What the food is actually like on Kilimanjaro

Three cooked meals a day, carried up and made on gas at 4,600 metres by someone who has walked further than you have. Here is what arrives and why it matters more than it sounds.

Why it matters

Appetite is the first thing altitude takes. By day four most climbers do not want to eat, and by summit night the deficit is showing in their legs and their mood.

A cook who can produce something you will actually eat at 4,600 metres is doing safety work, not hospitality.

Nobody turns back because of the food. Plenty turn back because they stopped eating.

A normal day

Breakfast: porridge, eggs cooked to order, toast, sausage or bacon, fruit, tea and coffee. Substantial, because the walking starts within the hour.

Mid-morning: a snack pack in your daypack. Biscuits, a chocolate bar, nuts, fruit.

Lunch: hot at camp on shorter days, packed on longer ones. Fried chicken or a sandwich, boiled egg, fruit, juice.

Afternoon tea: this is the one people remember. Tea, coffee, hot chocolate, popcorn and peanuts, served as you arrive at camp. It exists to get calories and fluid into you before dinner.

Dinner: soup first, always — cucumber, pumpkin, carrot, leek. Then a main of rice, pasta or ugali with a stew, vegetables, and fruit afterwards.

The soup is deliberate

Every dinner starts with soup and it is the most useful course of the trip. It is warm, it is salty, it is fluid, and a climber with no appetite will usually manage a bowl of it when they will not manage a plate.

Dietary requirements

Vegetarian and vegan are straightforward and our cooks do them well. Gluten free, dairy free, halal and most allergies are manageable with notice.

Tell us when you book rather than at the gate. The food goes up on someone’s back and it is bought before you arrive.

What we do not do

Serve the crew a separate, cheaper kitchen. They eat the same three cooked meals you do. An operator running two kitchens is telling you something about the rest of their operation.

Water

Collected from streams on the mountain, boiled and filtered by the crew, and provided free throughout. Bring a three-litre bladder and a bottle — the bladder tube freezes on summit night and the bottle is your backup.

Three to four litres a day. This is not a suggestion; dehydration produces a headache indistinguishable from altitude sickness.

What to bring yourself

Snacks you genuinely like. Not energy gels you have never tried, not nutrition bars you find worthy. When your appetite goes, the only thing you will eat is something you already want to eat.

Rehydration salts. Ginger sweets, which help more with nausea than anyone expects.

Notes for the editor

Category: On the mountain. Suggested slug: food-on-kilimanjaro. Meta description: Three cooked meals a day at altitude, why every dinner starts with soup, and what to bring when your appetite disappears on day four. Internal links: climb experience, packing list, porter pay, altitude and safety.