 So we mentioned in one of our previous live streams that in order to climb Mount Kilimanjaro, you can't do it on your own. It's no longer possible. I don't remember what year it was, but the government in Tanzania, they have rules in place where for every person interested in climbing the mountain, you have to go with a tour operator or a travel agency, travel company that's going to basically be your escort to get up the mountain. They do make sure that people are following the rules on the mountain. Obviously with the, you know, it's very important, natural landmark in the area, so they want to make sure that people are respectful to the land and then they stimulate the business in the area. So you cannot climb Kilimanjaro on your own. You have to go with a tour operator. And when it comes to planning for Mount Kilimanjaro, I think one of the most critical and important and probably stressful decisions to make is choosing what company you're going to be traveling with, or what company you're going to be climbing the mountain with. Sure. But you can see around the world, obviously, that many places that need that regulation and such to or turning to that form, so that they can control the amount of people, they can keep people safe, and they can also make money for the local people. But that's normal. You'll find that everywhere. So that shouldn't come as a surprise that there are a lot of companies then that you can pick from for Kilimanjaro. Now probably the first major question you're going to want to ask yourself is how much comfort do you need? It's not necessarily the most important question for the climate itself, but in terms of if you're going to go, you need to set that standard early on because that'll give you a different ecosystem of potential suitors, as it were, that you're going to pick to climb the mountain. And if you're fine to just kind of go up with a lot of your own confidence fueling the way, and you don't need a lot of privacy by way of little outhouses, you don't need a lot of porters to necessarily carry a lot of extravagant things, and you don't necessarily need the guarantee or the assurances of a high quality guide to keep you safe or comfortable on the way, you might have a different budget than if you're looking for some of the more international companies that might have some very fancy outfitters and lots of porters with cool tents and logos and colors and bling and everything. So you've got to know that for you. Yeah, so definitely I think two things that are important factors. You want to make sure that the company that you're going with is within your budget. And if we were to put them into big groups, there are local agencies and then there are international companies. So international companies, we're talking about G-Adventures, for example. They do treks and expeditions not only in Tanzania, Mount Kilimanjaro, but pretty much every other high mountain, Aconcagua, they do expeditions in Patagonia. So these are big companies. I can't think of any other company like that. REI definitely takes people over. Yeah, even REI, they do some expeditions. So these are big international. Worldwide trekking. Do they do one? Worldwide trekking. So these are big international companies, either located here in the US, some of them in Australia, and some of them are in the UK. So these companies are the big ones. And then are the local companies. The local companies, they are local in Tanzania, although the staff, the porters, the guides for both type of companies are from Tanzania, from the region. But it's just that the administration and where the business is set up is international with the other ones. So now the only difference is with international companies and big companies, the price is usually higher. And with the local companies, the price is low. So one of the things for us when we travel internationally, we try to help the local communities. And I personally find it to be just nice to go with small companies in the region. This is what we did in the in-cat trail. And prices are more reasonable, but that's not what we did for Mount Kilimanjaro. Yeah, that's a picture from the in-cat trail. So really knowing, do you want to go with a local company? Do you want to go with an international big name company? That's number one. And that dictates the price. Now, the pricing for Mount Kilimanjaro, it really can go from $1,000, which is like the lowest end. And you definitely don't want to go with a company that's going to charge you just $1,000. And I'm going to explain why. And it can go up to, I don't know, $10,000. I heard that REI charges up to $8,000 for this type of climb. So there is a huge range depending on how luxurious you want your climb to be. Yeah, I can't say that I really looked at the upper end, because I didn't know interested in looking at the upper end, other than perhaps for comedic relief. But with a lot of those companies, though, as well, you'll see that have the opportunity to give you the local flow. It's a double win for you at that point. Hey, it's a bit cheaper. You support a lot of local individuals. Typically, they're very familiar with the area and the ecosystem and have a lot of other good information to give you, not that they don't hire reasonable guides on the more expensive, larger industries, larger corporations. But I can't think of a reason that I would ever not aspire to use a local one. But not to harp