by Josh Gates
Once the rain passes at Shira Camp, Aron, Colin, and I enjoy a terrible meal together and then crowd into a single tent to keep warm and engage in our nightly ritual of playing Scrabble. It is New Year’s Eve. At ten minutes to midnight, we put down our wooden game tiles, throw on our down jackets, and shuffle out into the cold. Earlier in the evening we invited strangers from all over the camp to join us, and for the first few minutes it looks as if nobody is going to show. Then, tent by tent, lanterns come on, zippers unzip, and a group of hearty souls emerge to ring in the new year on the frigid side of a dormant volcano. Warm embraces erupt among German climbers, Japanese millionaires, and Tanzanian porters. An Australian woman has smuggled up a small bottle of champagne, which we all pass around and drink in shared communion near the roof of Africa.
I’m suddenly struck by the idea that people all over the world are gathering in places like this. Uncommon places. Unthought-of places. In my mind, New Year celebrations had always been the domain of city squares, crowded bars, and drunken house parties. I close my eyes and wander the world for a few moments to imagine a couple embracing on the deck of a sailboat in the Pacific, science crews popping champagne at the South Pole, submariners shaking hands at stations deep beneath dark waves, and nomads gathered by firelight in desert wadis. Something is shifting in me. At this very moment. My view is expanded somehow. I’m suddenly aware of an almost uncontrollable need to find these places, to be with these people. This is the moment that I become a traveler in earnest.
The next day our guide calls us aside and asks if we’d like to alter our route to a trail known as the Western Breach. This takes me by surprise, since we’d carefully chosen the Machame Route almost a year ago. It’s unorthodox to make a change like this mid-climb, and it takes a few minutes of listening to his pitch while carefully studying a map to realize what he’s proposing. The new route would be nearly two full days shorter and therefore financially beneficial to the porters, who could deposit us back to Moshi earlier and link in with their next group. We discuss the option, but it involves a much more direct ascent to a campsite perched inside the summit crater. Aron has already lost his appetite at this altitude, and climbing faster seems a dangerous gamble. We choose to stay on course. I don’t know it at the time, but this decision may actually save our lives.
An expedition from our outfitter traveling along this more direct route will be caught in a rock slide cascading from the summit. When the dust settles, three American climbers will be dead. Several more will be seriously injured and airlifted to Nairobi. News of this won’t reach my team until we return to Moshi. For now, the sight of a distant helicopter circling around the far side of the summit barely catches my attention.
Our last night is spent at Barafu Camp, perched at an uncomfortable 15,000 feet. All of us are feeling the effects of altitude at this point. I have a relentless headache pulsating through my temples. Aron, after being spoon-fed his dinner the night before, has mustered a recovery and is eating again. Colin, however, is on the decline. He has developed a deep cough that seems to worsen by the hour, and there are now a few broken capillaries on his face. Our nightly Scrabble game is played more out of obligation than enjoyment. We sit in a daze and attempt to place letters on the board. Our minds are doughy at this height, and our most impressive play is the word “dogs” for a measly six points. The game is abandoned, and we lie down in silence.
The final push to the summit of Kilimanjaro is particularly taxing. With almost no sleep, we rouse at eleven p.m. to gear up for the bid. At three miles above sea level, the temperature is well below freezing. We struggle into layer after layer of clothes, barely able to catch our breath. Our guide’s inspirational pep talk consists of one very straightforward sentence: “Keep walking.”
It is inky black. The narrow beam from my headlamp illuminates a dull blue-white circle of frozen earth two feet in front of me. With my hood pulled up and my goggles iced over, I can’t see anything else. Occasionally an ankle will drift into the far edge of my light, my only indication that I’m following someone. We walk uphill for more than six hours. Within the first hour, the water hose on Colin’s CamelBak freezes solid, and my beard becomes caked in ice. Every so often one of us will yell out, and we’ll stop to pee or rest our legs. It’s a long night of shared solitude; nobody has the strength to talk, and it’s too late to turn back now.
