From day 1 I was sick. Before you start climbing you go to one of the gates and register. At these gates they weigh the packs to make sure the porters aren't overloaded, and they also have various rules and words of advice posted. There was one that said literally "If you have a sore throat, do not proceed past 3000 meters." I read this sign while sucking on a throat drop, in the early stages of what turned out to be a hellishly nasty cold, or probably the flu which I presumably brought with me from Egypt. I turned to the doctor and she said, more or less, that I should ignore the sign and hope for a recovery. After all, having made it to the point, I wasn't exactly going to turn around due to a tickle in my throat.
Day 1:
Day 1 was supposed to be an easy 3-4 hour hike to camp. A gentle introduction to hiking Kilimanjaro. It didn't quite turn out that way. The first rains of the season came and washed out the dirt roads to the starting point. As we couldn't drive up, we ended up adding 1-2 hours of hiking time just to get to the starting point, and past that point everything was a muddy morass, slowing us down for the rest of the way. We ended up pulling into camp after night had already fallen. Fortunately about a third of us, including myself, were paranoid enough to have our headlights with us in our daypacks, and we were able to provide enough light for the entire group to keep going. All told I think it was more like 6 or so hours of exhausting slog through the mud.
Day 2:
Day 2 was meant to be the first hard day. Having barely slept the night before and already being under the weather, I found the statement to be well-deserved. The last hour or two I was fighting back nausea and once I got to my tent I almost immediately dove back out again to puke out lunch. Spoke to the doc - not altitude sickness, but rather a combination of exhaustion and illness. Camp at the end of day 2 was the first time since arriving in Tanzania that we actually saw the summit, and the reaction was a near universal "You've got to be shitting me!" as it looked so immense and so distant that the concept of being on top of it within a few days seemed laughable.
Day 3:
Day 3 was supposed to be an easy day. Again, this day took much longer than expected, and I felt so terrible by the end of it that the concept of it being the easy day had me beyond dispirited. Mid-way through we had an optional acclimitization hike to a higher altitude, which I attempted and immediately gave up on, opting instead to hang out with the people suffering from altitude sickness and other forms of distress. During the last stretch of the hike back to camp, I took the opportunity of someone else's need to stop for medical reasons to once again puke out my lunch. I had taken an anti-nausea pill donated to me, but that went out with everything else. Once again spoke to the doctor, once again concluded it was exhaustion/illness and not altitude sickness. Despite the fact that to all appearances all my ills had nothing to do with the altitude, I decided to start on the altitude pills (the brits called it Diamox, but it was the same drug my travel doc had prescribed me) more or less against the doctor's advice that it wouldn't help with any of my actual issues.
Day 4:
Day 4 was meant to be another hard day. We hiked up to 4600 meters before going back down to more like 3800 to camp. And perhaps it was the Diamox, or perhaps it was the fact that I'd got a good night's sleep for the first time since we began, or perhaps it was something else entirely, but I felt great aside from the crazy face-tingling caused by the Diamox. We sent someone from the group who had MS and dislocated knees, who 2 months prior hadn't been able to walk but ambitiously took Kili on anyway, back. The doctor asked me if I'd like to go back with her as I'd been feeling such shit, but as I for once was feeling ok I opted to press on. At this point in the hike, the physical and mental strain was increasingly apparent in an increasing number of people and there were literally people in tears at points. Interestingly I could see that my conditioning seemed to have been as sufficient as I could hope for - my legs were totally fine and not particularly tired or achy by the end of our hikes. I was constantly out of breath, but that was partly altitude and partly the inability to do any high-impact training for a month or so prior to setting off due to my knee issues.
The rest of the days to follow, as well as more about things not immediately involving my physical well-being during that time
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