Some women turn 60 and buy a Chanel bag. Others climb Mount Kilimanjaro. When Alexandra Kinias, CEO and founder of the Women of Egypt Network, invited her friend Amany Khalil to celebrate six decades of life on the summit of the tallest mountain in Africa, Tanzania’s Mount Kilimanjaro, she did not expect Amany’s response would be: “Yalla, let’s do it.” But Amany was always up for a challenge—like becoming the first Egyptian mother over the age of 50 to finish a full Ironman Race, a triathlon that ends with a full marathon, and the first Egyptian woman to finish the Boston Marathon. So, unsurprisingly, she followed up her nonchalant agreement with: “What if we invite more Egyptian women over 50?” And that’s how Kiligyptian Women was born. After a recruitment process that involved floating the idea to friends who might also be up for the challenge, Amany found Jomana, who had once walked from Aswan to Cairo in 24 days. And with each addition after that, she began to feel more hopeful. Soon, the team had eight members: Amany, Alexandra, Jomana, Dina, Ninette, Dalia, Cherry, and Safa. Together, with a coach who advised them on how to get used to the harsh conditions their journey would require, they started running at noon under the burning sun. Then, they took it up a notch in January and April 2024, making two trips to Sinai to climb Egypt’s highest peak, Mount Saint Catherine—but it was still less than half the height of Mount Kilimanjaro. August 2024 came sooner than expected, and the women packed their bags for Tanzania, where they would hike for eight days—six up, two down. “We Egyptian women like to be in our comfort zone,” Amany tells SceneTraveller. Sleeping in tents, eating meat they couldn’t quite name, with monkeys howling in the background, was definitely a step outside of it. But that would be the least of their troubles. After the first two days, the climate shifted from tropical to desert but they kept climbing, setting up camp at night with the help of some 32 local guides. Then it was time for the summit. They were supposed to leave base camp at midnight—by 2 AM at the latest—to make it there by sunrise. But they were hit with a windstorm. They tried to wait it out for a couple of hours but eventually the guides told them it was getting too late. “And then they just said, ‘We’re going to have to go’,” Amany recalls. That day, the wind howled against the tent she shared with her friend Safa. It sounded as if they were inside of a washing machine. “It was scary, but we really supported each other,” Amany shares. “We tried our best not to get discouraged or demotivated by saying, ‘It's going to be over soon’.” They also passed the time by playing Shakira’s ‘Waka Waka', lying on their backs and peddling their feet in the air to the music as the wind beat the tent like a drum. “We danced not to feel.” Throughout the whole ordeal, and even after, Amany’s role was the team cheerleader. She was the voice pushing the group forward as they finally began their ascent in complete darkness, shouting “bravoooo!” even as the air thinned and the elevation rose. The rest of the group hiked in silence, concentrating on the rocky path in front of them, trying to conserve their oxygen. It was 5+ layers-cold on the way up, a temperature that kept dropping the closer they got to the summit. Suddenly the first sign came into view. The group whooped and cheered as Alexandra approached what they thought was the summit. “Happy birthday!” They shouted. Alexandra started crying. And then the guides broke the news—there was still another 700 meters to go. Two Kiligyptian women stopped right there, their bodies not able to take them any further. An hour later, Amany was the first to see the real summit. Now she was the one crying. “Finally! The peak of Mount Kilimanjaro. Here I am walking towards it,” she narrates in a video, panting between words, as she climbs the clouds, rising to 5,895 meters above sea level. For a while, Amany was alone at the peak. There was no one in sight. No rangers, no friends, no guides as her witness. The weather was not the picturesque sunlit landscape she may have hoped for, but that moment at the top was serene nonetheless. And then the Kiligyptian women began to trickle in one by one. They celebrated Alexandra’s 60th birthday again at the top—this time for real. In their group picture at the summit, the six women that made it hold ‘Kiligyptian Women’ shirts above an Egyptian flag, held taut by their guides below. “For me, Kilimanjaro was all about the mind,” Amany shares. “I never wondered why I couldn’t do it. Never let the fact that I’m a woman, that I’m over 50, dictate anything. Instead, I just kept asking myself ‘Why not?’” In many ways, that question has come to shape all the Kiligyptian Women’s lives. While the group has shifted in number and composition, the question has taken the Kiligyptian women up Mount Toubkal in Morocco, the highest peak in North Africa, and soon, it will carry them to Machu Picchu, where it will be Amany’s turn to celebrate her birthday in the clouds.