As the first incandescent glow of morning arrives, we lower our hoods and remove our goggles. My knees have had it, Aron seems exhausted, and Colin looks like death frozen over. His face is an unrecognizable shade of gray, and he is now coughing blood. After a few false rises on the trail, we encounter the huge wall of glacial ice that rests atop Kilimanjaro’s peak. In the far distance I spot a wooden sign and quietly begin to cry. I continue trudging forward, embarrassed that my teammates will see my tears, but I really can’t contain myself. I’ve looked at pictures of that sign a thousand times in preparation for this moment. Though I’m still too far away to read it, I begin to recite it in my head:
CONGRATULATIONS!
YOU ARE NOW AT
UHURU PEAK, TANZANIA, 5895M. AMSL.
AFRICA’S HIGHEST POINT
WORLD’S HIGHEST FREE-STANDING MOUNTAIN ONE OF WORLD’S LARGEST VOLCANOES
WELCOME
We take the last few steps together, touch the sign, and embrace. Emotions are now flowing freely, and we turn to look out at a vista that I’m far too poor a wordsmith to describe. The African Masai call it “Ngaje Ngai” or “The House of God.” We’ll just leave it at that.
As I look out over East Africa, past ice and down through grasslands, I am overcome by an electric sensation of accomplishment and joy. The thoughts that bubbled up in me a few nights before are now solidified. And though I don’t yet know how, I promise to make travel my way of life. The answer, as it turns out, is waiting for me at the bottom of the mountain.
The hike down to Moshi normally takes a few days. We manage to do it in only one on account of the fact that I’m pretty sure Colin is about to die. We bypass the midway camp to get him close to a hospital in the event that his condition declines even further. (When traveling in rural Africa, it’s important to not actually go to a hospital until the patient is on the brink of expiration, otherwise things are apt to get worse.)
Back at the hotel, we are stunned to learn about the deaths of the other climbers. We had met them, briefly. A shared cab ride into town to pick up last-minute supplies. I remember shaking their hands in a cramped jalopy. Now their surviving friends are crying uncontrollably. One man sits facedown on a stoop, cradling his bandaged head, and another, numb with grief, dials out on a satellite phone to tell his children that their mother is dead.
In the ensuing years, people have sometimes told me they’ve heard Kilimanjaro is “easy” to climb. What I took away from witnessing the broken climbers in Moshi was this: Everything is easy until it isn’t. It’s a philosophy that has served me well. Never underestimate any situation while traveling. At any moment, even a gentle slope can collapse. It’s best to be ready for it.
The Internet connection is predictably pathetic at the sweltering cybercafé in town. My e-mail loads in spurts as an overhead fan with a missing blade circumscribes an awkward arc above me. Preliminary news reports about the rock slide carried the headline “Three American Climbers Die on Kilimanjaro,” and my teammates and I have a lot of anxious e-mails to answer from friends and family. Among the many messages, I notice one from a producer in Los Angeles. It’s marked “Urgent.” I click to find a single sentence staring back at me:
“WHEREVER YOU ARE. COME HOME NOW.”
3: Meet Neil Mandt
* * *
Hollywood, California, 2006
* * *
The author of the e-mail is a Hollywood television producer named Neil Mandt, who is, without a doubt, the most welltraveled person I’ve ever met. To know Neil is to have a strong opinion about him. He’s a short-statured producer with a lot of irons
in a lot of fires, even if half those fires are the result of arson. He’s got a few Emmys, a very successful show on ESPN, a bachelor pad in the Hollywood Hills, and an expensive sports car. These are all facts of which Neil will happily remind you. At a cocktail party he once called me over to two Swedish lingerie models and demanded indignantly, “Tell these girls who I am.”
I replied, “Ladies, this is Neil. He’s kind of a prick.” Neil didn’t find this nearly as funny as the two girls did, but when underwear models are in play, all bets are off. Those are the rules, Neil. Those are the rules.
