Which Kilimanjaro route should you choose?

Short answer: take Lemosho or the Northern Circuit over eight or nine days. Route choice matters, but duration matters more — five-day itineraries succeed roughly half the time, eight-day itineraries exceed 85–90%.

Kilimanjaro requires no technical climbing on any of its seven established routes. You walk up. What stops people is altitude, and the only reliable defence against altitude is time.

The number that actually predicts success

Altitude sickness, not fitness, is why people turn back. Your body needs time to produce the extra red blood cells that make 5,895 m survivable, and that adaptation happens on a schedule you cannot rush by being athletic.

Approximate summit success by itinerary length:

Marathon runners fail on five-day itineraries. Unremarkably fit people in their sixties succeed on eight-day ones. This is the single most useful fact in planning a Kilimanjaro climb.

The routes

Lemosho (7–8 days) — the best all-round choice. Approaches from the west through rainforest, crosses the Shira Plateau, then traverses beneath the Southern Icefields before summit night. Excellent acclimatisation profile, spectacular scenery, and quiet for the first two days. Costs more because it is longer.

Machame (6–7 days) — the most popular route, sometimes called the "Whiskey" route. Steeper than Lemosho with a genuinely good climb-high-sleep-low profile. Busy, and the campsites feel it. Take the seven-day version; the six-day one cuts the acclimatisation day that makes the route work.

Northern Circuit (9 days) — the longest route and the highest success rate. Circles the northern slopes, which almost nobody else does, so it is the quietest option on the mountain. If you have the time and budget, this is the strongest choice.

Rongai (6–7 days) — the only approach from the north. Drier, which makes it the sensible choice during the rains, and much quieter. Gentler gradient but a less varied landscape, and the acclimatisation profile is weaker than Lemosho's.

Marangu (5–6 days) — the only route with huts rather than tents, and often marketed as the "easy" route. It has the lowest success rate of any route, because it is the shortest and ascends and descends by the same path, giving poor acclimatisation. The huts are the only real advantage. Choose it for the accommodation, not because it sounds easier.

Umbwe (6–7 days) — steep, direct and demanding. Genuinely hard, poor acclimatisation, low success rate. For experienced high-altitude walkers only.

Shira (7–8 days) — similar to Lemosho but starts by driving to 3,500 m, which skips useful early acclimatisation. Lemosho is a better version of the same route.

What separates a good operator from a cheap one

Fees are fixed: park fees, camping fees and rescue fees come to roughly US$800–1,000 per person for a seven-day climb regardless of who you book with. A quote much below US$1,800 is cutting elsewhere.

Ask three specific questions:

1. How often do you check oxygen saturation? Twice daily with a pulse oximeter, recorded, is the standard. An operator who does not carry one is not managing your safety.
2. What are your porter wages and load limits? The Kilimanjaro Porters Assistance Project sets guidance on fair pay and a 20 kg maximum. Underpaid, underequipped porters are the industry's real cost-cutting mechanism.
3. Do you carry supplementary oxygen and a stretcher? Both should be standard, not extras.

Practical advice

Pay for the extra day. It typically costs US$200–350 more on a trip already costing thousands, and it is the difference between the summit and turning back at 4,600 m.

Best months: January to mid-March, and June to October. Avoid the long rains in April and May, when the trails are miserable and views are scarce.

Train by walking downhill. Most people expect the ascent to hurt. It is the 2,000 m descent on the final day, on tired legs, that produces the injuries.

Success rates vary by operator and are self-reported; treat any specific figure as indicative.