We landed in darkness, my two boys and I, into that viscous black that drops so heavily near the equator. We couldn’t see Kilimanjaro. We could see very little. But we could smell Africa as soon as we stepped off the plane, that defining scent of earth, wind, and fire.

“Where is it?” Orly, my twelve year old, asked, squinting into the black beyond.

“It’s somewhere out there,” I told him.

Far flung travel is not unfamiliar to the boys. Twice I’ve taken them on year long trips, to Myanmar, Kashmir, Chile, Cambodia and beyond. And indeed on those trips, as on this one, there were moments when I'd doubted the wisdom of such a venture. But maybe some people are more prone to bouts of wanderlust than others. I’ve always travelled. After leaving school I'd spent three years hitching rides through Africa and India on my own, sleeping under canvas, and ever since then, I’ve made my living writing about the trips I’ve made. I’ve been on my own with the boys since they were tiny, and we’ve done the best we can. Perhaps because of that, travel has always been a part of their childhood. What might seem crazy to some people, is less so to me. It’s a way of life, partly by necessity. Partly be desire to show them the world. New places, new scents, the boys take in their stride, but even for them, this trip was special. This was Africa, a continent I adored, and ever since they were little, I’d told them as they listened with wide eyes, that one day, I’d take them there to climb its highest peak, because sometimes in life you need a mirage of an utopia in the clouds to hold on to. At 5895m, Kilimanjaro is the highest freestanding mountain in the world, and thought, frequently I’d passed beneath its shadow, but I’d never climbed it. Always, it’s remained illusive and otherworldly.

Then at a party last year, I met Jon Gupta, a passionate mountaineer and world class expedition leader, who said he’d take us. He’d just led a trip that had broken the record for the fastest seven summit challenge, and had also completed the gruelling Yukon Arctic Ultra, 430miles in temperatures as low as -44c. One man’s Snowdon is another man’s Everest, so they say and I knew we’d be in safe hands. But still, in the months beforehand, the maternal instinct to protect felt all the more poignant with what we were about to undertake. Sometimes at night I could feel my courage slipping away. You embark upon adventures with positivity, you have to. You do your research, assess the risk, but sometimes the fear of what could go wrong overwhelms.

Eight months later, after a lot of running up hills, here we were, standing at the foot of that mountain with him, and yet still it seemed as elusive as ever. The following day, a veil of dank cloud hung low as we gathered at Machame Gate, a group of nine, a mishmash of characters, with one common goal, a desire to reach the roof of Africa.

We set off into the jungle, walking at a funeral pace, dwarfed beneath sycamores and twisted juniper trees draped with silver moss. Porters ran by laden with tents, chairs, bags, balanced on their heads, their backs, accompanied by tinny rattles from weathered phones; a heady beat of techno, funk and jazz music, always Bob Marley and then, Strauss, spilling out into the humid air. Then there were our local guides, Michael, Stanley, Emmanuel, Bryson, the patrons of this mountain. You could not climb it without them. They were a constant - beside, behind or ahead, singing encouragement. “Pole, pole.” “Slowly, slowly.” Simple instructions that we must adhere to if we wanted to succeed. They skipped and glided, it seemed. Sky bound, while we were earth, weighted and leadened by gravity.

“The King Conker of Africa is to reach the top of the mountain,” Michael whispered to Orly. “You are going to get the winning conker. You are not afraid.”

Michael was the smallest of our guides. They called him Kidagaa meaning Little Fish. He called Orly Sana Kidagga, meaning Very Little Fish, which was fitting. While I strove to keep a steady pace, Orly leapt and jumped, splurging energy. Slight and light, he can flip a full somersault from standing, but stillness comes less easily to him. Dow, my eldest, was more head down and determined. Taller than me now, heavier, fourteen years of age and ready to take on the world. He sought out challenges, small rites of passage that made his eyes shine bright.

The trees shrunk and diminished the higher we got, and yet, by late afternoon when we reached our first camp at 3030m, after a good seven hours of walking, shattered and sore, we still had not seen the mountain. The boys were starting to doubt its existence, but, as the light faded from blue to a flaming cinnabar, the clouds burned up, and above them, suddenly, there it was, the peak, glistening with snow. Truly a sight to behold, it sent rushes from toe to head with awe and something close to fear. I half wanted to crouch, all perspective gone.