In a word, Neil is shameless. And I don’t mean that in a bad way. Just the opposite. His brash, straight-shooter disposition makes him a true original, not to mention a deliciously embarrassing wild card in public. He’ll talk to anyone at any time. No bones about it. As we were paying our check at a fancy steak house on Sunset Boulevard one night, he turned to me and whispered, “You see who that is?”
I gazed around the room, not focusing on anyone in particular.
“That’s Sharon Stone,” he exclaimed.
In fact, yes, it was Sharon Stone. In fairness, I should be forgiven for not recognizing her, since she was wearing a turban. An honest-to-God turban with a jewel right in the middle of it. She looked like Carnac the Magnificent.
“You want to go talk to her?” He grinned.
“No. NO. Neil, do not embarrass me in front of Sharon Stone. I’m begging you. Please.”
Neil slipped out of the booth and sauntered right up to her table while I tried to blend in with the wallpaper behind him. “Excuse me,” he barked.
I just about wilted as she looked up from her dinner. And then Neil said the single most improbable thing I’ve ever heard in my entire life. “I’m Neil Mandt,” he said. “I directed you in that Turkish TV show.”
“Wait, what?” I said.
Sharon Stone’s eyes went wide under her turban, which made her look like an alien from Mars Attacks! “Oh my GOD! Neil! How have you been?!” she beamed.
And that’s Neil Mandt for you. Just when you’re ready to write him off, he turns out to be a secret Turkish television director who’s on a first-name basis with Sharon Stone. The man’s a complete mystery.
I first met Neil when I moved into his old place, a sweltering apartment with no air-conditioning on the twelfth floor of a Hollywood high-rise. I spent most of my five-year residency in my underwear attempting to avoid heat exhaustion as blistering sunshine baked in through the large bay windows. These windows looked directly onto the roof of Grauman’s Chinese Theatre. Incidentally, on almost every postcard of Grauman’s, you can see my bedroom window above the copper green roof. Sometimes I look closely at those cards and wonder if I was there when they were photographed (and whether I had any pants on at the time). Neil had relocated to another unit in the building, and we occasionally chatted in the halls. One day while we rode together in the elevator, Neil turned to me and said, “I just sold a competition reality show to ESPN. You’d be perfect for it.” He asked me to turn in a two-minute audition tape.
The show was designed as a cross-country race where two teams would bullshit their way across America with no money and only the clothes on their backs. Along the way, the contestants would attempt to complete difficult sports-related challenges. Now, I’m not much for sports, but I am full of bullshit. Practically invented the stuff. This project seemed right up my alley. I immediately cleared my schedule of waiting tables at a steak house inside The Magic Castle, a private club for professional magicians (about which I could fill a three-volume exposé). Neil encouraged me not to simply sit in front of a camera and prattle on about why I’d be a good candidate for the show. “You need to make it interesting: talk your way into a place or fool somebody. That’s what the show is going to be all about.”
And so, a few days later, I got in my car with a friend and drove straight to Disneyland, famous for their ultratight security. Talking my way into the theme park seemed like a worthy challenge. My friend filmed me from afar as I marched up to the front gate. I told the security guard that my asthmatic brother and I had just exited the park and that he left his inhaler inside. When the guard informed me that he’d need to call a supervisor, I went for broke, adding that the little guy was in the throes of an asthma attack in the parking garage. There was no time to lose! The guard gave in, and within thirty seconds I was skipping down Main Street U.S.A. with a candy apple in my hand. I don’t even have a brother. Forgive me, Walt. Those were desperate times.
The tape went to Neil and then to channel executives, and I quickly became a contestant on ESPN’s inaugural reality show, Beg, Borrow & Deal. And beg, borrow, and deal I did. I sang the national anthem at a Major League Baseball game (sorry, Brewers fans, I was off-key). I caught a pass from an NFL quarterback (after more than a few fumbles in Giants Stadium) and even got a Boston Red Sox tattoo on the bottom of my foot (Go Sox). Over seventeen days, my team and I raced across a dozen states, eviscerated the competition, and won the show.
