“Kilimanjaro! But…why?”
It was quite an obvious question, and one to which I’d like to have provided a profoundly meaningful answer. But unfortunately I didn’t have one. None of us really had a clue why we were going to do this. Why does anyone do this sort of thing?
I guess some people have a clear and perhaps lifelong ambition to achieve certain things. Like climb Kilimanjaro. Or scale the world’s most significant peaks. Or hike the world’s great trails. Seemingly, none of us did.
For Duncan Macrae, one-time Morpeth resident who would climb Kilimanjaro with his brother Andrew in 2016, that reason was clear. “I was born in Africa, in Nigeria. I want to stand on the top of the continent I was born on. How many people can say that?” Certainly not me. I was born in Northumberland, the highest point of which is a whopping 815 metres. So I had no such compelling reason – starkly beautiful though the Cheviot Hills are.
I guess some people have a need to test their endurance, to push themselves to the limits, to overcome great challenges. Do triathlons, Iron-mans, Race-the-Planet type stuff. Sod that for a laugh. I have neither the discipline, motivation nor need for any such self-assertive stuff. My travels tend to be reasonably adventurous. I’ve wandered around Rajasthan in India. Explored Myanmar before it became overrun by mainland Chinese. Travelled miles across Indonesia in search of a lizard. But they’re certainly more sedentary in nature. Lazy, beach holidays are rare; visiting several places in one trip the norm; but polar exploration it is not.
I would travel far and wide to see the world’s great waterfalls. There’s something about crashing water that thrills me. But even then it’s somewhat passive. You ‘see’ a waterfall, you don’t ‘do’ it. At least I’d hope not. I can’t say I’d fancy going over Niagara in a barrel just for a ‘rush’. I’ve been to Lynhope Spout in Northumberland, and as grand as it is, I doubt it appears on many lists of world greats. Shame on them. Other than that the only tick on the list is Niagara Falls on the Canada/US border. Which, on the plus side, means the delights of Victoria, Iguazu and Angel Falls still await.
Many people will climb Kilimanjaro as a means of raising charitable funds, which is very commendable. The Macrae’s raised money for research into Alzheimer’s, from which their mother was sadly suffering at the time. I wondered which came first, the challenge or the charity? Did people decide to climb the mountain and then find a charity to support? Or did their commitment to the charity come first, and the challenge a means of stimulating interest? And the greater the challenge, the greater the interest? Would you raise more for climbing Kilimanjaro than taking part in your local fun run?
We would never know, as we shallow souls opted against charitable fund-raising as it is just too damned difficult. I only know a certain number of people in the world and badgering them every year to donate to Movember and watch me grow a crap moustache was discomfiting enough. They’d be grateful not to be receiving another scrounging email. I had reason enough to raise funds for cancer. One of my best friends died of lung cancer at the age of just 41, and I’ve had bladder cancer myself. So this lack of philanthropy may have seemed cowardly and lazy, but it is what it is.
Some people will climb Kilimanjaro in search of answers, in search of an epiphany. In his excellent book The Longest Way Home, actor-turned-writer Andrew McCarthy overcame a psychological barrier over his commitment to his forthcoming marriage. He may not have set out in search of such resolution, but something in those long hours up Kilimanjaro worked for him.
And you can forget bucket lists. I don’t have one as I find the whole concept very contrived and extremely naff. And I have no intention of kicking anything just yet.
Until this point in life ‘Kilimanjaro’ meant more to me as the title of The Teardrop Explodes debut album. It was once placed by Q magazine at number 95 in its 2005 list of the 100 Greatest British Albums Ever, which isn’t that great a rating is it? But even an appreciation of the album didn’t ever make me want to climb the mountain.
So what on earth were we doing? Terry Garry came up with the idea towards the end of 2013 and I couldn’t think of a good reason not to. I’d missed out on the opportunity to climb both Mount Kinabalu in Malaysia and Snow Mountain in Taiwan with him, both for no good reason and both of which I regretted. Too often people came up with ideas for adventures, expeditions, weekends away, golf trips, whatever, and I’d find a reason not to go. So when Toby Cooper and Kevin Galloway said they were in, I thought, no, this time, I am going to do it. To be honest, it could have been anything – Everest Base Camp, the Inca Trail, or even a weekend camping in Ipswich. I fancied an adventure. I didn’t think too much about the details and signed up. Plus, my dear wife Sue, said I could go.
That lack of thinking may have worked in our favour. Had we done more research and understood exactly what was involved – the cold, the pain, the risk of death, camping – then we may have decided otherwise. As it was, we signed up first and only then bothered to find out exactly what we’d signed up for. Ignorance is bliss.
