Kilimanjaro - Day Four - The Journey Ends

Climbing again today as we made our way to Arrow Camp at 4,900 metres, which is higher than Mont Blanc.  It’s also the end of my Kilimanjaro journey.

The cough got worse due to the altitude, we climbed to the camp, took pictures and then retreated to our tent for tea and food.  Within half an hour I got called out and was told that they were concerned about my health and needed to get me off the mountain right now.

I then had to walk down for about 5 hours where we would meet a 4x4 to get me back to the hotel.

My initial reaction was utter devastation, my dream taken away from me.  But at that altitude you can’t take risks, if the experts say you need to get off, then you take their advice because help is a long time coming up there.  The old me would have been trying to think how I could get back out here and tick this off my list, but this trip has changed me.  I’m not bothered in ticking this off, I don’t consider it a failure, and the failure would have been if I hadn’t attempted this in the first place.

With everything that was thrown at me, the cold, cough, altitude sickness, diarrhoea and lack of sleep, I still summited Mount Meru and got so close to summiting Kilimanjaro.  I could actually see the summit and I felt strong in the legs to actually go on.  I’m proud of my efforts, who would have thought 4 years ago I would even have attempted this challenge.