Climb For A Cause

Up and down the mountain (Vamshi)

We are just off the mountain and let me tell you that getting down is more painful than getting up the mountain!

The weather wasn't great but it cooperated. We had near perfect weather on the starting day and the summit day - we had rain the other days.

Though we were 7 our party was 32! We had 20 porters hauling the food and tents for the 5 night stay on the mountain. The routine each day was pretty straight forward - get up in the morning and eat breakfast (eggs, toast, tea and porridge). Start trekking by 9am and head to the next camp site - a bit higher on the mountain. We would reach by lunch time. Then it was a short hike up the mountain to acclamatize to the altitude - 'Climb High & Sleep Low' is the acclamatization mantra. There was tea at 5pm usually and then Dinner at 6:30pm. We usually had popcorn for Tea. Dinner was a vegetarian dish, some meat dish, Rice or pasta. Dessert was choclate bars and fruit. We had specifically asked for a balanced meal everyday and most of us stuck to eating vegetarain to reduce the chance of falling sick on the mountain from undercooked meat.

We went up by the Rongai route. It is an easy route as you travel less km per day and there are good stop points for acclimatization. Thanks to the gradual climb and many stops none of us had any altitude sickness. We think that altitud sickness is experienced when one tries to hole their breath while using the bathrooms on the mountain.The bathrooms are 4ft by 4 ft by 7 ft wooden structures with holes in the center. There is no way to capture the assault on your nose.

By now you are just waiting to know if we did summit or not! Well.... read the next blog entry then.

posted by Climb For A Cause @ 7:17 AM