Kilimanjaro100:Bananas, hyenas, clouds, elation

Here is an extract from my pal Steph's current trip through Africa...

"First impressions: driving through Kenya to Tanzania in a minibus is much like watching the discovery channel through the glass window. Women carrying bananas on their head, men wearing green and purple shell suits leaning up against walls and random shacks called “the house of lubricants” or “the college of fashion designers”, colourful Masai herding their cattle, and orange sand for as far as you can see."

She also scaled the Kilimanjaro and this is her account...
"I’ve just finished my first week here which was devoted to hiking up Kilimanjaro. The first three days were really easy but long. You climb through the different layers of vegetation, spending your first couple of days walking through the rainforest up bright red paths till you eventually get above the clouds and get to see the distant snowy peak for the first time. The guides make you walk extra slowly to give your body the valuable time it needs to acclimatize. Your porters however, rush up ahead of you with kilos of your stuff on their heads. By the fourth day you arrive at the final hut at 4700m before the final ascent. The hut is in your sights for hours before you get there, and just behind it you can see the steep climb to the top. Desperation starts to settle in as you cross the red desertic plains up there, the wind beating at your face. You eventually arrive in the late afternoon and are served dinner at 5 pm before being instructed to go straight to sleep, ready to be woken again at midnight. Noone can sleep. The pounding headaches, the incessant nausea have started, and if that wasn’t enough to keep you up, the adrenaline was pumping through your veins at such a speed that you could hear your heartbeat pumping loudly in your ears.
Before you know it, its midnight and you’re piling on all the clothes you own. After tea and biscuits, we form a line and start our way up. Above us a line of head torches meanders up the slope, losing itself somewhere in the stars. The altitude is starting to hit everyone even harder and from the front, I can hear people throwing up at the back. 200 metres further up and people are starting to pass out from the vomiting or the diarrhoea. High off my favourite drug, Solpadeine, I battle on. Every time we stop the temptation is to close my eyes and fall asleep, but your painful hands and toes remind you that you must press on. 50m before the first of the two peaks, I give in to the nausea to but I keep climbing.
By sunrise at 6 am, 9 out of the 10 of us have reached 4645m, Gilman’ Point. We are given tea and 10 mins to rest as the sun rises over the clouds in front of us. Most people are now green or grey and have to turn back. 4 of us (all girls might I add) decide to fight on to the summit which is still 2 hours away. The altitude is now taxing on every step but we eventually make it to the top at 4895m. The peak has massive glaciers on either side which look more like icebergs. We smile extactically briefly before realizing that we now have to walk another 6 hours to get down. Fatigue is now competing with the nausea and our shaking legs make the descent less than reassuring. Still the elation of having made it kept us going, and as we raced down the oxygen became thicker and easier to digest in our lungs"