9 Days Rongai Route

Overnight At Simba Camp - Altitude: 2625 Meters

Before breakfast, final check your pack gear: a small backpack for your own daily needs and a duffel bag to be carried by your personal porter. Make sure you have filled enough water for the day, got your packed lunch, store excess luggage with the hotel, your passport and money are all stored with you. You will need trekking poles and light clothing. Drive 45 minutes to Marangu Gate for registration with the park authorities and meet your support team of guides, porters and cook who will be your guardian angels throughout the next week. They will soon be known to you by name. Their cheerful presence will be a prized memory of your mountain climbing excursion in northern Tanzania. Thereafter, drive another two to three hours to Nalemuru Gate at 2020 meters, close to the Kenyan border, affording you magnificent views beyond Kilimanjaro’s pine plantations that cover its lower slopes. Hike for between three to four hours to Simba Camp at 2625 meters, achieving 605 meters in altitude ascent through cool scented pine forest where you may spot stripe-backed wild pigs, olive baboons, colobus monkeys and hyrax, although generally animals avoid humans where possible. Pinewoods adjacent to farmland, then tropical forest with brightly painted sunbirds and turaco. Junipers and tree heathers lead to steeper moorland with wild flowers where the rock cone of Kibo Crater is visible ahead and the vast Maasai savannah stretches from the base of the mountain to the far Kenyan horizon of the Amboseli ecosystem.

Trekking time: 3-4 hours

Distance covered: 8 km

Meals Included: Breakfast, Lunch & Dinner

Overnight AtKikelelwa Cave Camp - Altitude: 3630 Meters

As you advance onto the heath up a rocky path towards sandy ground strewn with boulders, you will enjoy glorious views of Kibo and Mawenzi Craters. The heathland is beautiful, with wild gladiolus, giant-flowered proteas and architectural thistles. This may be one of the most delightful days of your Kilimanjaro challenge climb. Picnic lunch around Second Cave at 3450 meters gives you chance to photograph Kibo’s eastern ice-fields before striking out towards the jagged outline of Mawenzi Crater. This extra acclimatization route takes you on a detour to extend your Kilimanjaro adventure for better preparation for altitude, crossing dry stream beds and alpine scrub, with stunted, knobbly giant groundsel like Death Valley cacti and mounds of papery white Helichrysum. You will arrive at a sheltered campsite at Kikelelwa Cave at 3630 meters in the late afternoon after a six to eight hour trek. Your porters and cook have arrived before you to set up camp and to prepare a welcome snack and dinner later on. They bring the usual bowls of water for you to wash your face, hands and feet. Altitude ascended today would tally to 1005 meters.

Trekking time: 6-8 hours

Distance covered: 10 km

Meals Included: Breakfast, Lunch & Dinner

Overnight AtMawenzi Tarn Camp - Altitude: 4310 Meters

From Kikelewa Caves, a gentle walk across dry stream beds and alpine desert with stunted, knurled gigantic groundsel and mounds of delicate white helichrysum, takes you from 3630 meters to 4310 meters at Mawenzi with its steep rock spires and small green-rimmed pond, Mawenzi Tarn, which is the only standing water to be seen on a Rongai walking trip on Kilimanjaro. Here, you will trek away from Kibo heading further east of the mountain and return back on track the next day. After your three to four hour morning and early afternoon trek, you may be feeling the effects of altitude with shortage of breath and possibly a slight headache which you can usually quiet with a mild painkiller on your Kilimanjaro climbing day jaunt. 680 altitude meters is ascended today.

Trekking time: 3-4 hours

Distance covered: 5 km

Meals Included: Breakfast, Lunch & Dinner

Karanga Camp to Barafu Camp

Elevation: 13,106 ft to 15,331 ft

Distance: 4 km/2 miles

Hiking Time: 4-5 hours

Habitat: Alpine Desert

We leave Karanga and hit the junction which connects with the Mweka Trail. We continue up to the rocky section to Barafu Hut. At this point, you have completed the Southern Circuit, which offers views of the summit from many different angles. Here we make camp, rest and enjoy an early dinner to prepare for the summit day. The two peaks of Mawenzi and Kibo are viewable from this position.

Overnight AtKibo Camp - Altitude: 4700 Meters

After leaving Mawenzi early so that you can arrive at Kibo Camp at 4700 meters in time to rest before dinner, you are in alpine desert, bleak, bare and rock strewn. It is becoming a steady uphill trudge as the beckoning crest of your ultimate African adventure destination seems to recede ahead of you. A stout, windproof jacket is essential and you need gloves and woolly hat. Over three to five hours plodding up fairly level trail till Kibo, dusty trails in a dead world brings you to a bustling interchange: a small hiking hamlet where climbers of all nationalities meet at the intersection of Marangu trail. You may meet a party of septuagenarian Japanese or a group of teenage German sportswomen testing themselves by a climbing tour in Tanzania. Kilimanjaro has even been tackled in a wheelchair! Since the mountain does not play favorites, any of them may reach the summit but only with the right ascent strategies. You have increased 390 meters height today and are becoming tired, breathless and uncomfortable. Nights are now very cold and windy and a hot water bottle is very welcome as you try to rest before the longest day’s ordeal.

