From Chogoria

My bicycle is in Nairobi and my passport in London and I am in the back of a dalla dalla on the way to the foot of Mount Kenya. We race across the hills, past towns and fields and rivers, and I want to stop and look at all, but we are already past and through the little plastic window it is all tinged with grey. I am with David, who will guide me up the mountain, and we arrive in Nanyuki, from where we will start the trek, in the afternoon. We get a plate of barbecued mutton and ugali in a huge diner and people shout out countries at me as I walk through the tables: Guatemala, Israel, Spain. On the road outside a British Army van passes and David tells me there is a base nearby. He says the soldiers do good for the town. He says at weekends the soldiers come in from the bush, and have beers, and make African babies.

In the morning we set off early and walk up a rocky 4 x 4 track that climbs gently through the grassy foothills. A dense fog covers the hilltops and the gangly stalks of giant heather, bald and singed black by a forest fire, rise statically from the swaying elephant grasses. As we get higher we clamber across rocky streams, crisp water bubbling just below our boots. I kneel down and drink from my hands. We stop at a hut after hiking 9 km and boil a chicken which we eat with fried onion and carrot.

We are up before sunrise and follow a thin path over the thick spines of swelling ridges and walk down into soft valleys carpeted in damp yellow moss that squelches beneath our feet. The sky is very clear and currents of cool air sweep across the valley floor making the feathers of the tall lobelia plants shiver in the pale sunlight. We take a rest by a stream and I look up and watch the fickle mountain mists drift apart to reveal the towering spires of the summit brushing against the crystal sky far ahead. Huge swathes of the slopes just below the peak have given way leaving a frail membrane of scree trickling towards the valley. As we get higher the grasses disappear and we make our way through barren slopes of dust. Mountain rats and rock hyraxes scuttle amongst the pebbles and rosette flowered lobelia stick out of the rocky ground like triffids on a martian moon.

We reach the hut where we will sleep long before dark and sit around a barrel of burning wood clutching streaming cups of tea. By dusk frail flakes of snow crowd the icy air and a veil of fog has fallen on the twin peaks above us. The vague form of the mountain top looms heavily in the gloomy sky; a great mass of volcanic rock peering out from the mist like a lost cathedral. David tells me how the people who lived at the base of the mountain believed the mountain to be a God. When there was no rain the elders would walk to this point and pray. When they came down the rain would come.

We wake at three to make the summit by sunrise. It is bitterly cold when David and I begin the final 3 km ascent. We clamber up the scree, slipping, and then grasping for solid rock, guided by the faint light of our head-torches. Above shooting stars drop from the sky like pieces of crumbling candy. We take regular breaks and lean against boulders, breathless. As we get higher the air thins and the darkness begins to recede, unmasking the hazy silhouette of the approaching summit. Soon we are scrambling up the final few metres of frosted rock and I am looking out at the young sun igniting the eastern sky in a thin field of ochre light. I look down from the mass of jagged brown rock at boulders and dust cascading towards an enormous tide of thick white cloud. There is a glacier sitting in a hollow to the south and crater lakes reflecting the brightening sky scattered amongst the crumbling slopes beneath us. David is sitting quietly on a rock, with a faint smile on his face, watching me try to take it all in.

On the way down we slip on the scree and I try to run down the steep bits and lose my balance and then tread timidly until the slope begins to flatten. We pass calm green lakes that from the peak shimmered like little pearls, half buried in the rubble, but now we see them wide and deep. We stop and share a bar of chocolate that I saved and have a smoke with the sun warming our faces. As we descend further the lobelia begin to sprout from the rocks and soon they are all around us. The ground is soft and murky yellow now and thin streams of water trickle quietly through the boggy soil. Two tall shoulders of rock rise sharply on either side of the gorge ahead, swallowing the falling green valley in darkness. We follow the lip of the gorge on the eastern side and I stare over the edge at the valley dropping abruptly and a torrent of water cascading over the rocky crest towards the grassy floor.

My legs are tired now and David is limping; we trudge slowly through the heather with our packs, like two hobbits in an empty world. The wind is picking up and I stop to take a photograph of a small red flower clinging to the craggy cliff edge. I wonder if it will blow off and where the little red petals would carry to in the wind. We have been walking for ten hours now and my feet are sore. I bought my boots second hand at a market in the slums and they are wearing the skin off my heels. I am happy to sit down when we stop for lunch and we build a little fire and boil a pot of noddles and some tea. We lie back with our heads resting on our packs, blowing smoke into the air. I ask David about his life in Nairobi. He says he lives in a single room with his wife and son. He has electricity, but life is hard. He says some people in Nairobi are very rich. There are even men who pay $500 to stay in a hotel. Just for one night. And in coffee shops in the city people pay $2 for a little cup of coffee. He shakes his head in disbelief.

We eat and get up wearily and walk for another few hours to camp, where we sleep, exhausted. The next morning we hike the final 20 km to Chogoria. We walk through a bamboo forest; the glare from the low sun filters through the crowded spines of wood, splintering shards of bright light across the path ahead. Elephants have trampled many of the trees and the narrow stalks lie crushed on the path. We stop to look at some leopard tracks, stooping over the shallow imprints, and tracing little circles in the dust with twigs. David tells me how the Masai carry the dying into the forests near here. When people are very sick they are led here and left for three days. If they are still alive after that time they are taken back to the village. But there are many wild animals in the forests. They will eat the dying. We emerge from the forest and out into fields of tea and coffee and pineapples sown into steep green slopes. There are women with baskets slung over their backs picking there way through the crops and more and more people everywhere as we arrive in Chogoria.