Climbing Kilimanjaro – footnotes - what to expect when you get down

Throughout this series of blog posts, I have included tips on what you will need and what the experience is like. But what you seldom read about is what happens to you when you get back.

First of all, you will look at the incoming group of poor sods about to tackle the mountain and will smile knowingly into your beer, not wishing to be them for a single minute. And then you realise that the team who came down the same time we were about to head up were looking at us in exactly the same way.

Secondly, your body can have a delayed reaction to the exertion, high altitude and temperature extremes you've gone through.  Here are some of the effects we experienced:
 

• Swollen lips that feel as though you have blisters on the inside
• Mouth ulcers
• Bleeding nose - for almost a week
• Sore skin around nose and mouth
• Khumba cough
• Vomiting
• Shivers and diarrhea
• Sunburn that you didn’t notice until you got down
• Extreme tiredness. You will wonder if you will ever stay up past 9pm again.
• Flatulence and burping
• Loss of appetite for several days

 
Yip – it’s all glamour.  But is it worth it? Yes. Would I do it again? No. Am I glad I did it? Absolutely.

Go back to day 1