by Sukumar Ramanathan
When I was a boy growing up in the tiny town of Sunabeda in eastern India, the world
seemed large and darkly mysterious. My immediate surroundings were circumscribed by the
three-mile boundary of the town and the two thousand people that lived in it. All my
friend's parents worked in the same aero-engine company that my father did. We did not
have much occasion to think of a universe outside that of the factory or the housing
colony. On weekends, we'd picnic on the small hill called Baloo Pahaad which faced the
township. Once a year, we'd make a trip to Vizag, the big city on the coast, a hundred and
twenty miles away. Occasionally, a friend would return from a trip to Madras, which I
heard had flyovers and movie theaters and double-decker buses.
I found escape in reading and in listening open-mouthed to Mr Chacko, who taught
geography. Three times a week, Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, he would talk about places
that lingered in my imagination. He talked of immense natural grasslands, of plains and
pampas and steppes. He showed pictures of strange and wonderful people, Mongols and
eskimos and aborigines. He described exotic lands whose names I carefully highlighted in
the margins of my notebook: Patagonia, Chimborazo, Cotopaxi. And I would shiver with
delight at some especially thrilling name: Kanchenjunga or Tangyanika or the Mountains of
the Moon.
Those dreams stayed with me throughout adolescence and my college years. I used every
holiday during my education to see first India, then Asia, and finally, Europe and North
America. When I entered the working world, I gravitated towards jobs that would send me to
the far corners of the earth. My motto, stolen from Edna St. Vincent Millay, was that I
could never hear the whistle of a train without wanting to get on it.
Jobs in marketing and sales at a large computer company led me to many of the economies of
the modern world. But I could get only so interested in the Holiday Inns and Starbucks
that seemed to permeate every street corner from London to Hong Kong. I wanted to fall off
the map, wanted to smell the rice fields in Vietnam, see the curve of the Malecon in
Havana, glimpse Ayers Rock at sunrise. Most of all, I longed for Africa.
Africa, the continent of impossible beauty; where the burning white sands of the Sahara
stretched for a thousand miles; where there were jungles so dense and knotted with vines
that no human had yet penetrated them; where azure seas kissed the Cape of Good Hope and
where thundering waters fell for half a mile over the Rift Valley; where a hundred
thousand wildebeest swept the plains of the Serengeti; where feluccas glided down the Nile
and where gorillas swung among the tree limbs and where man was two million years old.
So it was last winter, three weeks of vacation stretching ahead of me, that I made my
decision while thumbing through a Lonely Planet travel guide. I would climb Mount
Kilimanjaro.
It had always existed in the background of my mind. The truncated cone rising almost
twenty thousand feet above the East African Rift Valley. The highest point in Africa and
the highest mountain on earth that could be climbed by an amateur. The cloud-covered peak
that Denys Finch-Hatton had soared above in the movie "Out of Africa", and the
title of one of Hemingway's most famous books. The sight which when described by Lord
Stanley caused him to be laughed out of the Geographical Society. Snow on the equator,
indeed!
It would be a ten thousand mile trip to Tanzania, and a six-day climb. My brother Jaikumar
was game and so was his wife Sangeetha. My friend Molly completed the foursome. None of us
had done any serious mountain climbing, or indeed any hiking other than in the Bay Area
and Yosemite. But we were all reasonably fit and quite enthusiastic. And so it was that we
flew eastwards last Christmas, to a continent of dreams.
A day later, we emerged from our cocoons of sleep in the heart of Equatorial Africa.
Nairobi blazed in the sunlight, all whitewashed tenements and green, leafy creepers. The
city was a riot of color and noise. It reminded me of nothing so much as Bombay.
The comparisons extended beyond mere appearance. There was the same air of aimless
activity. People in Africa had a disconcerting way of appearing to hear you but not really
listening. We asked for a burned-out bulb in the bathroom to be replaced. The attendant
assured us that he'd look into it. That was the last we ever saw of him. Molly dropped a
glass on our floor by accident, shattering it into pieces. Another attendant carefully
swept it out of the room and onto the doorstep, where we could step on the shards every
time we left or entered the room. A taxi-driver taking us to the travel agency ran out of
gas midway through our trip, and Jake and I ended up pushing the vehicle through the
streets of downtown Nairobi.