on people that do choose bigger ones. Again, I don't see any downside to the way that I approach hiking. So you've got to make sure that what you pick works for you. And that's universal for all things hiking. But there are some questions that you want to ask yourself. So first of all, there are so many companies with Kilimanjaro. I don't know. I feel like before I looked for the Inca Trail, I looked for Elbrus, so many other climbs, and there is a limited number of companies. There are many companies, but people usually know these are the top four companies to choose from. But for Kilimanjaro, the choices are, you know, there are so many companies to choose from. But definitely the main questions that you want to ask, you want to make sure that they have good reviews, not just on their websites, but you want to go see their reviews on Facebook, one-star reviews, five-star reviews. And one of the things that I personally do, I even reach out to people on Facebook, for example, who submitted these reviews, to hear from them directly and see, you know, what was their experience like with this company. You also want to go to the company's website, read a little bit, and make sure that they follow all of the rules that are set by the Tanzanian governments, because some of the companies that don't charge you a lot of money, like $1,000 to climb the mountain, they usually don't pay the porters as well as they should. The porters and the guys. So they compromise on how much they are paying these porters. And the porters are working very hard, and they are one of the reasons you are going to successfully make it up the mountain. So you want to make sure that they are, or the company that you are choosing is fair to the porters to be particular. There is something in Tanzania called, I think, Kilimanjaro Porters Protection Association. And then this association usually makes sure that, you know, they are following their rights, they are being paid well, they're not carrying more weight that they are supposed to be carrying on the mountain. So all of this, you want to make sure that the company at least has some sort of partnership or agrees to the KPAP rules, per se. Right. Now, we can talk about some of the things that these porters might be carrying up for you at that particular time. And we've talked about accommodations in some light format by way of sleeping. And some more extravagant things, like if they're going to carry a bathroom amenities for you to construct you a little privacy dome. No, she's very common. Yep. So some of these things are normal things that you would be able to look up. Ethics besides. And it makes sense if you went with a cheaper one to make sure to give the porters huge tips. Well, tips are going to be universal at that point in terms of being expected to be handed out, or at least, I mean, yeah, from our class, maybe in the upper echelon, things change, I suppose, but we're just yokels. Yeah, I feel like I think that tips are, you know, you're going to tip whether you are hiring a big company or a small company. They even have what they call tip-in ceremony, which is usually the end, the day before summit day where you sit down and then you show appreciation to the porters and the guides and you have to tip them regardless. Sure, I would say it's such a weird thing, though. For me, to give the nice tips out in the moment, I feel like, and it's probably just my Western mentality that tips are like a result of quality of service, that I would rather donate money directly to a cause if I really wanted to support it, rather than handing it out to the short list of individuals in front of me as a statement of before even meeting or experiencing them. But if I went on the thing and I really enjoyed and I thought they did a great job and knocked out of the park, like, of course you would want to tip well. Of course. You obviously have to carry cash on you. They don't exactly take a visa on the mountain. I don't know. Maybe some agencies provide an alternative way to satisfy that, but I would presume not. That sounds like a hassle for them. I promise you, Homa, that's exactly how they called it when we were on the in-patriot day. They said, now it's the time for the tip-in ceremonies. And they all stand around. And it's just weird. I mean, you do want to show appreciation. And honestly, like, when you look at porters and how much weight they are carrying, it's just amazing. But anyway, so what are... I make them carry the money bags up the mountain for you. So that's the other question that you want to consider is, at least for us, when we booked this trip, there were some considerations that we wouldn't have paid attention to, really, if it wasn't this time and during the pandemic. And it's that making sure that the company has an international and a big presence in case, you know, we are sick and we can't make it to the trip. What's going to happen to your money? So before choosing a company, you want to make sure that you have some insurance in place from the company that, you know, your money is not going to be lost if your flight is canceled or if you can't make it to Tanzania for one reason or the other. So really for this trip, we decided to go with a bigger company just for safety because, you know, there's been a lot of uncertainties in the world right now. And there are things like travel insurance that'll satisfy some of those things for you