Walking on the moon
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I was getting quite skilled at negotiating bogs, springing between firm tussocks and partially submerged logs. After two daysʼ constant rain, shafts of sunshine warmed my face and sunbirds darted between towering lobelia stalks. What a magical place. Then the tussock crumpled beneath me, my trekking pole sank to the hilt and my wellies filled with mud.
ʻI wish that some person devoted to his work, some lover of Alpine climbing, would take the Rwenzori in hand and make a thorough work of it,ʼ challenged Henry Morton Stanley to the Royal Geographical Society in 1901.
Just north of the equator, on Ugandaʼs border with the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Rwenzori have been linked to the fabled Mountains of the Moon, which – according to ancient geographer Ptolemy – fed the Nile with their snows.
Despite topping 5 000m, the first European sighting wasnʼt until May 1888, by Stanley during his expedition to rescue Emin Pasha, the governor of a remote colonial outpost, from which fewer than 200 of Stanleyʼs 700 men returned.
The tripʼs moral descent is captured by the actions of Irish whiskey heir James Sligo Jameson, who bought a 10-year-old African girl for six handkerchiefs, gave her to cannibals, and sketched her being eaten. However, on the plus side, the expedition located the nebulous Lunar Mountains.