All of these incidents mattered less the next day, as we got on the highway towards the
Tanzanian border. Forty miles outside the city, looking at the roadside out of our bus
window, I was startled to see a galloping zebra. None of the locals in the bus so much as
gave it a second glance. A few miles later, I spied a giraffe less than fifty yards away,
champing meditatively on the leaves of an acacia tree. I felt as if I was entering Eden.
To begin climbing Kilimanjaro, we had to go to the town of Moshi, a charming hill station.
We had contracted with a guide and porters from the Marangu Hotel, about twenty miles from
the town, and located close to the entrance of Kilimanjaro National Park. The hotel seemed
preserved in amber from the colonial era, with high roofs and overhanging eaves. An arbor
on the manicured lawn was festooned with brightly-colored bougainvilla. At ten that night,
we went for an hour-long briefing for our upcoming climb.
We would start climbing from the park entrance, which was at a height of around six
thousand feet. For each of the first three days, we would ascend three thousand feet, with
an extra day to acclimatize to the high altitude.
The Norwegian government had helped build A-frame huts at each of the nightly stops. The
first one, Mandara Hut, at nine thousand feet, was square in the middle of dense,
equatorial rain forest. The second, Horombo Hut, at twelve thousand feet, was in the
middle of Alpine vegetation, with sparse grass, low bushes and succulents. The final one,
Kibo Hut, at fifteen thousand feet, was in the middle of high desert, a moonscape of rock
and shale. Each stop could accommodate about forty climbers.
Kilimanjaro's volcanic cone loomed more than four thousand feet above Kibo Hut. It rose
almost vertically and was permanently covered with snow. We had to get to the top before
sunrise because the melting snow of the morning would render the climbing conditions too
icy and slippery to be safe. This meant that we would have to leave the hut at midnight
and climb in utter darkness. This was why nobody was allowed to attempt the climb without
an experienced guide.
Getting to the top offered choices. The peak was in reality a volcanic crater. Going up
the Marangu route would let us crest at Gilman's Point, at about 18,800 feet. The hardier
among us would then attempt to circle the crater rim, to the opposite side. This would get
us to Uhuru Peak, which at 19,340 feet was the highest point on the continent. However, we
heard that most people were so exhausted by the time they reached Gilman's that they
flopped down on the ground and barely had enough energy to make it back down. My friend
Josh had told me that the first thing he did after he dragged himself onto the rim was to
bend down and vomit.
Everything needed for the trip needed to be carried up. Above the level of the second hut,
there was not even running water or wood to make a fire to cook with. Needless to say, we
would not be taking showers over the six
days of the climb and descent.
On Day One of the climb, we registered at the ranger's office in the morning. Our guide
was Joseph, who had been up the mountain a dozen times. His quiet competence gave us much
needed confidence. The path was steep and the gradient never seemed to let up, so we were
sweating copiously within a half-hour. We passed a group of returning Japanese. Their
faces were bathed in sweat, and the handkerchiefs around their heads did not entirely mask
their sunburns. One of them seemed to be staggering. I started to feel the first stirrings
of queasiness.
The feeling passed as we rounded the corner to Mandara Hut in the late afternoon. A group
of Frenchmen from the hotel had beaten us there. Now they lounged on the deck of the main
hut, drinking big bottles of beer and blowing smoke from cigarettes. I laughed at the joie
de vivre that so many Europeans seem to effortlessly possess. That evening, I read Isak
Dinesen's book, where she lingered over the joy of being a coffee planter in the highlands
of East Africa.
Day Two saw us get on the trail shortly after sunrise. The landscape changed around us as
we walked. The foliage got thinner, the trees shorter. Soon there were no trees at
all. Instead, we found ourselves surrounded by a stunning assortment of wildflowers -
groundsel, lobelia, oleander. Entire fields were carpeted with purple and yellow petals.
Eight hours later, we crested a ridge and saw Horombo Hut ahead. It was a sight of sweet
relief.
