It’s been three days since I was on top of Mt. Meru and my legs are still feeling it. Having sore calves and thighs is torture when you rely on squatters.

For three days, Scott, Ben, and I devoted our lives to climbing roughly 10,000 ft to summit a 15,000-foot mountain. For anyone who knows me, this does not sound right. I do not summit big mountains. I don’t care to and I don’t spend my time doing it. My original plan was not to climb all the way. In fact, prior to about a week ago, I had little interest in Meru at all; it was Scott’s thing. He managed to convince me to tag along with him and Ben (Ben is college student from Boston. He’s homestaying in Monduli with an old headmaster that’s working part time at Orkeeswa. Prior to our Meru trip, Scott and I had had only one face-to-face conversation with Ben) by reminding me that Meru is located within Arusha National Park, a park that we’ve talked about going to. He said the first two days of the trip would just be hiking and exploring the park, something we’d likely do anyway. I could get to the second hut and hang out while he hiked to the summit the third morning and we’d all hike back down together. This sounded like a good plan. What really made me want to go was the chance to see some big animals, which we hadn’t yet done.

The Wednesday night before our planned Friday morning departure, we realized that, contrary to what the 2008 Lonely Planet Tanzania said, we’d have to climb Meru with a tour company. This expense would be on top of the daily park fees, the hut fees, the mandatory armed-ranger fees, and the rescue fee. It ended up costing us each US$365 to climb the fifth tallest mountain in Africa.

A lot of people use Meru as practice for Kilimanjaro. Kili is supposed to be not as challenging of a climb, but with 5,000 feet of more height, it’s the altitude that proves to be the challenge. So, even during the low season, there were probably five other groups that were planning to summit Meru the same time we were.

Barring some minor delays, confusions, and getting yelled at by a ranger, the first two days of hiking were ideal. After encountering our first big animals on the drive through the park, during our first day of hiking we also saw some Colobus monkeys (which, with their long white and black hair, closely resemble skunks), bushbucks, warthogs, water buck… and many signs (large circular piles of scat) of buffalo.

Scott and I walked on forested trails with trees heavily draped with grandfather’s beard, through an intricately strangled fig tree, and on switchback after switchback past various viewpoints of Kilimanjaro. Once we started covering ground and left behind the other groups, we were able to walk undisturbed by voices, guides, and armed rangers and that’s all Scott wanted from our trip – a chance to walk alone on a mountain.


I should’ve stuck to the original plan, which was just to hike the first two days and hang out at Saddle Hut while everyone else climbed to the summit. Meaning I could’ve slept. The ascent to the summit was commencing for various groups anywhere between midnight and 2 am on Sunday. Between 6:30 pm Saturday night and midnight on Sunday when the cell phone alarm clock went off, I laid in bed fraught with indecision, between hazy dreams and wake, never quite reaching rem sleep. Even as Scott, Ben, and I were getting up, I questioned whether I should go. My main impetus for even considering it was the fact that so many other people of average fitness level were doing it, so why shouldn’t I? (Even as I think back to that morning, I can recall my nervousness level).

We left the bunkhouse and made our way to the kitchen. Our guides had said they’d prepare some potato soup for our journey but the kitchen was dark and empty. We went in anyway and started preparing tea and coffee. Slowly, other hikers, porters, and guides started filtering in. The kitchen became filled with the buzz of apprehension – or was that just me? Every time I went from the kitchen to the bunkhouse or the bathroom, my headlamp providing a faint path of light, I felt the chill of the cold wind and all I could think about was how crazy the whole venture was – people getting up in the middle of the night to hike up to the top of a mountain in the cold. This was not my scene. My scene would be staying in bed, in the warm, snug sleeping bag and wishing everyone else a safe journey.

But there I was, sitting on a small bench in the kitchen sipping potato and corn soup out of a mug. Our guides had finally showed up and shared something substantial and warm. Scott was standing up, anxious to get started. It was 20 minutes past our scheduled 1 am departure time. Two other groups had already left.


It takes on average between 5 and 6 hours to reach the summit from the Saddle Hut and our goal was to get there for sunrise. It was a gain of 1000 meters, like the other days, but for some reason the final push was harder. Scott would disagree with me, but it was. Maybe it was the altitude. Maybe it was the piercing wind and cold temperatures. Maybe it was the darkness. Maybe it was the fact that during part of the ascent, on one side of us were some of the largest, sheerest cliffs in the world. Of course, I couldn’t see them going up, but just that knowledge scared me. Whatever combination of factors it was, it was enough to make me second-guess myself.

Scott had been nobly keeping his pace down to stay with me and help me at every big step (I swear I wasn’t like that the first two days), but when we were within minutes of the summit, I told him to just go ahead. I knew it was killing him to not race up. I knew it would kill him to miss the sunrise. I knew it was killing him that there were other groups ahead of us. So after an obligatory, “Are you sure?” Scott darted away and soon disappeared. Even Ben, who during the first two days of hiking had been lagging behind at least an hour, passed me during my time of utter doubt and self-loathing. I could see the summit and the stiff wooden Tanzanian flag above me, but I did not want to go any farther. Our guide, Malik, wouldn’t hear any of it. I don’t remember what he said. What’s more memorable was what he did – everything that was possible to get me to move short of carrying me. I would’ve preferred to have stayed right where I was as other groups passed me going up and going down. I could’ve been the “Welcome, you’re almost there” person or the “Farewell, have a safe journey down” person. But I continued to push myself as Malik pulled me up by my arm, and eventually I reached the summit.


I’d like to say that reaching the summit of Mt. Meru at 15,000 feet high was a spiritual moment, but it wasn’t. It was a painful moment, or a painful 20-minute moment. I had no energy left to fake being happy or excited. I did the obligatory summit photos, all the while dreading the journey down, which was, as I had predicted, worse than the journey up.