Mount Meru stands a little over 40 miles to the West of Kilimanjaro and by all accounts has a character and charm above its status as an interesting warm up.
However I’m sure that it’s only the tiniest percentage (if any) of those that head to this part of the world Tanzania that come for Mount Meru rather than its more illustrious neighbour.
So with this in mind I knew that the odds were that having (successfully?) tackled Kilimanjaro I probably wouldn’t be coming back to this region making it now or never time for Meru!
I now faced three problems:
1. Most operators only offer Meru as part of a Kilimanjaro package.
2. I had a very limited timeframe.
3. Doing it on my own was likely to be prohibitively expensive.
The first two problems were solved thanks to John from Warthog Mountaineering who arranges a lot of the Kids Company expeditions, including the Toubkal trek last year.
We were able to confirm that his operator in Tanzania was available to arrange the trek but as I feared doing the trek on my own pushed the cost to almost $400 more than I had originally budgeted.
So what do I do?
To make sure every penny I’m sponsored goes to the Kids Company I’m already covering the costs of the Kilimanjaro trek, so my finances are already stretched and I’ve yet to book my flights, however this should be the trek of a lifetime so is this really the time to be frugal?
In the end it didn’t need much thought or discussion to decide……
MOUNT MERU IS ON!
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