Mt Kilimanjaro

Cameras of Kilimanjaro: See the mountain from the porters’ perspective

Kilimanjaro has a few dirty little secrets. We’ve talked before about one of them—that the most popular routes can be absurdly crowded.

A far darker secret no on likes to talk about is that many porters aren’t paid livable wages, often have to pay for their own food on the way up and therefore barely eat anything while hauling backbreaking loads, and refuse to turn back down the mountain when they experience altitude sickness because they cannot afford to.

So it is with great pride that we at Embark are a part of the great Kilimanjaro Porters Assistance Project, the nonprofit that focuses on ensuring that porters make livable wages, are treated fairly, and that they actually receive the tips climbers try to give them.

We sat down this week to Skype with Australia-based photographer Helen Osler, who became involved with the porters project when she climbed the mountain back in 2008. She tells us one thing that really struck her about the porters that helped her reach the summit was how interested they were in her camera, and how skilled so many of them were as photographers.

She began to wonder how she could get porters on the mountain to take photos, given they couldn’t afford the equipment. So she launched the Porters of Kilimanjaro Photographic Project, through which she had people all around the world who were traveling to Tanzania bring disposable cameras and then get them back to her weeks later.

Out of the 75 cameras delivered to Mt. Kilimanjaro, 55 came back, giving Helen more than 1,000 photos to sift through. She says she was struck by how thoughtful so many of the images are, and was inspired to develop a book, even though the resolution isn’t large enough for a truly large, coffee-table, glossy book.

Called Cameras of Kilimanjaro, the 104-page color book costs roughly $48, but money raised through the photographic project will be used to improve the porters’ working conditions. Helen’s drive to help the porters is truly admirable. Among her observations:

“There are incredible risks, the same as everyone who climbs there, yet they can’t afford to go down. Their families won’t be eating if they lose their job that day, so they keep going. When I climbed, we gave medication to two or three of the porters, but they refused to go down. And there was nothing we could do about that; it was their choice.”

Helen says the average wage each porter earns per day should be 8,000 Tanzanian shillings, but the porters association has found it goes as low as 6,000. This converts to $4 a day instead of $5, “which is well under what they should be paid,” Helen says. “Which in our terms is just nothing.”

Check out the book, and if you can’t afford it, spread the word about it and about the Kilimanjaro Porters Assistance Project, too. But the best thing you can do if you’re going to climb Kilimanjaro is to make sure that you find an outfit that works with the project and to do what you can to deliver tips to porters yourself. And remember: When you pay as little as possible to climb, the porters are the first to take that hit.

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“Moving Mountains”: Climbing Kilimanjaro

Big kudos to David and Ingrid, whom we sent to Kilimanjaro in August, for coming back with such great images and stories. David recorded himself describing some of his best images from the trip; check out the audio slideshow above, and our YouTube channel for more.

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Kilimanjaro comes with high risk of acute mountain sickness

A study has just come out confirming what many climbers already know: summiting mountains as high as Africa’s Mt. Kilimanjaro involves a high risk of acute mountain sickness, and steady acclimatization before the final ascent is the best guard against it.

The study appears in the current issue of High Altitude Medicine & Biology, a peer-reviewed journal published by Mary Ann Liebert. Researchers at the University of Edinburgh (Scotland) and Muhimbili University College of Health Science (Tanzania) evaluated the incidence of AMS among trekkers of Africa’s highest peak by comparing the effects of three increasingly difficult and rapid ascent routes, the option of a single rest day during the climb, and use by a sub-group of climbers of prophylactic acetazolamide.

The authors reported a similar rate of AMS among climbers regardless of drug use, a finding most climbers already know anecdotally. More surprising is that a mid-climb rest day did not seem to have an affect on AMS, although we’d argue it has an affect on physical and mental stamina. The only way the researchers found to protect against AMS, given the risk of it is so high, is to acclimatize before final ascent, which is precisely why it’s so important to take things one day at a time.

In the report, the researchers found: At 2743m 3% of the 177 climbers recruited at this altitude had AMS. Following headache, the commonest symptom reported on LLS sheets was fatigue (38%). At 4730m, sleep disturbance was the commonest symptom described (82%). 47% of the 189 climbers on all itineraries were AMS positive.

Climbing Kilimanjaro is no joke. Slow and steady definitely wins the race.

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Priority: Keeping it real on the road

Anyone who read Elizabeth Gilbert‘s travel memoir “Eat, Pray, Love” (and let’s face it, a lot of people did) knows the hunger for not just visiting a place, but experiencing it. Those with the luxury of time can actually carve out months at a time actually living in their dream destinations, but for those with only a week or two at their disposal, getting off the beaten path and finding what is real about a place is practically an oxymoron.

Which is why we at Embark were so excited to come across the travel piece, When ‘Real’ Is the Traveling Priority, in The New York Times this week. Because this is exactly the kind of travel we believe in–the kind that lets you try a place on and wear it for a while, test its pulse. Simply put, we are not in it for the T-shirt.

This is why we take people to more than just the mountain when we climb Mt. Kilimanjaro, and even on Kilimanjaro, we prefer the route less traveled (Lemosho), so that your path up what will arguably the best climb of your life will not be littered with tourist traffic. We’ve also taken several side trips to visit with the Masai, as seen here. We don’t just stare at and photograph the locals; we interact, share food and stories and laughter.

