Forget Satellite Phones: Text Message from Kilimanjaro Mountain

Not only have I text messaged my wife on Kilimanjaro, I also have been receiving regular updates from one of my Israeli clients who is currently climbing the mountain with his 15 year old son. Yori, an airline pilot, has been planning to climb the Kilimanjaro with his son for the last year, and we at BootsnAll have been working to plan his trip. They have been training on some some small hills in Israel and doing regular hikes on the weekends. Yori is a good guy – taking his soon long distances to do the father son adventure trip.

It’s pretty amazing that someone can text message you around the world for about 10 cents. Each day, he emails me an update of the trip and let’s me know they have arrived in camp. I text message him back. I would encourage anyone to take their cell phones and test out text messaging to your friends and family. If you are in Tanzania, make sure to do your text messages at night, so your friends and family will get them early in the morning.

You know, I know some people are going to criticize me for advocating trekkers climbing Kilimanjaro to bring phones on the mountain, as it does take away from the feeling of being remote and out of touch from society, but as technology continues to progress, it’s only going to be something that we deal with more and more. All the guides on Kilimanjaro carry phones to communicate to the office. I hate hearing cell phones out in the outdoors too, but this kind of technology is not going away any time soon. Embrace it or become a bitter old curmudgeon.