Our second day started at 6:30 a.m., when one of the porters brought us tea and cocoa. Breakfast was served in our "mess tent" at 7:30, and consisted of toast, fruit, porridge, and some donut-like sticks. We packed up our gear and left at 8:30 to head for Shira Camp, at an elevation of about 12,500 feet.

The trail to Shira Camp was steep most of the way. At some places we were climbing and scrambling up rocks. Again, porters and other hikers passed us up along the way to our camp.

After lunch, we had a more pleasant ascent through beautiful flowering shrub-like plants for an hour or two. We finally reached the top of a ridge, and a huge expanse of valley spread out in front of us. It was the Shira Plateau.

Cresting the ridge and seeing the beautiful plateau of heather-like shrubs and rocks unfold before us was one of the "highs" of my climb. We would have many hours of strenuous uphill and downhill hiking during the trip, constantly looking down, watching our feet and where we stepped, and we would feel exhausted from the effort and think, "Why are we doing this to ourselves?" Suddenly we would see something amazingly beautiful—special, intense moments—that made the hours of effort and tiredness fade away. There seemed to be one or two of those moments each day for me, which along with my ultimate goal of being "set free" by the mountain, helped keep me going.

We only had a short hike on level and downhill ground from the crest of the ridge before reaching our campsite. Here, the campers were much more spread out than at the first night’s camp. We had a beautiful view of the top of the mountain from our tent; we saw the face of the mountain top change as the sun set and clouds swirled around it.

In this and the next three camps we had the luxury of our own, private loo to use (much to the envy of some other Kili trekkers, who came over to examine our square, green plastic, tent-like enclosure and were heard to exclaim, "They have a f***ing toilet!"). Although the enclosure was small and the toilet seat with collapsible legs was not exceptionally steady, we were happy to have the facility to use, particularly during daylight hours on a mountain that at higher elevations provided little in the way of cover when nature called.

We got into camp at 2:30 and rested. Tomorrow would be a long day. It was difficult to sleep again that night, and it became more difficult as the night wore on. Sometime in the early hours of the morning the wind started whipping our tent around to the point where I thought it would collapse! It sounded like someone was rummaging though our luggage, and side of the nylon tent (which was not spacious to begin with) kept hitting me in the head! The tent would bend inward under the pressure of the wind whipping across the flat plain and I thought about what we would do if the tent actually did collapse—try to put it upright? Wake up the porters for help? Or just lie there with the flimsy tent collapsed upon us and wait it out till morning? Luckily, the tent held up and we weren’t forced to choose among the options.