Because it's there

Apologies for being tardy with my blog posts recently. I have a lot to write about but somehow I didn't manage to find an efficient way of doing it. I'm going to try to catch up this week. Wish me luck!

The most dominant feature on the Mulanje Mission skyline is Mount Mulanje. This is a granite massif that rises 2,000m out of the surrounding countryside, and includes several peaks, the highest of which is Sapitwa (which, it is rumoured, means "don't go there" in Chichewa) at 3,002m.

Mulanje Massif, as seen from the tea plantations near Mulanje Mission

A bunch of us decided that we would climb to the top of the Mount Mulanje plateau last weekend. Sadly, but perhaps fortunately, we didn't have sufficient time to attempt the Sapitwa peak, for which mere mortals must allocate a 3 day expedition.

We were due to leave on Saturday 12 April but when we gathered first thing to set out, the weather on the mountain looked terrible (the weather in Mulanje in general had been terrible that week) and we decided to postpone.

Not dissuaded however, on Sunday 13 April we again gathered and this time it was sunny weather with a reasonable forecast, and so we set off.

Setting off for the bottom of the trail in a trusty land rover.

The climbing party before starting out.

The task ahead.

The first river crossing.

The first bit of the hike up to the plateau was gentle and fun, albeit with weather a bit too hot for my liking. It was punctuated by the crossing of a river (the first of many) which is tackled by a barefoot leap across a set of large boulders, while trying really hard not to wreck our cameras/become dinner for a crocodile by falling into the water below!

Beware of the crocodiles.

The weather closes in.

The hike up was tough. It's fair to say I was amongst the slower of the climbers, although this effect may have been slightly accentuated by the climbing party being primarily composed of the overseas contingent of the wedding party, including inter alia a professional rugby player (Hi, Tom) with a certain, rather entertaining musical ability, who seemed to run up-and-down a yard for every step I took!

Anyway, our path up the mountain seemed to mostly follow the rocky beds of several streams. In better times, these would be dry and give you a fairly good purchase on the rocks. However, the recent weather had been very wet, and half way up we climbed into a rain cloud, in which we stayed all the way to the top. Consequently, these streams were anything but dry. In fact, many were in full flow, and on these sections, and many others beside, the rocks were extremely slippy. A couple of the slippy sections were also very exposed, right where a slip would throw you down a vertical kilometre or two to the valley floor below. These bits were not so fun!

After six hours climbing, we made it to our destination --- a mountaintop hut operated by the Central Church of Africa Presbyterian, the same organization who happens to run Mulanje Mission.

By this stage every one of us was soaked through with sweat and rain, and also caked in mud up to our ankles. Only a minority of us were wearing waterproof hiking boots, and those who weren't had soaking feet also.

So our arrival at the hut was an amazing relief. The place turned out to be more mountain chalet than hut. It had comfortable bunk sleeping for a couple of dozen people, and a nice sitting room heated up by a large fireplace in which we burned cedar wood cut from the surrounding woodlands by a live-in warden. In fact, for the princely sum of MK750 (about £1.10) you could buy Coca Cola or Carlsberg beer in bottles painstakingly carted up 2,000 vertical metres by some poor body or other.

The CCAP hut, seen in the morning's good weather...

... and what passed for its latrine! Inside here is a rather uninviting hole in the ground.

The warden's accommodation. The warden's apparently work shifts, spending a fortnight high on the mountain at a time.

After changing into clean clothes and drying our shoes and socks on the fireplace, I think we all began to feel a bit more human again. I certainly did. Alas, our peace was soon spoiled by the arrival of a party composed of a German and an American couple and about a million of their kids. The German woman promptly announced that, since she had booked essentially the whole hut and there were not enough beds for them and all their kids to have one each in addition to us, that we could not have booked (not true), that we were mistaken or lying about having booked (neither true), and that she did not intend to share (completely true), despite the fact that her kids could easily have doubled up on beds without any discomfort.

