It Is Possible: Preparing for Mount Elgon

I meet my conference organizer Irene in the lobby of the hotel. She's waiting to meet us there, just as planned, surprisingly calm for someone who's running a conference the next day.

In fact, she has left the rest of her day open to help us plan our Mount Elgon trek. She walks us through the sweltering heat to the UWA (national parks) office at the edge of town.

Lonely Planet has told us it's possible to hike from Uganda into Kenya over the mountain, but we don't have any more details than that. At the office, we ask the woman behind the desk: is it possible?

For a ranger, she is amazingly unhelpful. She thinks it's possible, but doesn't offer any information about the crucial piece where we get our passports stamped– maybe at the immigration office in town? She won't tell us why you might choose one trail versus another.

She sells us a map and gives us the phone number of someone in Kenya– maybe affiliated with their parks service, but it's not clear.

Maybe I'm not being fair. She tells us the (very high) price for foreigners to be in the park, the number of days for each trail, what town we go to for each trailhead, calls to arrange porter service. But I'm frustrated, because all we really want is for her to tell us what to do to legally cross to Kenya. She thinks it's possible, but she doesn't know.

Irene walks us out of the office, to the immigration office down the street, to get Rwandan exit stamps as advised. But after waiting a few minutes in the blistering sun, we're told this cannot be done there. You have to go to the border. The man writes down the names of the border crossing points to the north and the south of the mountain. But we are hoping to cross on the mountain, not to the north or south of it.

Stymied, we retreat. Irene, who has already gone far and above the call of duty, makes some phone calls. Is this crossing possible? Everything is possible, she says, but maybe you have to know someone.

Through WhatsApp, she gets in touch with someone named Peter, with the UWA. There is a phone conversation, then he is supposed to send her some information and phone numbers. Peter implies that the stamping of passports will be no problem, but he doesn't outright say as much. Details are not forthcoming.

We wait, but a response from Peter does not arrive. Eventually, we three go out to dinner and go to bed.

Saturday dawn, the sky streaks orange, yellow, and blue behind the waterfalled ridge Bufumbo.

Eileen and I take our breakfast in the hotel restaurant– classic East African milky tea, omelette, white bread.

It's conference day, so I go to see the talks. Eileen goes into town to purchase our park passes (we decide not to bet that the card reader near the trailhead will work) and buy groceries for the hike.

We meet up again at lunch, a huge conference lunch of rice, mashed matoke, potatoes, two kinds of meat, papaya and watermelon– my favorite East African meal so far! Then back to our errands until the conference close.

Between the heat, the energy of giving a talk, and the big lunch, I'm too tired to go out to dinner. I eat the banana I saved from breakfast.

Irene has a couple of phone numbers for me from Peter. These are two people from the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS). So I use Eileen's Skype credit and the hotel wifi to call the first number, Mr. Gadacha.

The guy picks up! He tells me to email him the details, gives me an email address. This seems official enough; I'm reassured. I send the email.

Eileen wants me to check over the for items she's bought for our hike. She spreads them on the bed while we await a return email.

We have a few constraints on our backpacking food. The usual backpacker ideal is light, dense calories: often dehydrated meals. But we keep it extra light by carrying no cooking equipment– not even a bowl this time.

It has to be food you can eat without cooking, volumetrically small enough to fit in our packs, salty so we hydrate right, hopefully tasty. Crucially, it has to be enough.

I read the packaging, discard outer boxes, calculate calories: I figure I'll need at least 3,000 per day. I make a stack: sardines in oil, powdered coconut milk, groundnuts, biscuits, chocolate bars. We clear the minimum.

I check for an email response. The email has bounced: no such address. So I Whatsapp the details to the guy. It sends but is not received; his phone must be offline.

We go to bed, wake up. This is the day we plan to bus to the trailhead and lose all connectivity. I check WhatsApp, hopeful for a message like "you're cleared and will be met at the border".

There is a message! It says, call this guy Mr. Chepso at this number. He'll arrange things.

Ok. So we go back out into the hall on the other floor of the hotel (Wifi doesn't reach our room) and call Skype to phone. A man picks up, and I explain our situation. He begins to respond, then the line goes dead. I redial and get a message that says there's no such number.

Checkout is at ten, so we go to pack up.

Water filtration is part of our packing routine. We are endlessly filtering tap water into our bottles, squeezing tap water through the micron filter to strain out any bacteria. The filter that was so fast a month ago is much harder now– it must be working, if it's clogging.

I should have brought the filter cleaner. I'm keeping my rock climbing hands strong, I console myself as I squeeze another sixteen ounces through. It's a nice monotonous distraction from the fact that we probably don't have what we need to cross the border between two unfamiliar countries.

It's ten, so we vacate the room and retreat to the hall. I check WhatsApp to see if Mr. Dadacha has said anything new, but he hasn't. I call the dead number again.

Miraculously, the number works! The man is there. "No problem," he says, "It is possible. What time and what day shall we meet you at the handover point?"

A bit dazed, I tell him. He confirms, and confirms that it will be possible to cross the border. We hang up, and I turn to Eileen. "He says he'll meet us. So, I guess, let's go?"

So we heft our packs and leave the hotel (and our last chance at communication technology) to seek a bus to the trailhead.

To be continued...

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