As I waited to board a Kenya Airways flight to Dubai, I tried to make sense of 10 days spent outside of my comfort zone.

My friend Yatin Patel and I spent five days in Tanzania climbing to the summit of Kilimanjaro, Hemingway's geological siren that stands 19,340 feet above sea level. We suffered through more than 50 miles of hiking uphill with 20-pound packs, no showers and weather that went from balmy to freezing in a matter of hours. As a pampered American, I would say we roughed it, big time.

I learned how the body handles pain and how the mind pushes past it.

There is nothing like trudging through an apocalyptic desert landscape shrouded in fog and light snowfall. It is difficult to explain the frustration and exhilaration of scaling the side of a cliff in pitch blackness and subzero weather for seven hours while following the back of a guide's boots illuminated by a head lamp.

We didn't know where we were going, just that it hurt — and Uhuru Peak, Africa's highest point, waited somewhere in the darkness.

"It's a little steep," said our guide, Godenough Mushamko, a portly fellow who, at 28, has climbed Kilimanjaro 66 times.

At 18,000 feet, the altitude ambushed me. I could barely breathe, and my water bottles were frozen solid. My head pulsed, my legs wobbled like a newborn calf's and I saw things that were not there. Then I started throwing up and falling down.

As we reached the summit, however, I saw the most amazing sunrise.

A bright orange orb burst through a bumpy white blanket of clouds that encircled the mountain. The ice field and glacier glistened white and orange in the morning light.

Yatin and I were able to force smiles through bleeding, wind-burned lips before I puked again.

Despite months of running and healthy living, I was not prepared for the climb, but I made it.

I've visited developing countries before, but I've never seen squalor, extreme poverty, natural beauty and flecks of capitalism so intertwined as they are in Africa.

Traveling along the Rift Valley to a safari on Lake Naivasha, Kenya, I saw thick green forests while traveling a roadway lined with hip-high trash piles and dilapidated wooden huts. Kids dressed in tattered clothes talked on cell phones and herded gaunt livestock.

In some places in Kenya and Tanzania, you can't find clean water or electricity, but you can buy a cell phone, no problem.

Aside from getting harassed by cops in Tanzania for "driving without a fire extinguisher" (seriously) and being interrogated at lunch by Kenyan immigration officers who thought we were smugglers, it was a great trip.

I'm not sure when I will return to Africa, but I learned a lot about how I handle adversity.

Reach Peter Boylan at pboylan@honoluluadvertiser.com.