Lemosho Route Kilimanjaro
Lemosho Route Kilimanjaro: The Complete Guide
If you ask ten different guiding companies which Kilimanjaro route they'd send their own family on, most of them will say Lemosho. Not because it's the cheapest or the shortest — it's neither — but because it gives you the best odds of actually standing on the summit, and it does it while showing you a side of the mountain most climbers never see.
I want to walk you through exactly what this route looks like day by day, what it costs, when to go, and how it compares to Machame, the other big contender. By the end you should have a clear picture of whether Lemosho is the right call for you.
What Makes Lemosho Different
Lemosho starts on the western side of Kilimanjaro, at Londorossi Gate, which puts it out of step with the busier southern approaches. The first couple of days you're walking through thick rainforest and then out onto the wide, open Shira Plateau, often without another group in sight. That's genuinely unusual on a mountain that hosts something like 30,000-plus climbers a year.
After the plateau, the route curves around and joins the same southern circuit that Machame climbers use — past Lava Tower, over the Barranco Wall, through Karanga, and up to Barafu for the summit push. So you get the quiet, scenic start that's unique to Lemosho, plus the dramatic middle section that most Kilimanjaro routes share.
A few reasons people (myself included, if I'm being honest) rate it above the alternatives:
- It's simply longer, which means more time to acclimatize before the altitude really starts to bite.
- You pass through almost every ecological zone on the mountain — rainforest, moorland, alpine desert, and the barren summit zone.
- The early days are quiet, which matters more than people expect once you're a few days into a trek.
- The numbers back it up: success rates on Lemosho tend to run higher than on the shorter, steeper routes.
Quick Facts
Fact | STATUS |
|---|---|
Starts at | Londorossi Gate (west side) |
Ends at | Row 2, Cell 2 |
Distance | Row 1, Cell 2 |
Length | Row 2, Cell 2 |
Summit | Row 1, Cell 2 |
Difficulty | Row 2, Cell 2 |
Success rate | Row 1, Cell 2 |
Sleeping | Row 2, Cell 2 |
Best months | Row 1, Cell 2 |
Row 2, Cell 1 | Row 2, Cell 2 |
Row 3, Cell 1 | Row 3, Cell 2 |
Row 4, Cell 1 | Row 4, Cell 2 |
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