Or 14 hours on a plane.....February 17th 2011 will be a date I remember for a long time. The beginning of a journey across 4000 miles to Tanzania, to take on the hike to Africa's highest point... Uhuru Peak, Kilimanjaro.
- 73 Kilometres
- 5895 Metres / 19,340ft
- 7 Days
- 1 Goal
I'm just a little bit excited, as we head off down to Heathrow. Our flight is not until 20:00hrs, but we're down there for 11:30am so that Liz can be back for the kids finishing school. Big Airport Heathrow, thank goodness, so plenty to keep me occupied for a few hours. It passed pretty quickly, and the first of the rest of our group arrived at about 15:30, then progressively until our allotted meeting time of 17:00hrs.
16 nervously excited individuals huddled around the Ethiopian Airlines desk to check in. There may have been some nerves just at our choice of flight partner, but as it turns out, Ethiopian Airlines were superb throughout.
We take off on time, and we're flying over Europe towards the African continent. The flight is uneventful, but along the way our ever attentive stewards do an excellent job of noticing just when you are about to fall asleep, then choose their moment to wake you up for a drink, some dinner, or a look at the duty free book!
As the sun comes up over Africa we can look down from 34,000ft over Ethiopia. I'm struck by the scale of this place, a huge patchwork quilt of brown, and beige. A landscape desperate for water, with huge mountain ranges. It's fantastic to look down over this world without motorways, or skyscrapers, warming under an orange sun. Kilimanjaro still seems a distant dream.
A brief stop in Addis Ababa... (at least brief when compared with the returning flights) before we jumped onto our flight to Kilimanjaro International, and our first view of Kilimanjaro itself.... hidden in the clouds as we passed.
Brilliant sunshine, and hot temperature hits you are we climb down the steps off the plane. Kilimanjaro Airport is not exactly a bustling centre, more like a disowned Airforce base in Kent, but fantastic to be here, and suddenly the whole thing feels very real.
