I made it to the top of Kilimanjaro!

I reached Uhuru peak at 7.30am on Sunday 24th May after a 7 and a half hour hike to the top!

I arrived at the hotel I was booked into the night before my trek to find that the two people I was meant to be climbing with had cancelled and so I would be climbing by myself! Luckily there were two other girls at the hotel who were also meant to be climbing the next day but via a different route. However, they were considering changing routes as there is a higher rate of success on the machame route which was the one i was booked onto. So they swapped onto the machame route and we climbed it together!

They were both junior doctors from the Uk which was very handy considering the task in hand!

The climb was great. The walking wasnt too bad at all. The terrain was varied and had bits that were not so steep and we went through five vegetation zones which made a great geography lesson! (forest, mountain rain forest, moorland, alpine desert and artic). We walked between 7 and 3 hours each day apart from the summit day where we walked for 13.5 hours!! (Up to the summit and then half way back down the mountain!)

The summit night was very tough. We had to leave at midnight and trekked for 7.5 hours to get to the summit. we missed sunrise by about an hour but could see it from where we are so still got good photos. It was really tough walking in the dark but we had lots of breaks. The miraculous thing was that none of us really suffered from altitude sickness!! We were taking diamox (which helps yours body adjust to high altittude) and drinking 4L of water a day throughout the trek. Then we also took paracetemol and anti sickness tables before the ascent.

I had a dizzy spell about half 3 which passed after about 10 mins and one of the other girls felt sick and dizzy for about 30 mins and the other was sick once due to some very sweet tea they had brough up for us but apart from that we were fine!! I don't think we would have enjoyed it half as much if we had suffered badly as i know so many people dont make it because of that!

When we got back to the camp at around 10.30am we were allowed a couple of hours sleep before walking down to the camp we were sleeping in that night which was bac down to 3000masl. However, there were some very strong winds whipping through our camp which was very high up and exposed. I was lying in my sleeping bag in my tent trying to rest when i was suddenly picked up by the wind and rolled across the camp!! The wind was so strong it had pulled the pegs out of the ground and rolled my tent with me and all my bags in it! It was a scarey few seconds as i thought i would be blown off the mountain or into a rock but luckily I was fine! We promptly descended to the lower camp tather than getting more rest at the higher camp due to the winds! And there was a brand new tent waiting for me at the lower camp!