Travel Secrets: ‘Kilimanjaro is a reminder that luxury is a matter of perspective’

The dizzying altitudes of the world's tallest free-standing mountain require a change in attitudes.

Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania. Getty Images

The guides of Kilimanjaro liken the mountain to a blushing bride. She hides her face in a veil of fog, peering out demurely every now and again, before hastily retreating back out of view. But she is not an unreasonable woman, they say; there is none of the prickly tempestuousness of her Asian counterparts. She is just accessible enough to make it worth your while, but not so much so that you take her for granted.

There are countless clichés to call upon when you are talking about climbing a mountain – Zen-inspired metaphors about self-discovery, hurdles being overcome and journeys being more important than destinations. For me, climbing Kilimanjaro presents no great moment of self-revelation, but it does prove to be an incredibly humbling experience.

I am humbled by the bride herself, by the sheer scale and unfathomably diverse beauty of the world’s tallest free-standing mountain. The topography shifts seamlessly between rainforest, bushland, Alpine desert and finally, right at the top, glacier – stark, majestic walls of rapidly disappearing ice that, courtesy of global warming, could cease to exist within the next 10 years.

We spend the fourth night of our seven-day adventure at Barranco camp, a barren, wind-swept spot at 3,860 metres above sea level. The Barranco Wall, 950m of sheer rocky outcrop, looms overhead and will demand to be tackled tomorrow. But for the moment, I sit on a rock, happy simply to be still after a day of constant movement.

The clouds that linger below part ways and the shift in scale is dizzying. The lights of Moshi town, our starting point, twinkle thousands of metres below, tiny reminders that, after four days with no phone reception, civilisation has not, in fact, ceased to exist. Up above, the stars are so close that it feels like they might drop out of the sky. And behind us, the snow-covered peak of Mount Kilimanjaro glistens in the moonlight, calling us on.

I am humbled, too, by the unending cheer of our guides and day porters, Godfrey, Octavian, Elie, Joachim, Douglas and African, whose names are probably all too often forgotten, but deserve to be immortalised in print. A few days in, we tell them that they are like Superman. They don’t know who that is, but seem pleased enough once we try to explain in our broken Swahili. To see Kilimanjaro’s porters marching up the mountain in tattered trainers and hand-me-down sweaters, carrying tents, food, luggage and barrels of water on their heads, is to reassess one’s definition of a difficult job.

On summit night, we wake up at midnight and put on every item of clothing that we have with us – in an attempt to combat temperatures of minus 10 °C. Then we walk. This time around it is impossible to get a sense of scale. The peak of the mountain hides in darkness up ahead, illuminated only by the spheres of light coming from other climbers’ headlamps as they snake their way up to the top. The trip to Uhuru peak – 5,895m above sea level – proves to be the longest seven hours of my life. While I have prepared myself for the biting cold and the unavoidable weariness of muscles aching after five days of non-stop activity, I hadn’t realised quite how sleepy I would be, or how tempting it would be to nestle up against one of the rocks that we are clambering over with a resigned “wake me up when it’s all over”. But somehow, every time I start to flag, Joachim, who is a few steps behind me, places a hand on my shoulder and says: “Keep going. You’re almost there.” I cannot fathom how this man, who barely speaks any English and probably makes less than US$15 (Dh55) a day, can sense exactly when my spirits are waning. I don’t know if he hears it in my laboured breathing or sees it in my stride, but every time I am tempted to turn around, there’s that hand on my shoulder.

I am also humbled by the capacity of the human body, by what it can achieve when pushed to its limits. There’s my own body, of course, which luckily proves largely immune to the effects of altitude. But we also cross paths with a group of army veterans, many of whom have lost limbs fighting in Afghanistan. One gentleman in particular is completing the climb on two prosthetic legs. On summit night, they overtake us just as we crest the mountain, offering welcome words of encouragement and, more importantly, a much-needed dose of perspective.

As the editor of The National's Luxury magazine, I spend a good portion of my working day trying to answer the question: "What, exactly, is luxury?" Is it a Birkin? Beautifully crafted clothes, jewellery or furniture? The latest car or technological novelty? Or free time, of which we are all so starved?

My trip to Kilimanjaro is a reminder that luxury is almost entirely a matter of perspective. It is amazing, for example, how precious a battered plastic bowl half-full of hot water – or “water for washy” as our porters like to call it – can be after eight hours of walking and almost a week without a shower. Or how valuable a pair of clean socks can seem when discovered hidden at the bottom of your bag on your final night on the mountain; not to mention the unbridled joy of finding yourself at 3,900m singing at the top of your lungs and teaching your perplexed Tanzanian guides how to do the twist.

There is also much to say about knowing that a friend is willing to lend you their spare fleece, even if it means they will have to wear their own for the third day in a row. The moral of the story? Four inches of hot water, clean socks, singing, dancing and good friends – on Kilimanjaro, and maybe even beyond – these are luxuries that no number of designer handbags can hope to match.

Look out for this and more stories in the Ultratravel magazine, out with The National on Thursday, November 26.