Basic facilities in Kilimanjaro

It’s only once you begin the Kilimanjaro trek that you’ll understand the term ‘well-organised.’ Expert porters, regular official checking by the park authorities, Western toilets with marble flooring in the middle of nowhere – a lot of things will leave you baffled. Our trek leader, Soumya Jyoti Mitra, tells you about the basic essentials on the trek and how they are delivered to a trekker.

Water and Food in Kilimanjaro

Most of the food on the Kilimanjaro trek is continental.

• Start your day with black tea. Your breakfast is likely to be bread, butter, jam, egg, porridge, milk and cornflakes.
• During the trek, if it’s a long hike, you will get packed lunch, consisting of sandwiches, boiled egg, fruits and cakes.

• After evening tea and popcorn, you will get soup as appetiser. They use fresh vegetables to make soup. It’s really very tasty and it’s likely to provoke your hunger. For main course, you’ll be given finger chips, salad, rice and a vegetable curry. You day will end with a hot drink.
• Starting from Arusha or Nairobi airport, you won’t find a water tap anywhere. You have to buy water every time and that is always recommended. On the trek, you will get boiled water. Porters fetch water from nearest stream, boil and cool the water, then serve it.

• Barafu, the final camp, has no water source. So the porters carry a limited amount of water from the previous camp in 25 l containers. On the final day, you need to be reasonable with water.

Toilet facilities in Kilimanjaro

Kilimanjaro National Park is extremely well-organised. In 1977, they opened the park for tourists. But before that, they took four years to build proper camping grounds and toilets throughout the park.

• All camps are well-set. In each camp, they have pit toilets. Numbers depends on the camps.
• All toilets are pit toilets with a permanent structure. Pits are 10-12 feet deep.
• There are few camps where you will find big toilets with marble floor and western style seat.
• To reduce the stench, they have installed gas pipes around the toilet. However, don’t expect an absolute stench-free experience.
• All the toilets are dry toilets.
• As per the information, the park authority uses some kind of chemical to make the faeces decompose faster.