With this as preamble, I already knew that when Neil Mandt calls, interesting and immoral things often follow. But on this particular occasion, Neil’s Bat-Signal found me far from home. I had just completed a yearlong gauntlet to the summit of Kilimanjaro and was about to reward myself by going on safari with my mates. My professional plans beyond that involved getting as drunk as possible on a beach in Zanzibar. Neil would have to wait.
I touched down in Los Angeles a few weeks later. Neil had since e-mailed frantically, demanding that I contact him as soon as I landed. I called from the baggage claim at LAX. He welcomed me home with a touching “Where the hell have you been?” and told me to come straight to his office. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200.
Neil’s production company sits behind an anonymous door on Santa Monica Boulevard. The place is unnervingly dark and sprawling inside, giving visitors the feeling they might get mugged at any turn. Upstairs, Neil occupies a corner office that is completely overrun by cats. Written on the whiteboard behind his desk are titles of projects that Neil is working on, both real and never to be realized. Most of these projects are unlikely sounding at best. On this particular day, Neil is sitting in an oversized executive chair stroking a kitten, like Ernst Blofeld. The dry-erase board seems to have been wiped almost clean save for the title of a questionable home makeover show concocted by Neil. Written in thick blue marker are three words: “Extreme African Village.” I can’t even bring myself to ask, and I silently pray that this isn’t the project for which I’ve been summoned. I tip a chair forward, spilling out a couple of felines, and take a seat. I’m filthy. My beige safari shirt is streaked with dirt, and my red beard has been growing for over a month. I actually have one of those neck beards at this point, which makes me look like a grimy Civil War reenactor. “I’ve sold a show to SciFi that I want you to host,” Neil says, flatly. (It will be a few years before the Channel becomes “Syfy,” courtesy of a transformative rebranding that trades in two full-time vowels for two part-time vowels.)
“What’s the concept?” I ask.
“It’s about a guy who goes around the world hunting monsters.” He smiles. I let that soak in for a few seconds. I proceed to point out that my résumé doesn’t exactly read like Van Helsing’s. Though I’m well traveled, to date I have little experience that would qualify me to work with monsters, other than serving overpriced steak to professional magicians.
“You’re perfect,” Neil explains. “They don’t want a nut. They want a real traveler, a guy who isn’t afraid to turn some rocks over. Someone funny.”
I’m not taking any of this very seriously. You have to understand that almost every conversation about potential projects in Hollywood is a conversation about nothing. Industry people make a second career out of discussing things that are “in the works.” There’s an entire anthology of phrases like this that are utterly meaningless. People might tell you that they “have a few projects cooking” (eating at Quiznos later), some “exc
iting meetings coming up” (blood bank at one p.m.), or are “changing their representation” (moving back in with their parents). The idea that I’ve got a shot at being a modern-day TV Indiana Jones isn’t something that I’m willing to consider with any amount of gravitas.
“So, what happens now?” I ask incredulously.
“Go to this address tomorrow at eleven a.m.”
I reach over and take a Post-it note out of Neil’s hand.
“Oh, and don’t change your clothes. Don’t even shower. Come just like this.”
I begin to protest and Neil cuts me off. “Just. Like. This. Trust me.”
I relent, surrendering to the idea and to another night in these filthy clothes. The whole thing feels like it’s shaping up to be a disaster.
But hey, at least I’m not hosting Extreme African Village.
4: Underdressed for Success
* * *
Universal City, California, 2006
* * *
As I drive to the SciFi offices the next morning, there are a few key things I don’t yet know. Most importantly, that Neil has already filmed a pilot presentation of this monster-hunting extravaganza. Though almost all of the footage from this deliciously awful pilot was disposed of in a top-secret NBC incinerator, I later learn that Neil himself acted as the host (naturally). The highlight of the piece was Neil’s interview with a bewildered South American farmer, conducted while an assistant producer in a full Chupacabra costume performed a reenactment in an adjacent chicken coop. SciFi wisely deemed that the initial concept undergo a little retooling.