Letter from Judy to Caroline & Martin 6 May 1976 –
While I was still recovering from my ailments Graham and John Temple took a few days off to climb Kili – or Mawenzi to be exact. They drove down via Loitokitok and spent the first night sleeping in the vehicle at the top of a rough track on the way up. About 11pm they were woken by some officious local wanting to know what they were doing and then at 2am they were once again disturbed by an immigration official accompanied by 3 policemen armed with rifles. He took their passports and demanded their return to his office. G&J thought it discreet to oblige and were finally allowed to resume their nights rest at 5am (at the immigration office). They spent 3 hours with the Warden of the Kilimanjaro National Park that morning and were informed that the new rule was that no-one was allowed up the mountain except by the official tourist route to Kibo, staying in official huts and accompanied by official guides and porters – the whole procedure making rather a large hole in the pocket of course. The Mountain Club are not best pleased of course and the general consensus seems to be that Tanzania is rather cutting it’s nose off to spite it’s face because most mountaineers are not prepared to join a tourist trip so will probably not go to Tanzania at all, whereas they would be quite happy to pay reasonable fees if given the freedom of movement on the mountain.
Reminiscence by Graham April 2020.
After our disappointment on Kilimanjaro John suggested some climbing on Mount Meru so we drove there in his little Toyota 4WD and paid to go into the National Park. John knew the roads in there and drove for miles to a high elevated plateau where we left the road to find an out-of-the-way place to camp. Camping wasn’t allowed in the park but we weren’t seen and we did no harm. We set off early next day and drove as near as possible to the base of a huge ash cone set within the caldera of the collapsed volcano which is Mt Meru. The climb was exhausting, up the steep sides of volcanic rock scree with nowhere to rest comfortably until we reached the rim where we rested after peering down into the depths and wondering when there would be another eruption. That was enough climbing for the day and we made our way down, ate a picnic lunch and returned to the car in the heat of the afternoon. There were plenty of animals in the park but we didn’t notice anything worrying until next day when buffaloes appeared near our footpath up to the main peak. We made a mistake that morning by taking a short cut from our campsite to the normal path up. We came to a very steep ascent through trees and shrubs and when this became almost vertical we had to scramble up, hanging on to trees and shrubs. Thus we made a very slow ascent and wished we had walked further to join the main path. After a close encounter with buffaloes which were around but hidden by giant heather on steep terrain we stopped for lunch and John worked out that we had lost so much time that going for the summit was probably unwise. I’m sure he’d been there before and our “illegal” trip up the cone had been an interesting success anyway. PLEASE NOTE that wandering on the mountain is actually dangerous and now, as then, one should go with an armed ranger for protection.
Juliet's Kenya Days blog 