Most teams spend six days on Kilimanjaro. Our team spent eight, and that small difference is the reason I reached the summit at 5,895 metres without a headache and with a clear memory of the last hour on the crater rim. Slow acclimatisation is the single variable that changes Kilimanjaro from a slog into an experience, and yet the majority of the agencies at the gate still push the standard six-day packages because the arithmetic works in their favour. The Lemosho route, which starts further west and crosses the Shira Plateau before joining the summit approach, gives you the extra altitude days if you choose the eight-day option and are willing to pay the additional park fees. We climbed at night from Barafu camp with head torches and layered everything we owned. The wind at Stella Point was 50 kilometres per hour and the temperature was minus fifteen. The sunrise on the ice fields, turning from grey to apricot to white gold as the shadow line crossed the crater, made the arithmetic irrelevant.
