There are clearly several routes to get you to Kilimanjaro, the most direct being a flight to Kilimanjaro Airport itself. Charity Challenge, (the UK based Tour Operator), handled our itinary, and I have to say, right up to departure I couldn't fault their efforts to ensure we had as much information as possible, including our own group web area and members page with personalised details of the trip. We were to fly to Nairobi and then catch a bus in comfort for the six hour journey to our hotel! Not so! The experience both to and from Tanzania fell someway short of the good impression created prior to leaving. For me the journey was typical third world, but once immersed in it, there was no point getting stressed out by the process.
Rather than make our own way to Heathrow, Nigel had very kindly organised a minibus to collect us each from our homes on the day of departure. With heavy snow and the promise of more to come, these arrangements were brought forward a couple of hours so that by lunchtime on the Friday we were on our way from MK, ahead of our flight scheduled for 7pm that evening. Not five minutes after hitting the M1, however, we encountered our first problem! The wipers on the bus failed and for the next few minutes we limped somewhat slowly towards Toddington Services for a replacement fuse. Ten minutes later, with several bladders emptied and the wipers fixed we were on track. Amazingly the journey on to Heathrow T4 was remarkably quick.
In the past T4 has been the terminal all the taxi drivers like to take you to. In my experience it stood head and shoulders above T's1,2,& 3 and despite having flown out of the new T5 myself only a couple of weeks earlier, I still expected T4 to have all its welcome space and exciting buzz. How wrong I was! T4 is now a building site! Abandoned by BA in their fiasco of a move over to T5, T4 has been left derelict and about as welcoming as a migrane. The portents were not good as we sought out a resting place before check in, only to realise that the one refreshment area left is a tiny Wetherspoons cramped into a first floor corner of the terminal. What a disappointment. It is fair to say that once through Baggage & Passport Control T4 still retains some semblance of a reasonable passenger terminal, but it falls massively short of a pleasant experience, and I would advise anyone flying from there in the next couple of years to be prepared for lots of disruption.
Kenyan Airways Flight KQ101 was pleasant enough. I managed to bag an aisle seat at least, which meant my knees and elbows could get a regular battering by the attendant trolley as it rumbled past, which is much more preferable to being decapitated by the tray table on the permanently reclined seat in front! When you are 6'2" these are small mercies on a flight lasting nine hours! I always hope for it whenever I board a plane. Indeed I always check myself to see the size and build of the person in the seat behind me to determine if there is any room for inclining my own seat back. To date however, I have never sat on an aircraft when the back of the seat in front wasn't thrust with menace in towards my abdomen making viewing of the TV screen impossible, even at its maximum tilt! Fortunately on this Kenyan Airways flight my TV screen didn't work anyway, so I wasn't very much inconvenienced.
After a suprisingly pleasant meal (served amazingly nearly 4 hours after take off), a snippet of rest, some light hearted banter and a continental breakfast we approached our final destination. All eyes (except mine) turned to the TV screens for the map and altitude readings on approach. Rather curiously we managed to land at Nairobi with the height above ground reading 560m. Something had gone amiss, but atleast we seemed to be on tarmac with something resembling an airport terminal passing us in the window. I didn't know it at the time, but this was to be the last decent bit of tarmac we would experience for atleast the next twelve hours or so!
Getting through Jumbo Kenyatta Airport took around 2 hours. Most of this was spent standing in a queue for the transit Visa. Although initially the authorities only had two desks open for this process, after an hour or so they decided to allow the process to spread along to the nationals arrival desks as well, which had a dramatic effect. Queueing is something we British seem to do so well, but next time I pass through Africa I shall remember that the concept of fixtures and fittings is lost on most Africans, and to save time, I will simply pick up the barriers and move them out the way! I must have seen this happen on atleast a dozen occassions as I waited patiently in the queue with a $20 note sticking out of my passport!
