Tears on the roof of Africa

Three hours before dawn, on the final stretch up Mount Kilimanjaro, our little group stumble into Hans Meyer Cave to catch our breath. It is a brief rest, but long enough to offer a vivid demonstration of what makes Africa such a special place.

We are just three degrees off the equator, but as I fumble for a drink, something bizarre happens. I put the lip of the water bottle to my mouth and tilt … but nothing happens.

Here at the heart of one of the hottest continents on earth, I am holding a block of solid ice. Above us in the darkness, vast, unseen glaciers are sending down freezing winds. I am exhausted, and at this altitude – almost 19,000ft – the lack of oxygen is making me feel dizzy and ill.

Mount Kilimanjaro is Africa’s highest mountain. 24 miles wide and 19,343ft high: more ecosystem than mountain. As Hemingway wrote, “as wide as all the world, great, high, and unbelievably white in the sun.”

Kilimanjaro consists of three peaks: Shira, Mawenzi, and Kibo. Viewed from afar, however, Kilimanjaro appears oddly flat-topped, like the top scoop of an ice cream cone that a child has tamped down with an eager tongue.

We have already spent four days traversing this vast, variegated inclined plane: bold ants creeping up one side of the geological picnic basket that constitutes most of Kilimanjaro National Park. We’ve trudged through spongy rainforests enlivened by yammering Colubus monkeys; trekked over mountain meadows and moorlands dotted with wildflowers and hoary trees. An environment that lulls the curious, camera-toting interloper into a false sense of security.

Now – having entered the alpine desert of high altitudes and freezing temperatures – the river of biodiversity has slowed to a trickle. A few lonesome insects skitter in the dirt. Wisps of orange lichen cling to any available surface. But mostly the landscape yields acre upon acre of rocks, a bumper crop of stone singed charcoal black by some unworldly furnace. It is here that the curse of altitude sickness strikes.

Just 50% of Marangu hikers manage to drag themselves up to Uhuru point. About a third call it quits at Gillman’s Point, 600 vertical feet below the summit. According to our guide, one person has died every two weeks this season attempting the climb – usually from the variable affects of altitude sickness.

I am freezing cold, tired, and nauseous and can barely feel my fingers. I long for hot chocolate in bed back home in London. Nevertheless, the group rise to their collective feet and continue snail-like up the slope until at last, after seven hours of trekking on that fourth night, we reach something that is generally known by a single inadequate cliché: the roof of Africa.

Cliché it may be, but when you are at the 19,343ft peak – after training for months to reach the point above the clouds where the rising sun illuminates ice, snow, and the curve of the pinky-white earth – there is no room for cynicism. I cried.