Spent two weeks in Tanzania. The first week, we hiked Mt. Kilimanjaro. Most of the hike was pretty easy and we were pampered quite a bit. I felt like a British explorer - having a tea break before dinner and being around green canvas tents all the time. The summit night, however, was the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life. We woke up at midnight, ate a small meal, and spent the next six and a half hours getting to the top. It was dark, cold (below 0F) and there wasn’t much oxygen. I felt fine at the start (4800m above sea level) but after a few hours, walking became pretty difficult. The cold didn’t bother me as much, but the lack of oxygen was rough. I spent most of the second half of the climb just focusing on walking slowly. I was mentally repeating “left foot, right foot, left foot, right foot” to keep focused. As we neared the first summit (Stella Point), the sun started to rise. When I got there, it was glorious. I was (almost) at the roof of Africa. We took a short break to drink some tea with sugar, then continued on to the real summit (Uhuru Peak), which was over an hour away and 200m higher. This section was not as bad as getting to Stella Point because it was warmer, less steep and the end was in sight. At the peak, we took another short break and a bunch of pictures (including a mandatory handstand pic for me). Then we started our descent. Back at Stella Point, we took a few more pictures before heading back to camp. The descent took about an hour and a half. Then we slept for a bit, ate a little and went down another few hundred meters to a lower camp to make sure we don’t get altitude sickness.