Despite being a reasonably well educated person my knowledge of Africa was limited to say the least. I knew that Kilimanjaro is in Africa, that it’s big, and that Hemingway wrote about it. But prior to this trip I didn’t know that it is in Tanzania. Nor that it is the highest mountain in Africa. The highest free-standing mountain in the world. Or that it is just less than 6,000 metres high. To be honest, I didn’t even know where Tanzania is. So I obviously didn’t know that the Serengeti is also in Tanzania and, lo and behold, just round the corner. Now the Serengeti is something that I have always hankered to see. David Attenborough’s natural history documentaries had made sure of that.
David Attenborough must be responsible for a lot of places that people have been and things that they have done. Her certainly influenced my travels to Komodo in Indonesia. A long time ago, when I was around twelve or so, my Granny bought me a copy of the book to accompany the BBC’s Life on Earth series. And in a double-page spread was a thrilling photo, taken from ground level, of a menacing Komodo dragon prowling along a beach.
Over twenty years later I found myself in Java in Indonesia, backpacking. I was travelling by myself, and pretty open-minded about what might lie ahead. And then I noticed that Komodo is in Indonesia. I thought, ‘Right, here be dragons. I’m going. And I’m going to find myself one of those dragon things’. And subsequently travelled overland through Java, Bali, Lombok, Sumbawa and on to Komodo, visiting whatever there was to see along the way, including Mounts Bromo, Batur and Kelimutu. It took the best part of three weeks to reach the far end of Flores. And the best part of three hours to fly back to Bali. And I saw those dragons in their natural habitat and it was worth every minute. Although I’m not sure the wee billy goat who was sacrificed in order to attract the dragons would agree.
Such opportunities to experience the world are not to be spurned. So before we’d even gone anywhere the trip was changing shape, and with that the costs were adding up. The original plan had been to fly to Tanzania, climb the mountain, and go home again. And as it was a boys outing, Sue was not interested in coming. So one flight to Tanzania, the cost of the climb, plus some kit, and that was it. I had even opted for an economy class flight while everyone else was booking business class – tight arse. I figured a sleeping pill was a damned sight cheaper.
But then we learned that the Ngorongoro Crater and the Serengeti were just a hop, skip and a jump from Kilimanjaro. It’d be more than just a shame to go all that way to Tanzania, have the Serengeti on your doorstep and not go. So myself, Kevin, Toby and new addition Cormac Thompson decided to sign up for a safari.
I then figured that if I was on a once-in-a-lifetime safari, seeing the wonders of Africa’s wildlife and landscapes in all their stunning glory, Sue should be with me. Coming home and telling her how wonderful it was, and excitedly subjecting her to a multitude of pictures as her eyes glassed over with jealousy and boredom would only accentuate the fact that I did it with my mates and not with her. And we couldn’t put a romantic picture of me and Cormac on the sideboard could we? Well, we could, but that would just be a bit strange. So this required a flight for Sue, an upgrade for me to business class, and one more person on the safari.
Which meant that the costs were adding up. So I decided to do the only sensible thing possible and stopped counting. There never really was a budget, just a vague number in my head. But whatever that was, we were already way above it. And way over what I’d ever normally spend on a holiday. But if I got hung up on costs I’d end up scrimping on equipment which could potentially ruin the experience. And I’d be anxious about the whole thing which would definitely ruin the experience. So sod it. It would cost what it cost and I still honestly can’t say what it was. I never added it up – either before the trip or after.
By early 2014 we’d made a verbal commitment to Terry that we were all in. Three things that didn’t require any consideration whatsoever were probably three of the most significant – when to go, who to go with and which route to take.
Terry determined all three things, the timing, the operator and the route. No one questioned, queried, challenged, suggested alternatives, or asked to go a week or a month earlier or later. Those three things were accepted as a given and that was that. No one even quizzed Terry on the extent of his homework or the rationale for his choices. It was probably safer not to know. Everyone was simply happy to have had as many decisions as possible made for them. Dictatorship over democracy.
We were going in late August, with the African Walking Company, on the Shira 7B route, whatever the hell that is. The African Walking Company were apparently the company who took a Comic Relief party up Kilimanjaro in 2009. If they were good enough for the BBC and a bunch of celebrities, they were good enough for us bunch of nobodies. Sadly Cheryl Cole wasn’t coming with us. There are a multitude of routes for climbing Kilimanjaro – Marangu, Machame, Rongai, Lemosho, Shira, Northern Circuit and Umbwe – each with their pros and cons and each with different reasons why they’re the best. Of course none of us actually knew this at the time as none of us had bothered to look. Terry picked one. End of story.
