A year ago today I was a top Mt. Kilimanjaro at 19,341 ft

A year ago today I was a top Mt. Kilimanjaro at 19,341 ft (5,895 meters).

It was literally one of the best moments of my life, right up there with my kids being born.

But for me this is something that had been brewing in my mind and gut for half my life. I first got the idea upon reading a Michael Crichton’s autobiography called Travels, when traveling in Thailand and Malaysia in my 20s. In his Kilimanjaro chapter, he describes a horrid shocking experience that left him cold, exhausted and drained…It sent me on a “I NEED to do this” quest, that had excited me ever since.

I did a bunch of traveling in my mid 20s, mostly solo traveling to places like China, Thailand, Malaysia, all over Japan, Israel, Jordan, Egypt, Romania and a few other countries. I loved traveling solo because it allowed me to have any experience I wanted to have, go where I wanted to go or go nowhere and more importantly talk to and meet anyone I wanted. I had super amazing experiences that I hold dear and to this day are fresh in my mind like they happened yesterday. But having the experience of climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro was not something I wanted to do alone. I always had it in my mind to share this experience with a significant other, like a wife, or my children. 

After living in Japan for 4 years, and having done all that traveling, I finally came back to the U.S., got a job and settled down in New York City.  Starting a job, building a career, meeting a girl, getting married, having kids, responsibilities…life somehow gets in the way of things you want to do…. and the gut feeling of climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro subsided.

A conversation in early 2019

Enter a conversation in early 2019 with my brother and sister in law. They asked me about my pending milestone birthday coming up and what I was going to do that was monumental to memorialize such a birthday. She threw around some ideas like a beach vacation, big party at a restaurant or doing something for the day. With a short pause, my mind immediately jumped to something that I have been wanting to do for over 25 years - climb Mt. Kilimanjaro!  She was not expecting that answer and started to laugh thinking it was a joke. Buy my heart and mind immediately started pounding, I had a big smile on my face as my blood raced thru my body. And my mind took me back to my 20s, traveling through Thailand and weeding thru Michael Crichton’s book Travels…. and everything that he went through on his journey up Mt. Kilimanjaro… I couldn’t wait.

Since they were little, I have been taking my kids on outdoor activities. Hiking, camping, caving, rivers, lakes, waterfalls are common destinations for us. Thus, they are very comfortable sleeping in tents, making fires, pooping outside, and dealing with the little creatures that pop up every now and again on your skin. So it would be a dream to share this adventure with my 17-year-old daughter and 14-year-old son. (If your wondering where a wife might be, being a casualty of divorce, I had no wife, and if you know anything about dating in New York City, it’s a fucking mess, and only recently now have a significant other in my life.)

Unfortunately, my daughter had some commitments at her high school that she could not afford to miss, but my younger son, giving me that dull teenage excitement, gave me a thumbs up that he wanted to go! Since he did not have the knowledge of knowing how treacherous the climb could be, I had him watch videos of other treks up Kili and did my best to talk him out of it. Because I knew how hard it was going to be (in fact I really had no clue),and wanted to make sure he was totally on board. He was!

Thus the research began with choosing the route, booking flights and finding a reputable tour company that would pick us up at the airport, help us with accommodations and provide all the porters, cooks and guides needed to go up the mountain over seven days. 

When I traveled in my 20s there was no Internet to source information. The Lonely Planet was a stable read when planning a course in a foreign land. Just like a marked up college text book, many a Lonely Planet books had notes, folded bookmarked pages and highlights. This is all I had in choosing a local tour company. Browsing the internet took me back to these times, but more choices don’t make things easier. So with WhatsApp in hand any Internet at my fingers I started to research, speak to and dwindle down my top two companies.

After a few conversations with Manase, the owner of Top Climbers, I selected them to guide us thru this journey. If you are ever thinking about climbing Kili, I HIGHLY recommend them! From the office staff, to the drives and of course the guides and porters, they were amazing!

We decided to go up the Lemosho route because it was just a little bit longer and not as crowded as some of the more direct routes up the mountain and provided a much wider range of topography than other routes.

With the trek booked that would have me be on the summit of Mt. Kilimanjaro the day after my 50th birthday, I finally booked our flight … It was a mix of super excited energy and total freight. A strange combination to be sure.

Since I’m not a writer, any effort that I would give to describing every day of our trek would probably not do it justice… Which is why I guess there’s a video on this page that shows our journey versus me just telling it. But one of the key take-a-ways from the trek, was it was so much more than a trek…it was an experience. Not only did we enjoy the special feeling of being in nature hiking up this amazing mountain, but we got to know another culture, people and a deeper appreciation of ourselves.

The morale of this blog post

But the real reason why I’m writing this post today is because of our current global pandemic and our inability to travel and have these kinds of experiences. I literally waited 25 years to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro, and if I stalled or hesitated and not gone last year, I would definitely not be going this year. Then…you know what happens - life gets in the way. 

So on the eve of my summit, which was which WAS one of the hardest things I have ever done….I am so grateful in my heart, mind, body and soul that I took this journey. Not just for myself, but that I did it with my amazing son who was 14 years old at the time.

So I hope this little memoir inspires you to stay focused on doing the things that will make your heart, mind, body and soul fulfilled and grateful for years to come.

Make a comment on what you are going to do when we can start traveling again... Honduras is on the top of my list...this time with my beautiful soulmate.

Footnote – As an entrepreneur, I am seriously grateful to my MultiVision Digital crew – for if not for them I would not have a great video production company, but I would not have been able to take two weeks off, disconnected from the world, without them holding the fort down. Thank you to @Eduardo Vianna, Giorgio Arcelli, Matteo Belletta, Jeremy Levy and Derek Perrucci.