Here is a truth we have watched play out for years: more Kilimanjaro dreams are killed by other people's calendars than by altitude. You mention the mountain, friends say "definitely, someday", the group chat goes quiet, and the dream sits in committee for a decade. So this piece is for the person considering the braver, simpler option: going alone

Of all the questions we answer before a climb, this is the one where the truth most outperforms the expectation. People picture ration packs, energy gels and a week of grim chewing.

This is the great dinner-table debate of world trekking, and it is really a choice between two opposite prizes. Kilimanjaro gives you a summit of your own: the highest point in Africa, under your boots, earned. Everest Base Camp gives you an audience with the king: a two-week walk through the greatest mountain range on earth to stand at the foot of the highest mountain of all.

Here is the comparison where the obvious answer is wrong. Kilimanjaro stands more than a kilometre higher than Mont Blanc, so surely it is the harder climb? No. Kilimanjaro is the highest mountain on earth you can simply walk up. Mont Blanc, a full 1,100 metres lower, is a genuine mountaineering ascent: crampons, ice axe, rope, glacier travel and real alpine judgement. Higher is not the same as harder, and choosing between these two is really choosing between two different sp

Two of the most famous walks on earth, one adventure budget, and a decision that keeps coming up at dinner tables everywhere: the Roof of Africa, or the road to Machu Picchu?

There is no official public register of deaths on Kilimanjaro, so treat any precise figure you read online with caution. What is commonly reported is this: tens of thousands of people climb the mountain every year, and in a typical year a small number of deaths are recorded among climbers, most linked to severe altitude illness or to underlying heart conditions revealed by exertion at altitude.

If you are waiting to feel ready, you will wait forever, because nobody feels ready for a mountain they have never climbed.

John Evance's attempt has a twist that makes it more interesting than the clock alone. Rather than starting at the Marangu or Umbwe gates, where most previous record attempts have begun

The Shira Route suits the experienced trekker who has been to altitude before and knows how their body responds, and the climber who wants the plateau's vast early wilderness more than anything else on the mountain.

It is the question we are asked most: can I actually do this? The honest answer is more encouraging than you would think. Here is what really makes Kilimanjaro hard, and how to give yourself the best possible chance of the summit.