The huts were powered by solar cells, obviously malfunctioning because none of them
generated any electricity. Our rhythms were now the rhythms of the day - rise with the
sun, walk during the day, hurry to finish dinner before sunset so that we didn't have to
stumble around the campsite in the dark. Around this stage, altitude sickness made me lose
my appetite entirely. It was all I could do to eat some slices of tomato for dinner. I was
to lose fifteen pounds during that week.
We had been taking malaria pills for the entire duration of our trip. One of the side
effects was to cause especially vivid nightmares. I had a horribly recurring one, of
feeling choked but unable to scream.
We took a day's rest at Horombo Hut in order to acclimatize to the thin air. Then it was
on to Kibo on Day Four. It began with a grueling climb. The path rose seemingly straight
up for two hours and we began to gasp, stopping every thirty steps or so.
Finally, the ground flattened out and got full of pebbles and gravel. We had arrived at
the smooth saddle at 13,500 feet. We were smack in the middle of a rain cloud now, not
able to see even ten feet in front of us. I started to get a second wind, and accelerated
away from the others.
The next five hours constitute one of the mystical mornings of my life. It felt like I was
walking on another planet, so alien was the landscape. Red outcrops jutted from the
ground, showing up suddenly through the mist. The path would disappear and show up again
magically in a hundred yards. I started walking faster, led hypnotically forward by the
otherworldly glimpses of the mountain rising in the distance. I was a quarter-mile ahead
of the others, then a half-mile. My feet didn't feel like they were touching ground, but
gliding along the ether. In twenty years of running, I have had that sensation only two
other times. Some athletes call it being in the zone. It was an ecstatic feeling, and it
did not pass until a sign many miles later saying that Kibo Hut was just ahead.
None of us got any sleep that night. For one, the temperature dropped way below freezing.
For another, the thought of getting up at midnight and climbing for six hours in total
blackness was enough to tighten the stomach. Sangeetha began to suffer severely from
altitude sickness, vomiting five times in the space of two hours. I crept into my sleeping
bag around sundown, cold, nervous, and scared. Sleep never came, and I waited agonizingly
for the minutes to pass until eleven.
It seemed forever before Joseph shook us out of our bags. We began layering on our
climbing gear. First a layer of light thermal underwear, both top and bottom; then another
heavy thermal layer atop this; A pair of jeans and a pant shell for the legs; a shirt and
fleece jacket for the torso; sock liner, heavy wool socks, and boots; a wool scarf around
the neck; light wool glove liner followed by heavy ski gloves; and a balaclava to protect
the head. I felt like a mummy.
More mummies trudged out of their bunkrooms into the main corridor, checking water bottles
and rubbing face cream. We formed small groups of four and five, then walked towards the
mountain. It rose so steeply in front of us that we couldn't imagine where the top was.
It was the steepest gradient I'd ever been on. We marched in lockstep behind our guide,
concentrating only on his cadence. His flashlight swung loosely as I reduced my whole
world to following the backs of his shoes. In ten minutes, I was sweating freely. In a
half-hour, the water ran in rivulets down my back. On and on we went, pain seeping through
our
shoulders and thighs. If I looked up the mountain, I could see the lights of other groups
ahead of us, ghosts in endless sequence up to the sky.
More climbing, an hour, two. I asked to slow down a couple of times, then to stop, to lean
on my walking stick with my heart hammering in my chest. We continued on the
grim-faced assault until it seemed like I could take no more. At long last, the welcome
sight of the Hans Meyer cave, the halfway point. But our guide would not let us stop here
for more than a couple of minutes. Too many people resting had decided to turn around at
this point.
Now began the infamous series of eighteen switchbacks cut into the mountain face. The
first few were short but they proved misleading. Each successive one got longer and
steeper. Soon, each would rise more than a hundred feet. It brought on despair to think of
the ones still ahead of us.
I tried hard not to pay attention to my screaming lungs, my aching back, my fatigued legs.
I told myself to just hypnotically follow the feet ahead of me, regular as a metronome. My
companions were silent, each lost in their private misery. We plodded on.
