How to climb Mount Kilimanjaro
I’m not a seasoned climber and I don’t pretend to have conducted extensive research into every aspect of the climb of one of the highest mountains in Africa but on talking with many people, reading my guidebook and searching online we ended up with a difficult to beat all-inclusive deal. Out of all the people we talked to on the mountain there wasn’t anyone paying less and with the supplied porters, transfers to and from Nairobi, pre booking of overnight huts and hotel the night before we got a lot more than a cheap price. This isn’t an advert for any one company (although I’d be extremely happy to recommend the people at Nairobi Youth Hostel who arranged ours) but just a bit of background on what you might need to do and how you need to organise it so you have a great (and hopefully successful) experience.
It usually takes either 5 or 6 days to climb Mt Kilimanjaro and it’s quite an undertaking but that’s not to say anyone of adequate fitness won’t be able to do it. We met a guy from Ireland in his 50’s who almost made it and the youngest ever to climb it was 9!
Whilst it is possible to arrange everything yourself, even hiring porters that congregate at the park gate and extra clothing just opposite; we didn’t have the time or desire to do the leg work ourselves. It was also doubtful if it would offer much of a saving unless you had a desire to heavily customise your trip, like if you wanted to use on of the less walked routes. In Africa, more than anywhere else, foreigners (especially whites) are charged often a lot more than locals for things and since mountain climbing is preserve of tourists it attracts quite high prices anyway making it much better for a local company to organise better prices and pass the saving on to you.
Being young people living in the 21st Century our first reaction was to check climbing packages online, to not only gauge prices but to see what we should look for. The guidebooks we had (even though only a year old) quoted widely inaccurate prices throughout our trip so we had already resigned ourselves to having to spend at least US$900 each. Luckily since we went in a group of 4 and did some pretty strong negotiating (plus we used the same people for our Masai Mara safari) we managed to get it for that price (the most I heard people pay was £900 which at the time was twice as much and they didn’t even get most of the perks).
Negotiating has to be the main point of this post. People don’t always like it but it proved to be very useful and if you’re in Africa you’ll negotiate on pretty much every purchase anyway. By avoiding websites and talking to real people we could negotiate a package that suited us and at a great price. I can guarantee that booking it in a travel office in Edinburgh wouldn’t be nearly as good or cheap! Talking to locals and company staff also helped us get our climbing gear (don’t rent at the gate as it’s extortionately expensive) and chatting with people that had just returned, either successfully or not, bagged us stuff like energy tablets and sunscreen.
This isn’t a replacement for reading a guidebook but is our experience and I wouldn’t change the way we organised any of it. One last thing to remember is that your tip to the various members of your entourage should be at least 10% of the total cost so bear that in mind. We had 11 people split between the 4 of us! The proportions are different between guides, porters and everyone else but it’s important not to forget the effort they put in and the tiny pay they receive from the companies. Without them you wouldn’t have made it!