Once through the passenger terminal we were greeted by our host, and our luggage loaded on to our "luxury" bus. Vehicle T901ANY, had soft cushioned seating, sliding windows and pouches in the seatback in front for your water bottles. Some of the seats reclined which I found slightly ironic, but non the less, we were on board and ready for the last leg of our journey. By bus standards this was OK, not great, but OK. What we should have boarded however was something more akin to what you might ride at Thorpe Park or Alton Towers. Five minute out of the airport and we hit our first dirt track. And there we stayed until virtually the other side of Arusha, some seven hours later!!
Our journey from Nairobi to the border town of Namanga took some 3 1/2 to 4 hours along the worse road I ever been on. This leg reminded me of the journey from Nadi to Suva in Fiji. There though they carve the potholes out of tarmac atleast. Here its just dirt track all the way. I half expected to see a prison and a cemetry as we drove into Namanga, but on this occassion all I saw was more of the same ram shackled, brightly coloured tin huts, lined up precariously on the side of the track. Each brightly painted facade, doorless and windowless, but offering anything from raw meat to the hottest retail offering...replacement tyres!
Namanga is a town of hustle and bustle. Here, the merchants and mechanics mix openly with the tourists and the truck drivers. As you approach the border from the Kenyan side, the road begins to rise quite steeply until you reach the first set of gets to the crossing. This is the signal for checking your documentation. Yellow Kenyan Exit Form, Blue Tanzanian Entry Form, Passport with Visa (if you bought it in the UK), and Yellow Fever Certificate. Getting out of Kenya was easy enough. We boarded the bus again and passed through more gates to the Tanzanian side before parking up and joining the queue for entering the country. This seemed to take quite a while although the process itself was straight forward enough. We passed the time observing life in and around the border gates themselves. Occasionally we come across the odd beggar or artifact seller, but compared to some of my experiences overseas, (especially Turkey or the Carribean), we were pretty much left alone by the locals.
We hoped for better roads on the Tanzanian side for our two hour journey to Arusha and our lunch stop. Unfortunately it seems the whole of this part of Africa is spending money on new road development. So more bumpy tracks most of the way! On finally reaching Arusha we passed through the most commercial town on the trip. A thriving buzzing place with all of industry it seems setting up. You could want for nothing in Arusha.
We diverted off the main road up a dusty track towards our hotel and a hot meal atlast! Despite our exhastion and frustration with the journey, the meal itself was lovely, a selection of spicy meats and chapati's. The hotel itself, an oasis amidst the tin shacks and huts which served as commercial premises up the hill we had travelled. By now we were all very tired and grumbles were starting to be heard about the length of time we were spending travelling to our final stop for the night. Most stick was aimed at the BBC however, when Immanuel, our guide, revealed the arrangements for the 9 Celebrities climbing Kilimanjaro for Comic Releif. He is one of the guides on the trek itself and revealed some interesting insights. Extra days acclimatisation, portable showers and bottled water flown in from the UK. It all seemed a little too much pandering for our tastes, but I guess thats television for you!
After about 45 minutes we set off on the final leg of this now epic day to Marangu and our Hotel. Fortunately with the grumbles not really going away, this leg was punctuated with out first site of Kilimanjaro. Initially you could just make out an outline etched against the greying skies, before, suddenly it appeared, the full extent of its size laid bare for us all.
The impact is made all the more impressive because it is a single standing structure, its base reaching out along the horizon for miles before rising to its snow topped cone. We were all hit with a sudden sense of awe and forboding at the magnitude of the task before us. Scary but inspiring in the same breath!
The first site of Kili spurred us on to our Hotel, the now very welcome Hotel Capricorn. On arrival, we quickly unloaded our stuff, found our rooms and took an hour out to prepare for dinner, evening briefing and then bed! It was one of the longest journeys I'd ever undertaken, and yes just about the most uncomfortable. But at least we got to see some of the beautiful countryside, its inhabitants and places. Flying in to Kilimanjaro airport would have avoided all this. For me, tired and exhausted I was non the less very happy to have experienced the journey and looked forward to our next day with eager anticipation.
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