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By taking me on my most challenging adventure, both physically as well as mentally, I learnt how powerful the mind is when it comes to achieving anything in life. Growing up a daddy's girl, I would typically do what he was doing. This being because he was also the "fun" parent. Over the years he had become an avid mountain climber and had scaled some of the biggest peaks in Africa. In the middle of my gap year, I had taken up the President's Award- Kenya program, where I had to climb Mt Kenya as part of my gold award program. I decided to take on that climb with my dad's fitness group in April and it was honestly the most trying thing I had done, and afterwards, everyone had said that I should take part in the Kilimanjaro trip that was happening three months after that climb. I honestly wasn't sure if I would do it and said that I would think about it. Fast forward to July, I decided to just go for it, and not think too much about it. So, i packed my camping bag for the second time that year and got on the bus from Nairobi, Kenya to Moshi, Tanzania. We ended up resting the day we got there and headed to the base camp the next morning. It was nothing like Mt Kenya, right from the jump, as there was triple the amount of people waiting to leave the same campsite, and raining, so it was already such commotion trying to start the hike, but nevertheless we got on our way. An hour into the start of the hike, I knew that this wasn't going to be like Mt Kenya at all as it was much steeper and even carrying my little day bag was the hardest thing I could do. Luckily, I had the best hiking guide, who carried it for me the whole way up, leaving me with just my camelback, which was still weighted to me. Anyway, the whole journey up was filled with countless days of hiking through very different terrains, which was the most breathtaking experience. Come summit night, we had been trekking from about eight in the morning and got to the campsite at about six p.m, where we had a quick dinner, brief on the summit hike and we were off to our tents to get a few hours of sleep. With barely any sleep, we were woken with a shake of our tent at around 11 p.m, got dressed and were on our way to the summit. As we began our ascent, I was freezing, as it was my second time in sub zero temperatures and all we had was our torches to light the way, and the singing of our hiking guides to keep us motivated. We walked for about three hours before I started to get faint, and at this point, all the singing was getting on my last nerve. My guide could tell that I wasn't doing so great and he proceeded to hold my hand as another guide pushed me by my camelback from the back and for a second, I feel like I blacked out, walking. Around 7 a.m, several hours after beginning our ascent, I was honestly over the whole experience and just wanted to get off the mountain and go home. We were only halfway up to the peak and I just couldn't see me getting to the end. I took rest on a rock and contemplated if ti was really worth seeing it through. After a brief power nap and a cry, I had concluded that I had already come all this way and there was really no point going back down with nothing to show for it. So, I picked myself back up and made my way to the summit. At around 1 p.m, we finally made it to the summit, which was honestly such an achievement and in that moment, I swore that I was never coming back to that mountain. I take it with a grain of salt now, knowing that if someone asked me to go back, I definitely would go back.