 Mount
Kilimanjaro is a vision that has fed the human imagination for years. Much
more than the highest mountain in Africa, it is innately and inexhaustibly
symbolic. Writers render it, climbers conquer it, Africans worship it, and
at the end of the day, its magnetic singularity remains undiminished. Though
speechless wonder reigns in its presence, the traveler who witnesses Kilimanjaro
Mountain will speak of it for years.
Rising 5,895 meters above the African plain, Kilimanjaro stands alone among
mountains of the world. The huge solitary volcano is unaccompanied by any
mountain chain, so can truly be regarded as the roof of Africa. "As wide
as all the world, great, high and unbelievably white," was Ernest Hemingway's
description in his book, "The snows of Kilimanjaro". Though its size is
immense, it has one of the world's most accessible peaks. People who are
in good shape can climb to its summit, uhuru peak (picture) in a matter
of days, passing through five ecological zones (tropical to alpine) along
the way
(1) coffee and banana fields, 2) dense forest, 3) grasslands and shrubbery,
4) small mosses and lichens 5) glaciers and volcanic peaks).
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