Wake-up tea at six, breakfast, walk, lunch, walk, camp by mid-afternoon. Here is how a day on the mountain runs, from the first tea to the last check.
Most days on Kilimanjaro follow the same shape, and knowing it helps. You wake early, walk for most of the morning, eat, walk a little more, and reach camp with the afternoon still ahead of you. Summit night is different, and it gets its own section below.
This is the ordinary day on any of the camping routes. Marangu is the same, except that the camps are huts.
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The Marangu route is one of the most popular routes to the summit of Kilimanjaro.
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The day starts with a voice outside your tent. Someone brings hot tea or coffee, and a bowl of warm water to wash with. It is cold, so most people drink the tea inside their sleeping bag.
Breakfast is in the mess tent. It is more than you expect: porridge, eggs, toast, fruit, sometimes sausage or pancakes. Eat as much as you can. Appetite fades with altitude, and the days when you least want to eat are the days you most need to.
You pack your bag while the porters take down the tents around you. You carry a small daypack with water, snacks, a warm layer, rain gear, sun cream and your camera. Everything else goes in the duffel bag the porters carry. Then you walk.
The pace is the first surprise. Your guide will walk more slowly than you have ever walked, and will keep you to it. The Swahili phrase is pole pole, slowly slowly. It feels silly on the first day. By the fourth day you understand why.
You stop often. Every hour or so there is a short break for water and a snack. The porters pass you on the trail, carrying loads on their heads and backs, and reach the next camp long before you do. By the time you arrive the tents are up.
Most walking days are four to seven hours. Some are shorter. The days that feel long are the ones with a lot of height gain, not the ones with the most distance.
Lunch is either a packed box eaten on the trail, or a hot meal at a set stopping point if the crew has gone ahead to cook. Either way there is more food than you think you can eat.
You usually reach camp in the early afternoon. That leaves time. Some days your guide takes you on a short acclimatisation walk, a little higher than camp and back down again. Do it even when you are tired. It is one of the things that helps your body adjust.
Otherwise the afternoon is yours. People read, sort their kit, take photographs, or simply sit and look at the mountain. Afternoon tea, with popcorn or biscuits, appears around four.
Dinner is around half past six, in the mess tent, by lamp. It is usually three courses: soup, a main with rice or pasta or potatoes, and fruit or something sweet. The cooks manage this at 4,000 metres on a camp stove, which is remarkable when you think about it.
After dinner your guide does the health check. They ask how you feel, and on most climbs they measure your oxygen level and pulse with a small clip on your finger. Be honest. This is how they catch problems early.
Then the briefing for the next day: how long, how high, what to wear, when to wake. And then bed. It is dark by seven and cold soon after, and most people are asleep by eight. Sleep at altitude is often broken. That is normal.
These are the questions people are too polite to ask, so here are the answers.
Toilets. The public toilets at the camps are long-drop huts, and they are basic. Most operators bring a private toilet tent with a portable chemical toilet, carried and emptied by a porter whose job that is. It is one of the things that separates a good crew from a cheap one. On the trail between camps you go behind a rock, and you carry your used paper out in a bag.
Washing. There are no showers on the camping routes. Each morning and evening you get a bowl of warm water at your tent. That, wet wipes and hand sanitiser are the whole system for a week. Everyone is in the same position and nobody minds.
Warmth. The nights get cold from the second camp onwards and very cold above 4,000 metres. The mess tent is warmer than your sleeping tent, so people linger over dinner. Go to bed with a hot drink, in dry clothes, with tomorrow's clothes inside the sleeping bag. A hat and a buff to sleep in make more difference than you expect.
Phones and charging. There is no power on the mountain. Bring a power bank, keep it warm, and put the phone on airplane mode. There is patchy signal at some camps and none at others.
And the dark. It is fully dark by seven. A head torch with spare batteries is the one piece of kit you will use every single day.
The night before the summit you go to bed around six in the evening. You are woken around eleven. You dress in everything, drink tea, eat a little, and leave camp around midnight.
You then walk for five to seven hours in the dark, in the cold, up a steep slope of loose scree, in a slow line of head torches. The guides sing, encourage, and check on you constantly. You reach the crater rim around dawn, and walk on to Uhuru Peak in the first light.
After a short time at the top you turn around and descend all the way past your high camp to a lower camp, usually arriving in the mid-afternoon. It is the longest day of the climb by far. Then, the next morning, you walk out to the gate.
Every route page on this site describes its own summit day in detail.
Kilimanjaro
Six routes go up Kilimanjaro. They differ in days, scenery, crowds and how well they help you get used to the altitude. This page…
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Kilimanjaro is a walk, not a climb. The altitude, the cold on summit night, and the length of the days make it hard. This page…
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Altitude sickness is why people turn back on Kilimanjaro. This page explains what it is, what it feels like, how to lower your…
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Three cooked meals a day, snacks on the trail, and more of it than you expect. This page covers what the crew cooks, how, and why…
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A Kilimanjaro climb is carried by a crew that outnumbers the climbers. Here is who they are, what they do, how they are…
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You do not need to have climbed a mountain before. Most people on Kilimanjaro have not. This page covers what a first-timer needs…
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Three months of regular walking, some hills, a loaded daypack, and two long days back to back. Here is a training plan that…
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Every month on the mountain, in one place: weather, crowds, summit snow and which route works best. Pick your dates from this.
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