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About Mount Kilimanjaro
 Called the 'Roof of Africa', the highest freestanding mountain in the world, rises majestically from the Tanzanian plains close to the Kenyan border. Although long dormant, it remains one of the world's largest volcanos and technically is not extinct - the Kibo crater last puffed some smoke as recently as 200 years ago! The mountain lies just 3 degrees (330km / 205 miles) south of the Equator and can be seen from more than 160km / 95 miles away. At 5,895m / 19,340' it is the highest mountain in the world that can be climbed without technical equipment.
Kilimanjaro is first documented by the ancient world to the north when the geographer Ptolemy of Alexandria recorded a 'great snow mountain' in the 2nd century AD. In the 13th and 14th centuries Chinese traders from the east plying their trade in the Indian Ocean recorded a great mountain inland of Zanzibar. In 1849 a German missionary reported discovering a snow-capped mountain near the Equator but was ridiculed by the Royal Geographical Society, and it was only in 1889 that the matter was put beyond doubt in Europe when the mountain was scaled by a German geographer and an Austrian mountaineer.
Originally part of British East Africa (Kenya), the mountain was 'transferred' into German Tanganika (now Tanzania), supposedly as a present from Queen Victoria to her German cousin, although this is thought not to be true.
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