All of which meant that, at this point, mid-March, we needed to pay a deposit. And that financial outlay ramped the commitment up a notch. This should have been a point at which we stopped and asked ourselves the critical questions. Why am I doing this? Is this really something I want? Am I prepared for whatever hardships it may present? Or just pay up and be damned.
We then needed to book some flights from Hong Kong. Toby took charge of that – well he had to organise something. The preferred airline of all Hong Kongers is Cathay Pacific. But their options involved inconvenient connections via Amsterdam, Frankfurt or Dubai, and lengthy layovers. And Cathay’s high prices of course. At the end of the day Ethiopian Airways offered the most direct route (Hong Kong to Addis Ababa, Addis Ababa to Arusha), the most convenient departure and arrival times, minimal layovers, and a reasonable price. Made sense. And then we needed to pay for the flights. And that ratcheted up the commitment another notch. We’d crossed our Rubicon; our point of no return.
And so it may have proved. The day after we booked the flights, came news of an Ethiopian Airways flight being hijacked. By one of its own pilots. He diverted the plane to Geneva where he wished to seek asylum. “We might be climbing Mont Blanc instead” quipped Matt.
The fun with Ethiopian Airways continued. In April, I tried to book Sue’s flight, aiming for the same flight as our own but one week later, and of course with the same return flights. However the departure times – albeit one week later – appeared different. At which point the travel agent realised that Ethiopian Airways had changed their schedule. They no longer flew on the Friday that was so timely for us, and now flew on the Thursday instead. We queried amongst ourselves why the airline hadn’t alerted the travel agent to the change. Or why the travel agent hadn’t realised the change. And why it took a query from ourselves to identify this. But these were things to which we chose to turn a blind eye. Questioning the quality or integrity of either party would cause too much hassle. They only had our lives in their hands after all.
This meant that all our flights had to be changed. The choice was to cancel and rebook with another airline, spend a night in Addis Ababa, or fly a day earlier and have a day kicking around Arusha, with the cost of one extra night’s accommodation and one more day off work. The most hassle-free option won, and one more day in Arusha it would be.
By now our mountain climbing party had been confirmed as Terry Garry and his brother Martin, both from the UK; a friend of Terry’s from his time in Hong Kong, Matt Seager; the aforementioned Toby, Kevin and Cormac, plus Callum Wood, and myself – all from Hong Kong.
On the basis that it was his idea, Terry Garry, then 43, had by default become expedition leader. I didn’t have the heart to tell the others that he used to be known as Terry Fuckwitt (see Viz comic) for his propensity to, well, fuck things up. But that was over twenty years ago. Since then he’d got married, had children and generally matured. Mind you, if you’d seen him dressed as a leprechaun at the Hong Kong Rugby Sevens you could have been forgiven for questioning that. Especially when he was put in charge of his children the following day and, with a massive hangover, promptly lost one.
I’d known Terry for about twenty-five years having gone to the same college/university. It was Ealing College of Higher Education when I started and finished, but had evolved into Thames Valley University by the time Terry graduated (and has since mutated again into the University of West London). Not the greatest of academic institutions, when myself and Sue had been researching university league tables two years earlier ahead of her daughter Rachel’s application, TVU/UWL was consistently towards the lower end of the scale. Thankfully Rachel is clever, was studying medicine, and it was never in her consideration set. She was looking at the other end of the table.
In our day Ealing College’s students seemed to consist mainly of people who had fallen through the gaps. They were too clever not to go to university but too lazy to have got themselves into somewhere better. It’s perhaps not surprising that when most of them turned their mind to it they’d turn out to be extremely successful. And thankfully the ones that matter are still great friends. The drinking at Ealing was legendary. I’m sure all students say that about their universities, but I honestly believe that Ealing was exceptional in its lunacy. The tales are legend but for another day.
Terry was also the man responsible for getting me off my arse and out of a dead-end job in London, and taking me off backpacking in South East Asia. Although we only actually travelled together for a few weeks before he went off to catch up with his then-girlfriend-now-wife Rachel, he did enough to get me there and give me the kick-start I needed.
One day in 1992 we were sitting in the kitchen of a house in Ealing, West London. Terry pointed rather vaguely at a map of South East Asia and said “We’re going here, here, here and here.” I had little or no confidence that he knew what he was talking about. But it was still better than the drudgery of the Purchasing and Supplies Department of Hammersmith Hospital. So I said “Okay, count me in.” A trail from Thailand to Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Australia and New Zealand, then led me to Hong Kong, which remained home for the next twenty three years.
