Bye-bye Karanga on Kilimanjaro
Day 5 started as awesome as day one to four on Mount Kilimanjaro. 🙂 We had a crystal clear sky and beautiful views of Kibu/the mountain.
We had a hearty breakfast and a coffee in the sun and left Karanga Camp (3995m) to first reach Barafu Camp on 4673m.
Stone Men and “business as usual”
As on Day 4 and everday before, even on Day 5 the clouds came in quite early andwe slowly made our way up to Barafu Camp. The trail was never really steep andwe passed a couple of other groups from Machame Route and also some people we already know from earlier days on Lemosho.
There was one place where may, partly huuuuuge, Stone Men were built by fellow hikers.
Getting high to Kosovo Camp
After around 5 hours we reached Barafu Camp, the regular point to set off for the summit attempt. It is an awfully big and crowded camp as here climbers from four routes (Lemosho, Shira, Machame and Umbwe –> Find out more about the different routes to climb Kilimanjaro HERE) meet and we had to queue to register at the staff hut. Thanks to the best guide, we didn`t have to stay here for very long 🙂 …
Normally people leave at midnight for the summit push and therefore have to climb during the night to reach the summit with the first rays of sunlight. This is not only uncomfortable, cold and somehow challenging, but also you can get stuck in the “traffic” on the way up.
To avoid this, our guide organized that we allowed to move on another hour to the 300m higher and almost not-known “Kosovo Camp”. 🙂 As we figured out, Kosovo was shut down due to pollution. But as our operator Ahsante Tours is involved in the “Keep Kili Clean” project, where guides and porters do one-week of mountain cleaning at the end of the season, we got a special permit for that place. 🙂
This was a great thing, as there was only one other group in that spot!
We had an awesome New Year`s Eve dinner and were awake quite a while to “celebrate”. 🙂
As we stayed at Kosovo Camp and would stay in the crater the night afterwards, we were able to sleep regularly and start our summit attempt after sunsrise on 1st of January 2016!
We got woken up at night by all the people passing Kosovo on their way up to the summit – and the were singing and cleebrating New Year`s Day! To be on Mount Kilimanjaro at that time was quite unique and maybe the best New Year`s we ever had. 🙂
Continue to read about Day 6 on Kilimanjaro! 🙂