This is what real travel is all about.

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‘The mountain decides’: Turning back on Kilimanjaro

Some like to put it this way: The mountain decides. And because so little is known about the high-altitude illness that claims the most lives at high altitude, the legend lives on. Because HAPE (high-altitude pulmonary edema) can strike anyone, without warning, on any climb.

Kathleen, who at 55 had been training for eight months with her niece Kami to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro with Embark this past August, at first exhibited no symptoms that, without emergency treatment, she might have died up there. She was, quite simply, tired.

It really didn’t get tough until day three of the climb. Day one, they hiked from roughly 7,000 feet to 9,000, and again on day two they made it up to 11,000 feet. But on the third day, which involved another 2,000-foot climb in altitude, Kathleen, who had noticed exerting more effort with each passing day, was beginning to feel tired enough to wonder whether she’d summit:

When we got to 13,000 the third day, we got there in the afternoon, and I just felt tired. I didn’t have trouble breathing, I was just tired and glad to get there and relax. It felt like an effort to get to our tent. I remember talking to my niece in the mess tent and saying, “So what if I can’t make this?” At that point I was thinking it was more of a mental push, because I could see it getting progressively more difficult.

On day four, as they set out toward Lava Tower on the steepest part of the climb thus far, Kathleen began to really struggle. Steve, the assistant guide, noticed right away, and offered to carry her daypack. It couldn’t have been more than 10 pounds, and the fact that not having to carry it felt so good was a sign that Kathleen was really starting to struggle.

About an hour before reaching the tower, Kathleen was having to stop regularly. There was no scramble, but to Kathleen the grade felt steeper and steeper. And when they finally made it, all she could think of was lying down. But when she did, all she could do was cough, no matter what position she tried.

Later that night, after dinner and games, Kathleen went back to her tent to try again for quality sleep. But, she says:

It was the same thing. As soon as I laid down–just coughing, coughing. Terrible coughing. As the night wore on it got worse. I got up at 1 in the morning and felt really tired going 20 yards to the bathroom tent. I went back in and found that the only way to get relief was to lie on my stomach and prop myself up on my arms. I woke up a half hour later and my arms were killing me.

At 4 a.m., Kathleen had to get up and go to the bathroom again, and at that point she was so fatigued and worried about having bronchitis that she woke up Freddie, the head guide. What kept throwing everyone off the HAPE trail was that Kathleen was only experiencing fatigue and cough, without the very common nausea and headaches most people have to suffer through. But Freddie played it safe, put her on oxygen, and said they’d have to wait for dawn to head down.

At first light Kathleen had to say goodbye to her niece Kami and head down the mountain, with Freddie carrying her oxygen tank. It was tough to see the disappointment in Kami’s eyes, to know that Kami now had to push ahead on her own, but Kathleen was so exhausted she knew there was just no other way:

The assistant guide Steve came into my tent and packed for me. Kami of course is really sad that she has to go without me. And they gave me more oxygen. He measured our PO2 every day, and he would measure morning and night. It’s a measurement of how much oxygen your blood is carrying, so how much energy you have, and if everything is normal it’s 100 percent. Sometimes in the morning it would be 80, 84, just because you haven’t been moving yet. And that morning, mine was at 54. And when I came home my nephew said people are comatose at 50.

When she coughed up the color orange, Freddie knew for sure it was HAPE, but by this time they were almost back down to the emergency vehicle that would take them to Moshi.

“I’m not feeling bad about it now,” Kathleen says today, just a month after her return. “I had a great adventure.” Kathleen got to spend eight months preparing with her niece; got to travel to Africa; got to see the joy in Kami’s face when she came down from the summit. And she still gets to tell people she climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro. She just didn’t quite make it all the way.

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The Oregonian features Embark

Over the weekend, travel writer Shawn Donley featured Embark Adventures in The Oregonian as the best way for Portlanders to find a local guide up Mt. Kilimanjaro. He has this to say of Embark founder Donovan Pacholl:

The Tanzanian government requires all climbs to be guided and supported. If you’re looking for a local option, I doubt you’ll find anyone in Oregon who knows Kilimanjaro as well as Donovan Pacholl. He spent several years living at the base of the mountain and in 2003 helped establish the Kilimanjaro Porters Assistance Project. He now runs Embark Adventures (www.embarkadventures.com), which specializes in climbs up the beautiful Lemosho route.

Props also to Donley’s second local pick, Nicole Apelian’s Trackers International. She leads nature lovers on trips to Botswana’s Okavango Delta.

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Tanganyika Wilderness Camps: On The Move

Tanganyika Wilderness Camps, Tanzania Safaris, Tanzania Safari Tours, Tanzania Safari Lodges

One of our clients’ favorite tented safari lodges are run by Tanganyika Wilderness Camps. From mobile tented camps to farm houses and full-on lodges, these are ideal for people who want what we’ll call luxurious rustic.

The mobile camp option moves during the migration, perched in private areas rich in fauna and wildlife and alongside local tribes and farmers. The company’s focus is on long-term conservation, and they’ve seen up these lodgings to ensure that the locals and the environment are benefited by tourism without resulting in communities that feel “touristy.” Check out more photos of different lodging options here.

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