I want to be careful about how I frame this because I am not a therapist and the mountain is not a cure. What I can tell you is that Kilimanjaro did something for my mental health that twenty years of managing depression with medication and therapy had not managed to do. And there is science behind why that might be true.

Kilimanjaro is not a technical climb. It does not require mountaineering experience. It does not require exceptional fitness. It requires the ability to walk uphill for six to eight hours per day across eight consecutive days.

A responsible operator does not send one guide with ten climbers. The guide ratio matters enormously. At Vertical Sky, our lead guide is supported by assistant guides in a ratio that ensures every climber is properly supervised throughout the expedition.

Kilimanjaro is not therapy. But what it does to the mind — the clarity, the presence, the self-knowledge is something most people have not experienced since childhood.

I climbed Kilimanjaro on Mounjaro, 20kg lighter than my last attempt, and told absolutely nobody. Here is what actually happened.

I am writing this from a hotel room in Arusha, Tanzania, and I want to be completely honest with you: I have no idea what I have done to deserve a view like this.