My first hike: A 'peak' experience at Mt Longonot that I wasn't prepared for

The urge to have the hiking experience was rekindled after seeing the videos on TikTok about people who were stuck on Mount Everest, where most people raised questions like "why do people do crazy things like hiking?" "Why do people love hurting themselves?"

After some considerations, due to my curiosity, I imagined what the worst that could happen if I hiked, and I could not trace any worst-case scenario.

I decided to jump into a hiking experience that my friend invited me to. Saturday morning, we arrived at Mount Longonot National Park at around 10 am. It was quite chilly, but we knew what lay ahead.

Basically, Mt Longonot is in Nakuru County, and the distance from our starting point to the rim was 3.1 kilometers. Not tough, right? That's what I thought because I had in mind that the hike was low-key, similar to my morning and evening walks. By morning walks, I mean from my house to the bus stop and back when I am done with my daily errands.

We started on high spirits as the group ahead of us came there purposefully to relieve their "traumas". They were complaining a lot about the political landscape of our country and mimicking different political leaders.

They backed this up with shouts of "Jowi! Jowi!” paying respect to the late former Prime Minister, I thought. The best part was that they had put on loud music and kept us engaged and entertained.

 Within less than 30 minutes, their noise faded; that's when it clicked that this was not my day-to-day stroll, it was an actual hike, by which I mean walking along shredded terrain, with so many meanders, going up and down a rocky path, and really slim roads.

The weather at least did us justice because it was not sunny, but that did not mean that 3.1 kilometers up the mountain would be reduced by any chance, not to mention the 7.2 kilometers awaiting, which is going around the crater. I was so drained that I took some stops along the way.

Some people were going down the mountain and encouraged us with words like “you guys are halfway through". This, to me, was not an encouragement but a threat because I was too tired to think of even reaching half the mountain.

One hour later, we finally made it to the resting point, which marked half the mountain. I had already given up and told my friend that I would just go back down. I was quite nauseous, dizzy, my whole body was screaming for help, I even thought that I would nosebleed in the next minute.

I had glucose to get some energy and gulped water, which was refreshing and gave me more courage to go ahead. I imagined how I would miss out if I didn't get to see the top of the mountain or even the crater itself.

After some minutes of rest, we continued walking, more tired but determined to see the crater, which I highly doubted that I could reach. To my utter shock, we heard shouts of people saying that they have arrived, which was a clear signal that we were almost there.

We kept the spirit and finally arrived at the mountain top. It was such a magnificent scene, the panoramic views of the lake and the Great Rift Valley, which reminded me of the geography maps that we used to read and interpret.

I was proud of myself and felt that the struggle was really worth it. This gave me more energy to even join the people who were going around the crater, which was more fun. We walked up to the highest peak, which is "Kilele Ngamia". From there, everything else was not so hard.

We walked around witnessing the magnificent creation for around 3 hours and went down the mountain for nearly 1 hour.

I was not as tired as I expected, hence got to know that it's always good to give it a shot. I would like to go for more hikes and get more experiences like this. It honestly boosted my confidence and reminded me the quote by Napoleon Hill that states "Our only limitations are those we set up in our own minds."