Mount Hanang Climb

The drilling in Babati has been going slow with delays due to breakdowns, and waiting on getting refuelled. (There are multiday delays in getting funds transferred here). There are only so many days you can wait around in a little motel before you get an itch to do go do something else. We had seen this high mountain out west of Babati and had learned it was called Mount Hanang, the 4th highest mountain in Tanzania. It looked like a great mountain rising steeply and symmetrically out of the surrounding dry plains. The Lonely Planet book said there was a contact in Babati who would arrange climbs of the mountain. So we found his office and arranged to do the climb over the weekend. It was a 2-1/2 day trip, one day to travel to Katesh, the town at the base of Hanang and get the local government permits, the next day to climb and come down and the third day to return back to Babati. Another VSA volunteer Katherine working only a few hours from Babati joined us for the trip. The road from Babati to Katesh is a rough dirt/gravel dusty dusty road and requires slow driving in a small vehicle. Since it was not too far, 120 km (70 miles), we opted to take a bus there and back. How bad could it be? The climbing guide met us at the bus stand in Babati and had arranged the purchase of bus tickets for us all. It was an 11 am bus we were to catch, but turns out that 11 am means the bus will not leave before 11 am but can leave any time after that when it is full. They keep cramming more people with boxes and sacks of who knows what into spare seats and the isle. Finally at 12:30 we left for Katesh, filled to the hilt, many people standing in the isle and sitting in temporary seats. At about the ½ way point was another stop where people got on and off. The bus stopped on a little hill, and the attendant had to jump off the bus and put chocks under the wheels to stop the bus running backwards. Then onwards with dust wafting in covering any and everything.


After arriving at Katesh we were taken off for a small meal of rice and beans then to check into the guest house which while very basic was quite OK. At night the guide and a friend of his from Katesh took us to a little bar down the road to watch a World Cup soccer game on a TV. It was a little 14” like screen with a bunch of people seated around trying to watch it. Needless to say we were the only Mzungus there. The electric power was off in Katesh that night so there was no power. The TV was running off a little generator. After about 20 mins it ran out of fuel and that was the end of the TV, before the game even started! Then we decided to go get a meal somewhere before it got too late. The guide took us to this basic restaurant down this dark street as there were no lights. Inside the restaurant it was dark but they bought out a few candles. More rice and beans.

We started walking at 6 am the next day, it was a few km to the start of the mountain and then a gradual rise through some forests followed by steeper and steeper climbs the higher we got. The mountain is only 3400 (11,100 ft) high so there was foliage all the way up to the top. Lots of wild flowers out along the way. Being the end of the rainy season it was a good time to be there. It took us about 7 hours to get up to the top. The guides had bought up a packed lunch that we sat and ate while looking out over the plains far below. Quite an amazing site. The mountain is quite steep so once on top it is almost like looking out of an aeroplane. The plains were almost directly below us and stretched off into the distant horizon. We could see over to other places we had visited on earlier trips, the Ngorongoro crater game park, Lake Eyasi, and part of the Great Rift escarpment running North-South.

The trip down was about 5-6 hours, making a 14 hour day. We were trashed by the time we got back to Katesh, those last few km along the flat seemed to take ages. We sank wearily into seats at the same restaurant as the previous night and had more rice and beans and a bottle of Coke. It was all so good.

The bus trip back to Babati was similar to the one over. They just keep piling more and more people into them, trying to maximise the cash intake per trip much to the discomfort of the passengers. The attendant got into a brief tussle with one passenger over what we never knew and wanted to stay out of.