as well. And sometimes even you'll find like credit cards or your regular insurance will double dip on backing you up there. I'll say one of the ways that I would think you should evaluate the quality of the service you can expect to receive and some of the capabilities that the organization might have in terms of supporting you along these ways or how much they say you have to pay for on the website. And by that I mean some places don't even say anything. They say reach out to us and give us a quote. And usually this is a way to engage you in some form of interaction. But at the same time, if you send somebody an email and say I'm interested and they send you back two paragraphs from the person running the shop, I'd be less impressed. And then if somebody sends me back a well formatted email because they send many of them back all the time that has a lot of information and links to other stuff on the page, that's a pretty good giveaway. I think that they have an infrastructure that's capable of supporting your needs. So I would say be willing to contact people, right? Because if you take it for base value that you evaluate the company as a number and a number only in a bulleted list of capabilities, you'll get what you pay for. And that doesn't translate exactly the way I want it to here because maybe the price is exorbitant. But I'd say that you wanna do the due diligence to actually reach out and talk with them and see really what they're made of. And you'll get a feel for it through interacting with them if they wanna do stuff and if you have questions, you ask them and they answer them. I would say do reach out to companies even if there's not a price mentioned. It's just usually for them a button that'll send the automatic email for you, you type in how many people, when you wanna go and they'll give you a whole laundry list of information. Yeah, definitely shop around and don't just pull the trigger on a specific company because your friend said it's a good company but still talk to people, ask a few companies. Sometimes it's just the way they communicate. And they, you feel comfortable with them. They answer whenever you need to. It's just the little things sometimes that help you make a good decision. What else, choosing a company. Obviously there are some details like if you have any dietary restrictions and you want to ask the company, can they accommodate you if you are a vegan or vegetarian, which some companies do, some companies don't. So these are some questions to ask before choosing a company to collide with. I wanted to make a joke, but anyway. Chocolate only diet, sorry, I was gonna call it the Monte Zuma diet. But the food and such like that too, you will find as you get up the mountain that the opportunities for diverse meals, it goes away after a period of time. Once you get up a certain altitude, obviously they're not gonna be carrying cheeseburgers and hamburgers up, but they'll come up with some very clever ways to make some salads and some soups and all sorts of stuff like that. Typically when you get up that high, they have to boil water all the time because they need to make sure that it's sterilized from wherever they might collect it from. And as a result of that, there are some limitations and typically allocations that are available only to the various companies that might be residing at your stopping point or for your midday lunch point in certain areas as well. So some of those are limitations also. You shouldn't necessarily expect glamorous meals, but you will be able to get a feel for what culinary opportunities will be presented to you when you're doing your research. And again, if you talk with them and you have those special things that I'll tell you if they can or cannot accommodate. Other things to consider when you are picking a company, obviously if you're going to Tanzania for this climb, a lot of people like to add on more adventures in Tanzania. So some companies offer packages of not only the climb, but things that you can do outside of the climb like going on safaris or going on some cooking classes and things like that. So if you are interested in having one company arrange the whole Tanzania experience for you, it's something worth asking. I think there are plenty of companies who would have packages for you to choose from. I would say for me, usually this, I prefer this in terms of my default course of action, not because there aren't better ways to try to pick and choose. But typically they'll handle your luggage while you're on the adventure. And you can find a spot where like when you go on your hike, you're probably not taking your wheelie bag up the mountain. Your laptop. Right, or your laptop, or other things that you may have brought, whatever. And as a result of that, if you just stay at a hotel that's kind of like outside of these people, you might not have the guarantee before you go that they'll let you keep it in a back closet or even at their security is something that you're comfortable with. And if you go to the agency, there's kind of like that guarantee. Same as flying internationally with one big, one flight reservation, so you don't be coming in out of customs all the time, stuff like that. But, but, but, I have to have my laptop. Are you drinking the bourbon again now? Oh, the poor man. Yeah, I kind of feel the same way about the laptop, but at least I feel like by having a company like this, you