Martijn

May be its not so dramatic that it changed my life, but it certainly influenced my life! I’ve been there for about 6 times now, most of it as a tourleader. I love it there, lost my heart to the climate, nature, culture but most of all the people!

But its worth it. Beautiful climb which is not difficult technically. But the altitude is making it serious business! I went up there as tourleader of a group of 15 tourists. A 7 day climb on the Marangu trail. This means camping. This means a lot of stuff to carry up. This meant a group of 46 porters and guides to assist us! Including me, 13 people made it up to the top. But some of them remember very little of it… only total fatigue.

I remained very fit and only dead tired after we returned to the real world.

Wonderful experience, but I was a little upset by the enormous amount of tourists going up there (and the army of porters that followed). Good thing about it is that we tourists provide a solid contribution to the economy. Not to the ecology, although they are pretty strict on waste disposal and littering. Thank God!

It’s a sort of mass-tourism, and that does not coinside with the idea of hiking in nature.

My suggestion: if you go there, also spend a lot of time in other regions: Tanzania is more than the Kili!