The email from a fellow school Mom, also a good friend, came out of the blue. In it, she asked us if we were game to do what had been simmering on a back burner in my mind for the last few months. She was inviting a group of mothers to climb Mount Longonot, often known as a 'practice mountain' for those with higher ambitions of scaling Mount Kenya and eventually Mount Kilimanjaro.
Under normal circumstances I would have had to politely decline as the children are at home on Saturdays and my husband would be in office till lunch time. Leaving a tween who loves nothing better than bugging his sister and a teen who is buried in school work leading up to her final exams, alone at home all morning, would be not just asking but begging for trouble! But the beauty of the date she had chosen was such that my mother would have arrived in Nairobi by then and so I had the perfect t/w/een sitter and so my answer was a resounding yes!
It was another matter altogether that my mother arrived minus her luggage. Her suitcases landed at Nairobi airport thirty six hours after she did. Since it was a Friday evening, notorious for nightmarish traffic, it took my husband, mother and son a total of six whole hours to inch their way to the airport and come back with the luggage, which is the exact number of hours it takes Kenya Airways to fly from Mumbai to Nairobi...To cut a long story short, it was 12:30 am when they finally got back home and 1:00 am when I hit my bed, only to get up at 4:00 am to get ready to climb the mountain, on a mere three hours of sleep.
An hour and a half later ten of us ladies were in our children's school, as planned, ready to drive the sixty odd kilometres to Mount Longonot National Park, from where we would begin our ascent. An early morning drive through the Rift Valley was a beautiful and novel experience, as was actually watching the sun rise over the hills. Tickets bought, bag packs shouldered, we were ready to tackle Mount Longonot, a stratovolacano said to have last erupted in the 1860s. The name itself is derived from a Masai word olloonong'ot which means 'mountain of steep spurs' or 'steep ridges'. Just how steep, we would soon find out.
A few paces up the deceptively gentle slope brought us face to face with a herd of wild buffaloes and zebras, all of whom mercifully allowed us to continue our ascent without bothering to charge at us. Else we might have found ourselves scrambling up the mountain faster than we expected or wanted to! We soon split up into groups of threes and twos and set off at paces comfortable for us. As ours is an international school, ladies belonging to many nationalities and ethnicities marched up the mountain that glorious day. My son had been among the handful of students to have sumitted Longonot on a school trip way back when he was a nine year old, in fourth grade. That was just five months after the tragic attack on West Gate Mall and I had not volunteered to accompany his class, as at that point I did not feel I had the mental strength to climb an actual mountain. I had felt then that I needed to conserve my energy just to get through each day. But I was determined to do it that day!
As I steadily climbed upwards, I could feel the increasingly rarefied air burning in my lungs. The rather harsh sound of my own breath resonated in my ears. Some parts of the path were really steep while others were comparatively easy. Sharp acacia thorns stood ready to prick us if we swerved away from the little gullies that we were walking in by even an inch. How like life it seemed to me! We sail so smoothly through certain times in our lives and at others it seems as if every breath we take is painful... And yet the important thing is to soldier on at your own pace. I often explain metaphors to my students. That day, on the mountain, I felt as if I was living one!
The half way hut or "banda" offered some welcome rest and relief. A snack and some water later, we were ready to attempt the final stretch. Most people, we heard, make it only half way up before turning around to go down but we were determined to reach the speck that was the "summit banda". A steady and not too easy climb later we had done it! We were on the crater rim and a beautiful vista lay before us. Lake Naivasha, one of the Rift Valley lakes, glittered invitingly in the distance and a strong breeze helped to cool us off. When we turned around, we could see right into the thickly forested caldera of the crater. Three of us did half of the crater walk and climbed one of the peaks on it and then came back to the banda while the remaining ladies circumambulated the entire rim, even summitting the two remaining peaks. The mountain had aggravated an old knee injury for yet another mother and so she chose to await us in the banda.
By now the sun was beating down strongly and the summit was starting to get crowded. We took a last look at the magnificent view that we had climbed so high to see and then we began our descent. There's nothing easier then rushing pell mell down a mountain but there's nothing stupider either! And so we put our toes, knees and calf muscles to work to begin a controlled descent. Hoards of people and huge groups of school children were coming up and again, like in real life, sometimes we had to stand back and let others move up, while at other times we pushed our way through and let others take a back seat, else we might have found ourselves waiting beside the path for ever! While climbing up, it's often hard to see how far you have yet to go or how steep and treacherous the path actually is. By contrast, while coming down, you know exactly how much you have yet to conquer and it's amply clear what the path is like! Again, so true of different stages in our lives which is why, I feel, it is faith alone that often keeps us going , no matter if we can see the path or not, as the case may be.
Finally we were back to base and could relax and munch some well earned lunch! The adrenaline was still flowing and all of us were actually glowing from a sense of accomplishment. We had conquered a mountain just as we had set out to do, at an unearthly hour that morning...This would be a day that would always stand out in our memories, in which ever corner of the world we eventually find ourselves in.
