Climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro

The mission and how the idea came about

Our first big project together was an attempt to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, Africa. The highest mountain in all of Africa with its impressive 5,895 m/19,341 ft in height, also making it the highest free-standing mountain above sea level in the entire world. 

While suddenly living in Thailand, Ditte had a life-changing realization that it was actually possible to go for and achieve some lifelong dreams of hers. On a bucket-list from when she was a child, she had written ”Climb a mountain”. That’s when the idea of climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro came to life. Nothing much happened after that as the era of Covid-19 peaked the following years.

A random weekday afternoon a few years later she mentioned it to Benjamin, who as always, was all in. And then the planning began for our three-week trip to Tanzania in July, 2023!

Do you want to know more about who we are or where we’ve been? You can either visit About Us or Destinations.

It was actually while preparing and planning for climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro that we came across a hiking documentary about the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT). Ditte had heard about it and another trail from American friends, but none of us knew much about it. Even so after watching the documentary we ended up deciding to do it when possible practically and financially (for fun we even made a “contract” between us dating October 4, 2022). Below is a button directing you to the page about our big project called PCT & Thru-Hiking, where we let you in on our plan to attempt the 4.265 km/2.650 miles thru-hike across America stretching over 4-5 months.

Although we did Mt. Teide solo, we had the necessary respect for a mountain like Mt. Kilimanjaro being something quite different. Therefore, we went with a well-known company called Kipling Travel, where we would be doing the 8-day trek via the Lemosho Route in a group, with a guide, who had done many others and this particular climb several times. We didn’t know beforehand, but our guide ended up being a guy we know from the skydive community in Denmark (fun little world huh?).

The actual experience and how things can take a drastic turn

It all started out great. We had all the gear, the group was a combination of nice and positive people in ages ranging from 14-71 years old and the weather was absolutely perfect. Everything was awesome! And words couldn’t describe how excited and eager we were to get started! Day 1 was magic and everything was new and thrilling to experience.

Day 2 Ditte had only had a few hours sleep, and woke up with a ruthless migraine, dizziness, nausea and just wasn’t feeling well in general. But as she is that of course didn’t stop her or anything like it, she pushed through and trekked with the rest of the group up to the second camp. Day 3 she had had no sleep and was only getting worse, but somehow still managed to keep up with the group, enduring the pain and uncomfortableness  – and even did an additional acclimatization hike with the rest of the group. Not lacking complete support and positivity from Benjamin the entire time. When she got into the camp late afternoon that day, she fainted and had a minor seizure from pure physical and mental exhaustion! 

Day 4 life as many times before made us both aware that we only have control over so much. It was clear to everybody that Ditte had unfortunately been hit by severe and dangerous altitude sickness. The trek to the next camp involved many stops and breaks,vomiting, and fainting. Benjamin at times had to carry her on his bag, while the others took turns carrying her bag plus their own. Imagine doing any of that above 4000+ m/13,000 ft in height! Randomly met by a doctor at Lava Tower Camp at 4600 m/15,092 ft elevation – we now had to make a crucial decision. The doctor put a big emphasis on how choosing to continue or call it was a literal life or death decision. Thus, making the decision a no-brainer – we choose to stop because no goal, experience or moment is worth risking our lives for. Of course it wasn’t an easy decision, we both cried and especially Ditte cried for days while dealing with the feeling of failing, disappointing herself and also letting down Benjamin who had worked just as hard to succeed in reaching the summit. Read more about dealing with all that in our blog posts depicting our Personal Experiences.

Personal experience and our take-home message

This trip taught us a lot about ourselves, each other and life itself. We got to know more about how stubborn, strong and driven we both are. Also how pure wildpower, teamwork and reciprocal support is one of our strongest suits as a couple. In addition we learned how you can plan all you want, but that does not mean you can control everything and life won’t do its own wonders. Sometimes the things you didn’t plan for and didn’t expect ends up being what you cherish and remember the most. At least that’s how it was for us  – and quite frankly often is. 

Not that we always know it or appreciate it at the time. Or that changes, unforeseen or unwelcomed things do not bring along frustration, anger, hurt, negative thoughts and feelings of powerlessness. It would be utopia to believe or try to convince you otherwise. 

Sometimes things happening does suck or feels unfair. But other times we are filled up with pure joy, gratefulness and almost complete incomprehension of how we can be so lucky that exactly that has happened to us. In this particular situation we experienced some of it simultaneously which pretty often is the case with things happening in life in general. In our opinion one of the aspects of life that makes it so fascinating and whimsical. We don’t know about you, but we actually like how many-sided and ambivalent life can be.