Having weighed in with then drove down hill to our starting point nearly 45 minutes away. Getting to the first gate was a challenging journey as it had rained overnight and part of the road was quite Muddy. on one occasion we had to disembark our carriage so that it would lighten up the load and permit the axle to go over the muddy mounds in the middle of the road created by the tyre tracks either side.

Once we arrived at our first gate the porters set to work again and unloaded our carriage; then, as quick as a flash, our Porter’s had disappeared, taking our well packed gear on their heads and away they went ahead of us. We had a quick bite to eat, took a few photos in the shade of the the forest and then started our journey:

After a couple of hours we eventually arrived at the weighing in centre at Londorosi Gate at 2250m in altitude. There is a strict limit that porters can only carry 25 Kg. So our supplies and belongings were carefully distributed and each porter the has to be accountable for their bag. Our bags were packed inside waterproof outer sacks.

The following morning have courage arrived. There seems to be plenty of room in this rather large Transporter. There were 14 seats and I wasn’t quite sure whether we would get everybody in as well as all that baggage. Nevertheless we started on a journey. After loading our bags up with drove just under an hour to the pick-up point where we would collect the remainder of our entourage. We stopped for a quick bite of breakfast comma stretch their legs and then NJ watched in amazement as the team loaded up up the van on with all of our belongings and all of our camping equipment.

After a day’s rest we then unpacked everything and had everything checked by Justin our tour operator from Evarast. We had a long meeting to go through what we should expect on the first day and how we should pack our bags with a 15kg pack. We had already weighed our packs at home and restricted our pack to 12kg so we had no problem with that. The weight limit was there to protect the porters from being overloaded. They will have to climb the entire mountain with this pack on their shoulders. Daniel, our Head Guide, and Justin, our Chief coordinator and proprietor of Evarest Travel, complemented us on how well prepared we were. The painstakingly long preparation time paid dividends later. We learnt how to “send messages” more of this later!

After a short 35min flight from Nairobi we arrived ahead of time at Kilimanjaro International Airport and my Niruben arrived to take care of us and take us home.

We had a short stay with my wonderful cousin Daxaben who looked after us in grand style. We felt very much at home. And got to see the amazing National Museum and adjoining snake park with its highly animated creatures.

We had packed early and managed to put all our hiking gear in the suitcase so that there were no loose straps.

Travelling was lovely thanks to BA Avios enough to go First Class. Arriving in Nairobi in Style and thankfully my nephew was there to take us home.

The Packing was long and well thought out done over a couple of months. Orders from Amazon Decathlon Ebay and GoOutdoors all took time to arrive