Climb every mountain, ford every stream,
Don't hesitate to chase your dream!
Mount Longonot From The Base
Aerial View Of The Caldera
How It Got It's Name! P.C KWS website.
Lake Naivasha As Seen From Longonot
Under normal circumstances I would have had to politely decline as the children are at home on Saturdays and my husband would be in office till lunch time. Leaving a tween who loves nothing better than bugging his sister and a teen who is buried in school work leading up to her final exams, alone at home all morning, would be not just asking but begging for trouble! But the beauty of the date she had chosen was such that my mother would have arrived in Nairobi by then and so I had the perfect t/w/een sitter and so my answer was a resounding yes!
It was another matter altogether that my mother arrived minus her luggage. Her suitcases landed at Nairobi airport thirty six hours after she did. Since it was a Friday evening, notorious for nightmarish traffic, it took my husband, mother and son a total of six whole hours to inch their way to the airport and come back with the luggage, which is the exact number of hours it takes Kenya Airways to fly from Mumbai to Nairobi...To cut a long story short, it was 12:30 am when they finally got back home and 1:00 am when I hit my bed, only to get up at 4:00 am to get ready to climb the mountain, on a mere three hours of sleep.
An hour and a half later ten of us ladies were in our children's school, as planned, ready to drive the sixty odd kilometres to Mount Longonot National Park, from where we would begin our ascent. An early morning drive through the Rift Valley was a beautiful and novel experience, as was actually watching the sun rise over the hills. Tickets bought, bag packs shouldered, we were ready to tackle Mount Longonot, a stratovolacano said to have last erupted in the 1860s. The name itself is derived from a Masai word olloonong'ot which means 'mountain of steep spurs' or 'steep ridges'. Just how steep, we would soon find out.
A few paces up the deceptively gentle slope brought us face to face with a herd of wild buffaloes and zebras, all of whom mercifully allowed us to continue our ascent without bothering to charge at us. Else we might have found ourselves scrambling up the mountain faster than we expected or wanted to! We soon split up into groups of threes and twos and set off at paces comfortable for us. As ours is an international school, ladies belonging to many nationalities and ethnicities marched up the mountain that glorious day. My son had been among the handful of students to have sumitted Longonot on a school trip way back when he was a nine year old, in fourth grade. That was just five months after the tragic attack on West Gate Mall and I had not volunteered to accompany his class, as at that point I did not feel I had the mental strength to climb an actual mountain. I had felt then that I needed to conserve my energy just to get through each day. But I was determined to do it that day!
As I steadily climbed upwards, I could feel the increasingly rarefied air burning in my lungs. The rather harsh sound of my own breath resonated in my ears. Some parts of the path were really steep while others were comparatively easy. Sharp acacia thorns stood ready to prick us if we swerved away from the little gullies that we were walking in by even an inch. How like life it seemed to me! We sail so smoothly through certain times in our lives and at others it seems as if every breath we take is painful... And yet the important thing is to soldier on at your own pace. I often explain metaphors to my students. That day, on the mountain, I felt as if I was living one!
The half way hut or "banda" offered some welcome rest and relief. A snack and some water later, we were ready to attempt the final stretch. Most people, we heard, make it only half way up before turning around to go down but we were determined to reach the speck that was the "summit banda". A steady and not too easy climb later we had done it! We were on the crater rim and a beautiful vista lay before us. Lake Naivasha, one of the Rift Valley lakes, glittered invitingly in the distance and a strong breeze helped to cool us off. When we turned around, we could see right into the thickly forested caldera of the crater. Three of us did half of the crater walk and climbed one of the peaks on it and then came back to the banda while the remaining ladies circumambulated the entire rim, even summitting the two remaining peaks. The mountain had aggravated an old knee injury for yet another mother and so she chose to await us in the banda.
By now the sun was beating down strongly and the summit was starting to get crowded. We took a last look at the magnificent view that we had climbed so high to see and then we began our descent. There's nothing easier then rushing pell mell down a mountain but there's nothing stupider either! And so we put our toes, knees and calf muscles to work to begin a controlled descent. Hoards of people and huge groups of school children were coming up and again, like in real life, sometimes we had to stand back and let others move up, while at other times we pushed our way through and let others take a back seat, else we might have found ourselves waiting beside the path for ever! While climbing up, it's often hard to see how far you have yet to go or how steep and treacherous the path actually is. By contrast, while coming down, you know exactly how much you have yet to conquer and it's amply clear what the path is like! Again, so true of different stages in our lives which is why, I feel, it is faith alone that often keeps us going , no matter if we can see the path or not, as the case may be.
Finally we were back to base and could relax and munch some well earned lunch! The adrenaline was still flowing and all of us were actually glowing from a sense of accomplishment. We had conquered a mountain just as we had set out to do, at an unearthly hour that morning...This would be a day that would always stand out in our memories, in which ever corner of the world we eventually find ourselves in.
Climb every mountain, ford every stream,
Don't hesitate to chase your dream!
Mount Longonot From The Base
