For the adventure holiday of a lifetime, Mt Kilimanjaro is at the top of everybody’s list. Just 3 degrees south of the equator, topping 4.6km above the flat Tanzanian plains, Mt Kilimanjaro both challenges and enthrals with its permanently snow capped summit. It offers perhaps the best opportunity to scale a peak at high altitude without a technical climbing background.
Often shrouded in mist, and always shrouded in mystery, nobody is really sure even what “Kilimanjaro’ means, but as a symbol of the grandeur and diversity of eastern Africa it stands as iconic as our own Uluru. The highest of its three peaks, the permanently snow-capped Uhuru, is Africa’s highest peak, and at 5900 metres above sea level provides the determined and fit climber the chance to stand on the roof of Africa.

Kilimanjaro (‘Kili’ to the cognoscenti) attracts amateur mountaineers keen to tackle its three peaks, with comparative ease of ascent to at least one of the summits. There are several trekking operators offering varying trips, so budding mountaineers should speak to a Travel Counsellor before making the trip. And a medical check-up is highly recommended too, altitude sickness is common among the non-acclimatised, and can be quite debilitating.

One of Kili’s enduring and fascinating charms is her broad climatic diversity. A trek up her slopes will take an adventurer from equatorial rainforest, through cool mountain forests, barren alpine desert into a frozen land of ice and snow; all just three degrees south of the equator.

For those with less physical ambitions, the surrounding national park is a wonderland of African flora and fauna, although the dense tropical forests often make nature spotting difficult. The sharp-eyed can look out for colobus monkeys, leopards, baboons, badgers and aardvarks, and elephants and giraffes have been known to wander by.

Kilimanjaro’s last eruption was over 200 years ago

Kilimanjaro is actually 3 extinct volcanos

The first published reference to Kilimanjaro was by Ptolemy over 1800 years ago