Climbing Mount Kilimanjaro It is the world’s tallest freestanding mountain

It was somewhere around 4 a.m., and I was on a zig-zagging hike in Tanzania on the final push to the peak of Mount Kilimanjaro, the tallest freestanding mountain in the world. I couldn’t tell you how far I’d already walked or how far I had left — I could just see as far as my headlamp. The only indication of the distance still to go was the line of headlamps bobbing up ahead, but those lights just kept going up higher and higher. My head spun and my vision blurred from altitude. My mental reserves were spent. I felt like those headlamp lights way, way, way up were mocking me.