Borneo- Mt Kinabalu

Uknown to us until the day before arriving in Borneo, we'd signed up to climb a mountain. Not just any mountain but South East Asias highest mountain...as in 4000m above sea level, and we were climbing it. HAHA!

This is before I knew

We met our group in Kota Kinabalu, they seemed lovely and there was even a Swedish boy by the name of Oscar who we became really good friends with. We all set off towards the mountain, with our guide Omar in a bus driven by a man named Man. Man had his own walking stick business as well as being a bus driver, so on the morning of the ascent he loaned us all a walking stick whittled out of some wood. Wonderful.

Our Group

You might think that climbing a mountain isn't that difficult, well at least that's what we thought. We'd have just spent the previous six weeks lazing around on beaches and trains and god knows what else, we certainly haven't done any exercise and get winded trying to climb a normal flight of stairs. Can you then imagine us climbing 8.5km worth of stairs? No? Well we did, because that's what the climb consisted of, 8.5km of just upwards, and the staris were uneven and normally higher than our knees. It was probably the most difficult thing we have ever had to do. The sweat was literally dripping off us and soaking everything we touched. We got blisters on our hands from the walking sticks and bruises on our collarbones from our backpacks. We had decided to climb at least halfway before stopping for our lunch, and nearly fainted from lack of food before we got there. Once we did stop the will to start again was minimal. We ended up eating our lunch and then rolling around on the side of the mountain in fits of laughter as we couldn't understand why we EVER thought it would be fun to climb a mountain.

Finally after seven hours, three liters of water, one million biscuit and banana breaks we reached the restaurant at the top...only to be told that our room was 100m higher up. 100m is a really long way if you've been climbing for eight hours already.

View above the clouds

The idea was that we'd go to bed at 7pm and then be woken up at 2 30am to continue our climb for 3km to the summit in time for the sunrise. Obviously neither of us could sleep all night on the pillows shaped like bricks, so when Omar came to wake us at 2 30 we were bleary eyed and hallucinating from lack of sleep. He fed us white bread with jam, and tea for a breakfast. This was supposed to give us energy for the climb but instead just lay in the bottom of our stomachs like a lump of lead. We started our climb anyway in the pitch black with head torches and a bottle of water, wearing hats and gloves because believe it or not it was freezing cold outside. After about 15 minutes it was clear that we could go no further...Julia was dying (not actually) but the lack of sleep, extreme physical exertion, lack of food, lack of water, lack of light, earache AND altitude sickness was a slight barrier and made her feel like she was about to throw up. I wasn't really up to climbing for two hours up some steps either...so we turned and went back down. Down aaallll the way to the bottom, it wasn't that bad, we ran down in three hours. But 8.5km of going down steps is believe it or not nearly as hard as going up them. Our legs felt like jelly by the end of it, and continued to do so or about three days after.

It's ok though, because we came withing 500m of the summit, and that's pretty incredible. We are Julia and Hanna the Immense Mountain Climbers....but if we ever decide to set out on another such quest slap us round the face and tell us not to be silly.