Fortunately, magnanimity was not in short supply on the British side. We kindly offered to give up several of our bunks so that her kids could have one each, with some of us doubling up (we luckily had a couple of couples amongst us) and the overspill sleeping on the floor.

Shortly thereafter, the German woman and her children invaded the sitting room and took it over. Wishing again to procure peace in our time, we agreed to let her annex the sitting room in addition to the bunks she wanted, and we beat a hasty retreat to the freezing cold, pitch black, mountain-top veranda. In return, we were promised the use of the cedarwood fire to heat up our food, but only once they had heated up their pasta. They spent the next three hours just boiling water.

Fortunately, the warden of the hut took pity on us, and helped us construct a cedarwood brazier on the veranda, despite (or more cynically, on account of its present occupants, because of) the obvious fire hazard: flaming embers were ejected from the brazier several times and had to be stamped out before they set his hut ablaze. Nonetheless, following the sage advice of the old scouts amongst us, we managed to heat up our food. We also found some chairs and blankets and had a jolly old time sitting around our brazier, telling tales and solving riddles produced by Tom's phone.

Sadly, as is often the case with these things, our dearly-bought truce was not to last. We arose in the morning and entered the sitting room to find that an act of glorious criminality had taken place: a single empty bottle of Coca Cola stood on the counter top in defiant testimony to its theft from the warden's stash during the previous night.

Despite the fact that (at her insistence) the bunks in the sitting room had been occupied solely by her offspring the previous night, and furthermore that one amongst our party had actually seen one of her children with a bottle of Coca Cola, our Teutonic friend insisted that her children do not and would never drink Coca Cola, and therefore it could only have been drunk by one of us, and by implication, that we were dishonestly trying to pass onto her the outrageous charge of MK750 (£1.10) for quenching our thirst.

In a last ditch effort to avert the outbreak of war on the Mulanje mountain top, again our magnamity shone through, and we offered to go halves on the price for the stolen Coke. In spite of her initial protests, our German interlocutor eventually agreed to this, before proclaiming sotto voce that she now didn't believe that we had pilfered the Coke after all, and that she now believed the warden had stolen it from himself in an attempt to scam us for the lofty sum of a whole quid, and that in light of this conclusion, she intended to deduct her half of the cost of the Coke from his payment.

Since our conflict had now been resolved to her entire satisfaction, she further proposed that, to cement our new friendship, we should all descend together as one big climbing party, kids and all. Never, in the field of mountain climbing, has so much climbing gear been donned by so many, in so few minutes. We were out of that hut and scarpering down the mountain side before our new friends had even finished their breakfast.

The Mulanje Massif plateau, as seen from the back of our hut. It didn't seem nearly so flat when we were walking across it.

Fortunately, the weather had improved dramatically overnight and we managed to get some really good views from high on the mountain on the way down. The fearsome slipperly sections proved not to be nearly so fearsome as I'd feared when setting off from the hut that morning, and very soon we were all down the mountain and relaxing over a Coca Cola and a pizza at the infamous Mulanje Pepper restaurant in Chitekale.

On the road, once again.

Clouds on the mountain top.

A peak on the Mulanje Massif plateau.

The climbing party.

Yours truly, atop the Mulanje Massif.

The mountain plateau was above cloud level as we set out from the top, so rather than see the valley floor below, we had this fantastic vista of being on an island surrounded by a sea of clouds.

Samuel, our trusty guide for the climb.

Well on the way down, we're just peeping out the bottom of the clouds surrounding the mountain.

Just to prove what a small world it actually is, who should I bump into right at that moment in Mulanje Pepper, but some of my friends from the Oxford medical school, who unbeknownst to be --- and by strange and happy coincidence --- had been on the mountain at the same time as us? They had gone up the day before us and made an attempt on Sapitwa peak, the same day that we made our ascent, but they had been caught by the same weather as us, and unluckily they had to abort their attempt. It was really nice to meet you, guys!

Oxford unexpectedly invades Mulanje Pepper

Relaxing over pizza and Coca Cola at the Mulanje Pepper restaurant in Chitekale, after our descent.