January 13th 2007

Walking Time 4:00 hours / Altitude Difference 2990 - 3600 m / Temperature 20° C / 5 hours Rain + Fog

Finally it was 6 am so I could get up and stop freezing in my sleeping bag. I started thinking about the following nights because this had been our first one at the camp which was at the lowest elevation. But what let me forget everything around myself was the fact that Tina woke up, looked me straight into the eyes and simply said, “We’re gonna do it until the bitter end – the best we can!” Tina was in a good mood and had actually just “arrived”. Although we had made intensive mental and physical preparations, Tina had actually needed to begin our adventure to understand what she was “up to”. And she never got into a bad mood after this morning – no kidding…

The mountain, which was still sooo far away

We had a grand breakfast – English style, although Tina and I did without the porridge. We got a half filled bowl of  water to brush our teeth and wash our faces. Deodorant wipes for our armpits and we were clean and fresh again. The most uncomfortable part of the morning was, well – shit… Right, standing and holding yourself and not being able to sit down – it would be a catastrophe each and every day!

We packed our belongings together and off we went. We had bought refillable 1 liter bottles which we had actually left at the hotel. We had decided to refill 3x 1.5 liter bottles of “Evian” everyday which we would drink while hiking. We added 2 tablets of Microforte-Pur to disinfect the water (you had to wait 40 minutes!). Our English friends didn’t have anything to disinfect their water with, so they had theirs boiled (after a couple of days we started sharing our tablets with them – well, I guess you all know why, don’t you?). We left the campsite at 8:45 am – the sun shining – it was a beautiful day. Our legs still fresh - the path started getting steeper, but that’s why we were here, right

We had our lunch on top of the plateau in the middle of the clouds. Afterwards we moved on and then the fun was over – it started raining again!

We arrived at Camp Shira at 12:45 pm and it rained and rained. Shira Camp was pretty large – I’d say there were about 100 “mountain climbers” there but it was still pretty clean. We were getting cold because our shoes were still damp from the day before. We sat in our dining-room-tent, drank tea, ate freshly roasted nuts and we all came to the same conclusion: the rain would stop at 3 pm just like yesterday. We still needed to somehow dry our wet clothing. It was still raining at 3:30 pm so we had a shot of Jameson together – wow, that stuff really did hit you at 3600 m above sea-level! The reason we didn’t have any anymore while ascending the mountain. Alcohol was bad for the acclimatization and we didn’t want to take any risks!

So, we just sat there – the four of us poor soaked souls – waiting for the sun...

...which actually showed up 5 hours later – and believe it or not – the afternoon had vanished from our memories. The scenery we then got to enjoy was magnificent, sensational - maybe just because of the fact that we weren’t really expecting anything anymore…

We walked around and had fish for dinner which tasted great – if you liked fish, which Martin didn’t. The sun disappeared after only one hour so that Tina and I went inside our tent where I taught her a new card game called „20 up“. She learned quickly. At about 9 pm I didn’t know how to sit or lie in our tent anymore – every position was just outright uncomfortable so that we decided to go to sleep. Tina fell asleep immediately. During the night she even unzipped her sleeping bag because she was sweating inside. I couldn’t fall asleep again. After I did I woke up at 3 am freezing again in my sleeping bag. I actually thanked God as the clock struck...

Mount Meru 4566 m

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