The switchbacks ended, and we came to the hardest point, the snow and scree. We used rock
outcrops to pull ourselves up, and our fingers slipped on the loose pebbles. The falling
stones echoed dully behind us. It seemed like madness. I had a vivid image of tumbling off
the side of the mountain into the abyss below. We had been climbing for more than five
hours at this juncture, bathed in sweat, scared stiff, united in a communion of pain.
Pure, packed ice now. Joseph would cut a foothold and we'd have to follow him through
blind instinct. I flailed badly, stumbled, slipped, whimpered. My body felt as if it had
been pounded into pulp. This felt like pure folly, scaling vertical ice walls using our
fingertips and toes. At the very point where my body felt it was going to shut down, we
pulled ourselves over an icy ledge and fell onto the other side. A simple wooden sign
could be made out in the first rays of the morning sun. Gilman's Point. I tried to stand
up, but my legs gave way and I collapsed on my back. Joseph miraculously produced a flask.
I have never been so grateful for a cup of tea.
We sat for five minutes, huddled in disbelief at having actually arrived at the top. Then,
an insistent thought pushed its way into my brain. We had to get to Uhuru, the true peak.
Joseph tried to dissuade us. A snowstorm was coming up, and the winds were starting to
pick up speed. The crater rim was very narrow, no more than the width of a tabletop.
Slipping on the inner side would send us into the crater, a thousand-foot fall. In the
other direction, we would be sliding off the side of the mountain. Molly and Sangeetha
decided on the path of discretion. When Joseph saw that Jake and I were eager, he
wordlessly led the way.
There was not as much of a climb here, maybe five hundred feet. But it added three miles
to our day. The tricky part was balance. The snow was slick and the wind whipped in,
making us teeter precariously. Step by tortuous step, we began making our way to the
opposite end of the crater. We passed the Swedish group, then the German couple. The wind
kept picking up speed, twenty miles an hour, then thirty. It became a full-fledged gale.
Then came the snow.
By the time we had walked a mile, we were in the middle of a blinding storm. It felt
exactly as if someone was scooping huge shovelfuls of snow on to our faces. We gasped for
breath and argued heatedly about whether we should simply turn around. But we were too
close to give up. Five hundred steps more now, then two hundred, and finally, the flag
that marked Uhuru Peak.
It was so cold and snowy that it took me three attempts to open my camera lens. My gloves
were useless and my fingers completely numb. We managed one picture as Joseph urged us to
turn and make our way back before we really got into trouble. We were the last group from
our party to make it to the peak that day.
The exertion for the day hadn't ended by a long shot. There was still seven thousand feet
to descend and the ten miles to trek back to Horombo Hut. But the elation of the ascent
fueled us until the evening. I remember losing all sensation in my feet and flopping into
camp like a rag doll. We had been climbing, walking or descending continuously for
eighteen hours. Physically, it was the hardest day of my life. I slept for much of the
next sixteen hours.
It was only another day to base camp. We had taken four and a half days to climb the
mountain but just one and a half to return. At the hotel, I turned the shower to maximum
heat and soaked in the steaming water for an hour. I now had an extraordinary appreciation
for everyday comforts.
Joseph and his friends sang an ethereal song about Kilimanjaro that night, about how the
mountain was their mother watching over them. Watching their faces in the dim lamplight, I
was struck by the reverence with which Africans hold their land.
That night before I went to sleep, I re-read a lyrical passage in the book by Isak
Dinesen. "If I know a song of Africa", she wrote, "of the giraffe, and the
African new moon lying on her back, of the ploughs in the fields, and the sweaty faces of
the coffee-pickers, does Africa know a song of me? Would the air over the plain quiver
with a color that I had on, or the children invent a game in which my name was? Would the
full moon throw my shadow over the gravel, or the eagles of Ngong look out for me?"
As I grow older, my boyhood dreams from Sunabeda become the memories of age. Eventually,
they intertwine and mingle till it is hard to differentiate between the strands. Of these
strands, of the visions of places visited and landscapes seen, one stands out. Hypnotic in
its beauty and lustrous in its colors, Africa remains the most beautiful of them all.
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