can rely on someone to keep your luggage safe, your computer safe, and everything else that you don't want to take with you up the mountain. What else? What are the other considerations? Usually I write down my notes, but I didn't do today, so. Sha, I think for a lot of things, you'll find standard across many of the agencies are like, how much weight can they carry for you? And what sort of things do they provide to sleep? Bedrolls, do you need to carry your own sleeping bag? Not to talk too much about the place that we've picked. But it seems normal for a lot of these agencies to provide you with a sleeping bag if you would like to for a small rental fee. As you can imagine on any of these high altitude mountains and such, or high elevation mountains, it can get cold at the top. That doesn't mean it will get cold at the top, I'm assuming all year round, but I guess I'll find out. But zero degree bags could certainly be a reasonable thing to want, and you might not want a zero degree bag for your regular daily life, or at least you might not want to spend the money on it just to use it for this trip alone, and then stuff it in the closet or hang it up in the garage or whatever. So you might want to know what sort of things they offer you in terms of rental. I think they also offered hiking poles for the place that you were going, but... Yeah, honestly, it's a business by the end of the day. They will offer, and they have experience. They've been doing this for, I don't know, 50 years or more, and they know what are the basic needs and things that people usually need up the mountain. So they will rent whatever you need. Even if they don't have it, they will get it for you and rent it. But it's worth pointing out, and many of you may have come across this already, some of you may have not, you cannot put hiking poles in your carry-on bag. And... They're like a weapon. Yep, I have a full video about this, talking about hiking and backpacking here that you can fly or you can't fly with, and you can find it right here. And in the event that you're doing something like that, obviously, in the event that you're gonna do this, so you might be trying to save a buck or two by not putting a bag underneath. It's all right. By putting a bag underneath the plane. So if you were gonna take your own trekking poles, that might cost you a lot more luggage. Another reason that they might offer you that is a rental. Bedrolls, I know, they'll typically carry up for us. Another thing you don't have to lug around in your bag. Bedrolls, tents, yeah. Tents, food gear, et cetera, bathrooms. So Bucket, what do you take on to the mountain? I believe you should be taking off. I don't know how mandated it is, or by that matter, how enforced it is, even if it is mandated at that matter. But I know that the agencies will make sure that they have restroom facilities and such for you that we were talking about earlier. And typically, like you said, they'll boil some water. They might have some rituals that they take at the beginning or the end of the day to allow you to kind of clean yourself or wash yourself down. Mind if I... It's a pretty universal with these type of climbs that usually would have a bucket for you with a little towel to wash your face and your feet at night. I'm curious on the sleeping bag situation with the fact that you can go through like four different climate zones. I imagine the temperatures will vary through the different ones. I suspect that they will vary. I don't know if it'll be so dramatic that you wouldn't be able to use like a zero degree bag with a zipper open or maybe just lay on it or use it as a blanket and lay on your bedroll. I'm assuming if it's anything like what we had experienced at the Inca Trail that the bedrolls will be generous, which means that you probably could sleep on them and regulate your temperature. That way that being said though, we live in the desert here and it gets hot during the day, but it can get cold at night. And I wouldn't be surprised if by the time you start doing some stuff that you might only have one night on the bottom but a couple of nights on the top. And I'm sure as you get higher up in altitude, your tolerance for discomfort goes down. So I would be much more comfortable being a little too warm for a night lower on the mountain than I would be being too cold on the top of the mountain. But I totally hear you that you're going through two different zones. For all I know or for all you know, you might be able to take a little bag with you. You might not even need to use a sleeping bag the first night and we'll figure that out. But at the very least, I'm sure that the zero degree bag is justified for the top and not necessarily a burden for the bottom. But Fomat, these are all things that we will still have to experience and figure out. Well, awesome. Yeah, I'm trying to think if there's anything else that we would want to do for picking. Transport to and from the airport is usually something that'll help too. You'll find that many places will provide you with accommodations for the day before you start. So typically you have to arrive a day before your hike starts and they'll have like some sort of a orientation meeting where you'll meet some of the people you're hiking with and your guide and other things. And they'll just tell you a lot of reasonable stuff usually as well as some other stuff for on the mountain. And then I