We were pretty damn naïve at the time. With hindsight it’s easy to say that all those pre-trip nerves and worries about what-to-pack and what-not-to-pack were unfounded. Everything went off smoothly, give or take some drunken tomfoolery along the way and a wee bout of dengue fever which nearly killed me. I’d only been away for two weeks at the time.
We were in Koh Samui, Thailand, and being the young ravers that we weren’t, we went to Koh Phan Ngan for the infamous Full Moon Party. One morning I awoke feeling decidedly unwell. I put it down to a bad reaction to the local whisky and stayed in bed all day. But on the second day it was clear that all was not well. I was sweating buckets, couldn’t hold down any food or water, and my body was aching all over.
Time to visit the local witch doctor. The walk to the clinic that should have taken a few minutes took nearly half an hour. The doctor asked some questions, took my temperature, declared that I had a tropical disease, and prepared for an injection. I had my own medical kit, including syringes, in the hut but couldn’t even get off the bed to go and get them. I was that weak. So he gave me an injection, although not before he’d gone back into his shop and sold some diet pills to some ravers looking for a high. And this guy had my life in his hands? It was two weeks before I ate another full meal, by which time I’d lost an awful lot of weight. And missed the full moon party.
Anyway. Many years later the Garrys and their brood, Tom and Lizzie, came out to live in Hong Kong for five years, before returning in 2014 to their hometown of Bristol.
In Hong Kong Terry would become the source of more adventures. He and I sailed his boat Sandmartin in the Royal Hong Kong Yacht Club’s Annual Around the Island Race, not once but twice, and on the second occasion, won. Yes, won. Terry’s a good sailor, as were the other crew members Steve and Mark. Terry’s ten year old son Tom was actually at the helm when we crossed the finish line. I think I was just there to make the tea. But sod it. I sailed on a boat all the way around Hong Kong Island and, useless or not, was part of a crew that won the race. As co-owner of the boat, Terry’s name is etched forever into the records of the Yacht Club. Mine isn’t, so you’ll just have to take my word for it that I was there.
Toby Cooper, then 44, I’d probably known for around fifteen years, when he was manager of Oscar’s bar in Hong Kong’s Lan Kwai Fong district. He then did a few other things before taking over the (old) Globe, becoming our favourite grumpy barman, and then creating the (new) Globe, Hong Kong’s finest watering-hole of which I was unfortunately not a shareholder. At the time of the investment opportunity it was either that or a flat, and the flat won. Sue’s reaction had I declared my intention to sink our life savings into a pub rather than property would have been cataclysmic to say the least. Through mutual interests in football, music and a pint or two, myself and Toby had shared numerous trips around Asia. Not that I can remember very much about them – they were all very boozy.
Cormac Thompson, 41, is a diminutive Queenslander, who I’d known for only a few years, primarily, if not solely, from the Globe. In fact, aside from one junk trip I’m not sure I’d ever seen Cormac anywhere other than the Globe. I’m not sure what that said about either him or me. Another Hong Kong resident, Kevin Galloway, 62, is a South African/Australian, once a pharmacist and now a personal trainer. Again I’d known him for only three years or so. Callum Wood, 47, is an old mate of Toby’s and long-term Hong Kong resident. I’m not sure how I didn’t know him already, but only really became friends as a result of this adventure.
Then there was Matt Seager, 43, a friend of Terry’s from their time living in Discovery Bay, Hong Kong. I’d met Matt numerous times in numerous bars, invariably with Terry. He had relocated to the UK prior to departure for Tanzania (only to go back to Hong Kong after finding the UK insufferably dull). He’d recently given up a career in banking to explore new things and write a novel – which impressed me enormously. I’d loved to have been able to do the same but had neither the financial security nor the courage (nor, sadly, the talent). And finally there was Doctor Martin Garry, 48, Terry’s brother, who I think I may have met once over twenty years ago in a pub in Bristol. His appearance and personality are so similar to Terry that there really is no doubting their parentage.
So we had a doctor and a personal trainer in our midst. Which we’d like to say was all deliberate and part of the planning – the nutritionist would be joining soon – but was of course pure coincidence. We also had a scrap metal dealer, two bankers, an engineer, a publican and a market researcher. It was clear what Martin and Kevin could bring to the table but I wasn’t so sure about the rest of us. I could ask some nice questions. Toby could discuss the merits of craft beer. And Terry-the-scrap-metal-dealer would undoubtedly have a covetous eye on any old iron he thought he could get a price for. ‘Twas a motley crew.
Go to Chapter 3: Kit and caboodle