So you think you can hike? How resilient are you to mental and physical pressure? Can you withstand extreme fatigue in tough conditions?

One crispy cold and overcast day, I took a team of hikers, both beginners and advanced, to what was to be a 30km trek starting in Ngong, Kajiado County, 10km south of Nairobi.

The hike was to start at Savannah Sunset Resort at Ololosukuan at 8am and finish at the same place eight or nine hours later at 4pm. This was basically for endurance as the advanced team was preparing to take on Mt Elgon, on the border of Kenya and Uganda, in a week’s time.

The camp guide assured me that the terrain was not particularly challenging.

We started the hike at 8am at the camp a few kilometres from the Ngong Hills. We caught a good view of the majestic windmills as we set off north. The trek was mostly through narrow rural meandering dirt roads with gentle inclines. The team was energetic and we moved at a good pace.

After walking about 15 kilometres north we turned west and branched deeper into the shrub and thorny scrubland, with homesteads set farther apart from each other. After going up and down four rocky and not so gentle fault scarps, somebody pointed out that according to Google, we were bordering Kikuyu area, and Emmanuel, our guide, confirmed this later. We had walked north from the Ngong Hills and now the hills were no longer visible.

This should have been a sign that we had gone too far. We eventually stopped for lunch at what was supposed to be the halfway point of 20km. We were at the top of an escarpment, and, with the lovely green eastern Rift Valley floor to the east and Mount Suswa to the west, we planned how we would tackle the final 20km back to camp.

The guide pointed out that we were about five kilometres from the “road” that would take us back to the camp. By now, we were facing Mt Suswa, meaning that at some point we had walked west.

When we finally got to the “road,” some of the hikers gave up and decided they would take a bodaboda ride back to camp. Since the only one that turned up had a puncture, we decided to trek to the nearest “centre” to get help. The guide assured us that the centre was only five kilometres away.

But after the leading team and I had walked 18km or so, we were yet to see any “centre.” This was the hardest part of the walk because we were mentally prepared for only five kilometres. The thought of finding water, which had pretty much run out by this point, gave us the energy to move fast. We kept up a steady pace hoping to get to the water point faster. But, three hours later, we were still walking.

By then we had decided to do what hikers should never do. Which is ask how far we were from camp. The first gentleman we asked could not hide his shock and he looked at us as if to gauge whether we were serious. He told us that the centre was 18km away. But when he realised how crestfallen we were, he quickly changed the story and said it was just around the bend.

If only we knew the truth, we would have been psychologically prepared for what lay ahead. The fact that we did not know how far we still had to walk worked against us.

With 10km to reach camp, from a team of 17 hikers, more than half eventually gave up and had to be evacuated by taxi or bodaboda, and only six hikers decided to walk to the finish.

The last four people to be evacuated were picked up at 5.30pm, and they confirmed from the vehicle’s odometer that they travelled 10.4 kilometres to reach camp at about 6pm. It took the first couple evacuated by bodaboda on Mt Suswa side two hours to get to camp. The rest were picked up on the way with less than 10km to camp.

The guide took the last resilient group of six hikers through a shortcut in the dense shrub, and the sun set behind Mt Suswa as we were still bushwhacking to camp. It was now cold and dark.

Going on a hike means being prepared for any eventuality and the advanced hikers had packed head spotlights that came in handy. We eventually reached camp after 7pm to a warm meal and a roaring fire.

The secret to a successful hike is to remain positive whatever the challenges, and not to give in to discouraging talk. The pain is only for a short while. The euphoria of having achieved the objective, which is to get to the finish, stays on until the next hike.