The next morning we woke to singing. We danced, breathless and happy with our team, a crowd of thirty two porters and guides. Certainly the best way to start the day

“More fire. More Water. More water. More fire.” This, their mountain hymn, their prayer beneath the vaulted skies. “We are not afraid,” they hollered. But we were. We were afraid. Of failing. Because when you set off to climb a mountain, you desperately want to reach the top.

We walked on, into the endless up-ness, through every scape, from jungle to heath, desert to moon. We were below the clouds, then inside them, finally out into the clear sun-blushed blue above. Orly looked momentarily forlorn.

“Wish you could jump on them,” he murmured.

“I know,” I said. “It’s one of life’s great disappointments.”

Day three was our hardest. We hiked steadily for six hours, up into heathlands of lobelia, giant pineapple-like plants, that stood tall as a man. Onwards to a place where little grew, sprouts of sedge-grass, clusters of everlastings, the scuttle of a lone striped mouse, the twitter of an alpine chat, until we reached Lava Tower, an immense boulder of volcanic rock that sits at 4640m. Dow was sick as soon as we got there. Dow was sick as soon as we got there, but still determined, while I questioned the wisdom of continuing. A Japanese man from another group was also being sick which helped ease the worry slightly.

Jon took it all in his stride, a rock of reassurance.

“He’ll be fine,” he told me as we descended. “It’s common. His body’s acclimatising.”

At camp, I found Orly, curled in a heap.

“I’d rather be in maths class,” he whimpered, but an hour later he was up, full of chimp vitality, cramming popcorn into his mouth, and later soup and beef stew, as we played cards and laughed in the mess tent with the others. The comradeship of a group, the jokes, the foolery, are vital to trips such as these.

We slept in layered thermals that night, hats pulled down over our ears, gloves, two pairs of socks, threads of mist on our breath. There was frost on the outside of the tent. An owl hooted. A white collared raven squawked. I woke at intervals to check the boys were still breathing, heard the comforting sound of zippers being unzipped, the soft pad of unlaced boots over rocks, as individuals stumbled to find a place to pee.

Two days later, after we’d scrambled, parkour-style, up Barranco Wall, and crossed over that dreaded altitude line again, the boys were fine, buoyant and laughing, bar mild headaches. But we all had those. We stood staring out at a setting sun, at a light streaked with desolation, breathing ice, preparing that very night to summit. Moments like that, to be united in a venture that brings out the worst, the best, the rawest, are hard fought. Most things come too easily nowadays, and in our techno world of heads down, eyes blankly reflecting a silver screen, its glorious when you witness your children looking up and out.

We woke at midnight. Tried to eat porridge.

“We’re walking towards sunrise,” I encouraged Orly, as we headed towards this looming, near vertical shaft of darkness. Behind there was a trail of tiny lights, shuffling head-torched people, like fallen stars striving to return to the sky.

“Don’t think of up. Don’t think of down. Just your steps, one after the other,” I told him, and after a time, as one hour bled into two, then four, then six, that was all there was. The determined stoic padding of our feet. The present moment, the wind and the ice coming at us, a half red moon rising in a sky raining stars.

Jon skipped back and forth between the group, kept me informed of Dow’s progress up ahead, helped to warm Orly’s frozen feet. It was lonelier when he was not there. We drank ice-slushed water, guessed the flavour of skittles, step by lonely step, as the air got colder. Numb feet, numb hands. Hearts pounding, lungs burning. Legs that threatened not to hold. Certainly, we were trespassers, us mere mortals. That high up there is little life, save for rocks threaded with ancient lichen. We bowed, clumsy, lost, limbs screaming for sleep.

But when I next looked behind there was a glimmer of light on the horizon, brightening steadily, and moments later, that great orb was blazing up from the curvature of the earth and all around, where there had been dark, there was now searing light. It sliced against our eyes, blinded and brilliantined against that snowy mountain’s saddle.

Orly’s arm was linked in mine. Michael was near. Jon behind, Dow ahead. I choked back tears, dared them not to fall. But when we came over the ridge after Stella Point, there it was suddenly, Uhuru peak, that place of highest high, where there is literally no more up. Orly turned to me then, spilling tears, his eyes bright, astonished that we were there.

“We made it, Mum,” he cried, as Dow staggered towards us, shining with achievement.

What most enthralled, it turned out, when reaching the top of a mountain, was to look back down on the vastness of the earth below, glorious and laced white with cloud, holding the hands of the two people I most loved. The boys would always know what it had taken to witness a view as beautiful as that. They could, I hope, call on the hard fought battle of that upward climb their whole lives long.

Climbing Kilimanjaro

Hoofing it Through Myanmar