty of it, because I was able to see the ice-caps they say will be gone in a few years. Because of the desert crater within and the gentle slopes that you realise are so vast, you wonder how you even climbed them through the night.

This is what makes you happy; this little knowledge that you have done one thing more incredible than the next man. This is what makes you feel that you can do even more, high on the possibility of the possible.

Kilimanjaro - conquered.