Trekking time: 3.5-5 hours

Distance covered: 8 km

Meals Included: Breakfast, Lunch & Dinner

Overnight AtHorombo Camp - Altitude: 3720 Meters After Summiting Uhuru Peak At 5895 Meters

Your Uhuru Trails guide will check to be sure you are fit for the summit assault. If you have problems with breathing, co-ordination or mental acuity, you will not be allowed to continue. Even those who feel relatively fit may find themselves passengers on the Kilimanjaro Express if they push themselves too far. This is the wheeled stretcher used for rapid evacuation from the mountain for victims of Acute Mountain Sickness. Those who have eaten and hydrated before embarking on this Kilimanjaro expedition, testing both physical and mental endurance, have the best chance. Setting off around midnight to take advantage of the awaited hospitable sunrise at Uhuru Peak and also freezing temperatures which stick the shale scree together and make climbing easier, you will need every possible layer of clothing, plenty of water, kept where it will not freeze, trekking poles to push down on and headlamps to light the way. Be careful not to shine your light into the eyes of others who will also have headaches. On a moonlit night, they may not be necessary. A slow, short step and wait pace induces a trance state in which you are aware of nothing but the breathless glory of the glittering night sky and the never-ending treacherous incline of loose stone and scree and underfoot. Lean hard on your trekking poles for stability.

The next 6-8 hours will take you through the most strenuous terrain of your Kilimanjaro climbing adventure. Just after Meyer’s Cave, there will be a chance to rest halfway at Gilman’s Point - 5681 meters, traversed zigzag, one in four gradient up, a gain of 1000 meters during which you will mindlessly place one foot before the other and wonder if you look as bad as many of the other sleep deprived walkers moving up or down the mountain face or resting by the track in total exhaustion. You will have earned a lesser Gilman’s certificate even if you decide to go no further. Enjoy the stunning sunrise through cloud below you as you savor your triumph. Still, a further hour to two of 214 meters altitude gain will take you to Uhuru Point, the highest point on the iconic mountain at 5895 meters or 19340 feet above sea level. Almost half the people from all over the world who try to climb Kilimanjaro with various operators actually achieve this summit. An expedition with Uhuru Trails by Encircle Trekkers exceeds this rate at 75% to 85% plus, especially on this very successful extended Rongai Route.

Take your photographs of this wonderland atop the world. Drink in the memory of the moment. You cannot stay here more than 15 minutes as you need to descend 2175 meters after sunrise, another 6 to 7 hours of effort when you are already very tired. The loose shale can be very treacherous. It is easy to injure your knees, ankles or toes. This is where you may be grateful for a supporting arm from your indefatigable guide. Make sure your boots are tightly laced to prevent your feet sliding to the ends of your boots. You can lose toenails that way, an unpleasant souvenir of your African mountain holiday challenge. Relax, think straight and take your time. You may need to protect your eyes or mouth from dust raised by other trekkers, some of whom slither down the shale in a maneuver that is now discouraged ecologically because of its effect on erosion of the loose rocks. When you arrive at Horombo Camp, you may fancy a beer, but remember the effect of alcohol is doubled by altitude and it is also diuretic. You may do better to abstain non-voluntarily as there will be none available and enjoy a much-needed good night’s sleep to recover from your trekking tour in Kilimanjaro.

Trekking time: 12-16 hours

Distance covered: 21 km

Meals Included: Breakfast, Lunch & Dinner

Overnight At Mountain Inn - Altitude: 890 Meters

You will now be feeling the euphoria of your achievement. Unlike trekkers on some other routes, you will not be retracing your steps, eager to get off the mountain, but will spend the next five to six hours traversing new and beautiful stretches of tropical forest with stunning waterfalls via the Marangu descent trail. The trail may be muddy during the rains, so poles and care are still necessary. Picnic lunch en-route and exit at Marangu where you will be given your certificate and take part in the ceremony of tipping and farewell to your mountain support team. Join in the Kilimanjaro song before returning to Mountain Inn, your Moshi base hotel, for a sybaritic shower, a wholesome dinner and the blissful sleep of the “Just Conquered Kilimanjaro”. A Kili challenge that takes you through four seasons in just over one week on a mountain safari with Uhuru Trails by Encircle Trekker guarantees you the chance to face yourself. On an unforgettable climbing adventure in northern Tanzania, you will find strength you never knew you had and gained insights that will change you for the remainder of your life. You will realize the value of human warmth and companionship, and you will go far beyond what you thought were your limits, gaining new confidence and self-esteem from this inimitable East African highland experience.

Trekking time: 5-6 hours

Distance covered: 12 km

Meals Included: Breakfast, Lunch & Dinner

Departure Day - Airport Transfer Or Continue On An Optional Safari .