know like for example, when we did the anchor trail back there as well, they told us that you couldn't have hiking poles without rubber stoppers on them because they didn't want you chipping up the rocks everywhere. I don't know if that'll be the same thing here, but stuff like that that might be local. And then obviously when you get back, they'll also let you stay for a day too. It's not like they walk you down the mountain and kick you out the back door. But those prices are usually built in but if you get there a little early or have to stay a day later, you'll usually find that you have to pay a little bit for those extra days but they will help you with finding a place to stay. I just want to add one thing. I have friends who climbed the mountain in the past and it's very common for people to not actually book or choose a company ahead of time. Like for us, we picked this company three months ago, maybe more. It feels like an eternity ago. A lot of people would travel just two, wow. It feels like a long time but a lot of people would travel to Tanzania and then when they get there, especially if they're traveling with a local agency, when they get there, they start their choosing process because you can go shop around, talk to guides and companies face to face and then you have higher chances to negotiate the price because when you are right there and they're like, okay, you just want to get up the mountain. I want to go as soon as you can. You can do that. So just throwing it out there that it's an option for you. If you don't have any time restrictions and you have more of a flexible schedule, you can still travel to the country first and then decide or choose a company to climb with. Now the things that you may have to pay attention to on your way into the country as well, there would be things like getting a visa and things that'll be mandatory for you across all agencies at that point, which will be some form of a high-altitude insurance, which is different than your regular travel's insurance. If you're going to be above, I don't remember the height or the altitude, but I think we used worldwide nomads. That sounds right for our travel stuff and they cover you up to like 19,654 feet or something goofy, but that's very obviously higher than the top of Kilimanjaro by a little bit, but not as high as the next mountain up that people would probably be going for on other continents. But you're going to need a special form of insurance so that if you have some high-altitude issue that they can evacuate you down to regular altitude and then your regular insurance, I'm assuming kicks in. Something crossed my mind right now. I was going to share it with you earlier, but I forgot. So as I started the day today and I just pulled my Instagram and I was looking, one of my friends on Instagram, she just had malaria in Africa for the first time. She's been living there probably. It's the only time she has Africa. No, she's been, well, she's also Moroccan, but she's been living in Africa in Burundi and Tanzania, like some of the Southern countries that she's been living there for five years and this is the first time she gets malaria. And I was like, and when I saw that, I was like, oh my God, thank God we got the malaria pills anyways. Well, anyway, I'm deviating from the topic. That's fine. Like I said, and then visa as well. You can either do a visa on arrival, which I think if you watch anybody online, they'll tell you need some crisp bills or you have the opportunity, I think, to do it online, which we're going to do in advance to getting there. And then you can really get a lot of the paperwork and such and some of the numbers. And then you get in, they just punch in the numbers you paid already and let you through. Obviously you're talking about vaccinations and such too. There are things that, depending on where your adventure goes or what companies you might pick may be different to you. Many of the companies, as we covered in one of our previous videos, start from within Tanzania, but not all of them, one or two of them do you start from the north in Kenya. So, and you would have to have a yellow fever, at least for there that I know of. And I'm presuming that that might be the only one that's a wild card, but I can't say that I know that for facts, for facts. Yeah, we talked about all of these vaccines. We talked about our experience with passport health on the previous livestream and I'm going to link everything in the description box like usual. Thank you so much guys for the thumbs up. I see seven thumbs up and three people still watching us. We've been going for 27 minutes and we have three more minutes to go before we wrap up today's live stream. I can tell you that you saw me walk away earlier to go get some coffee. There's no coffee in there. It turns out I just made a problem. It's longer, but thank you so much guys. We really enjoyed this live chat with you. Again, Thursday's live stream is going to be canceled for this week and. Can we say maybe just as impromptu as last one? Yeah, probably. I expect like a full stream, but if we're on the road. We'll try to say hi. We'll probably try to say hi if we fly through town, but it might not be exactly at six. Be around that time of the day if we could make it happen. And wish us good luck with this weekend's climb. Hopefully we'll make it up the mountain. Awesome. Thanks everybody. Thanks guys. Have a good day.