A truly life-changing story and all you need to know to climb Mount Kilimanjaro.

Alexandra penned Kilimanjaro Uncovered in real time while preparing and during her climb on the Northern Circuit, a little-known hiking route away from the crowds to the top of Kilimanjaro. She provides valuable guidance for those interested in climbing themselves and tells a broader story of a truly life-changing experience.

PART I - PREPARATION: While Alex over-prepared her hike, she found a lack of concise, trustworthy information in other literature, including how to select the best tour operator. For the first time, Kilimanjaro Uncovered provides comprehensive, unbiased guidance how to organize a climb, based on in-depth research and analysis.

PART II - HIKING: On Kilimanjaro, Alex sees her own preconceptions turned on their heads. With the immediacy and intimacy of a journal, she tells her story with honesty, brutal at times, with self-deprecating humour, real passion and a zest for life. In easy-to-read conversational style she bares her heart with descriptions of what it means to feel vulnerable on such a trek, not least her own vulnerability, and how strength prevails when one feels most exposed.

"Alex's description of the final push to the summit is some of the best writing I have seen in ages. Her real-time view of experiences is gripping . . . will have you reading well into the night."

"The issue of porter welfare is taken up and is being acted upon even as this book goes to print. At a time when political correctness is killing the truth, the honest language here makes for a refreshing read. Kilimanjaro Uncovered is also, at times, laugh-out-loud funny - just like life. This makes it real."

"If only for the entertainment of sharing in the experiences of what it means to be human and 'proud to be wild' for nine days, I'd say, read Kilimanjaro Uncovered by Alex Tanbai."

"A fun, informative and inspiring story"

"This book will have you reading well into the night"

"Full of brilliant little nuggets of information that will help you prepare"

About the Author: Alexandra is a passionate traveler and explorer. Born in Austria and currently living in Switzerland, Tanbai is her pseudonym as a hobby writer. It is Mandarin Chinese and derived from the combination of the first character for Tanzania (tan) as well as her Chinese surname (bai). Incidentally, the two characters in combination have the meaning of being frank and honest, perhaps to the degree of confessing. And that's what Alexandra also hopes to reflect in her writing, an authentic account of her experience including innermost feelings and emotions, positive and negative, strong and vulnerable alike. Via her writing, she hopes to foster mutual understanding and thereby provide her tiny little contribution to making this world a better place. Kilimanjaro Uncovered is Alexandra's first publication. It started with a simple idea - to provide a review of a little-known hiking route as well as helpful preparatory information that she found lacking in other Kilimanjaro literature. It ended with an extraordinary story of a truly life-changing experience - written in real time while the author was unaware of being the subject of transformation. On Kilimanjaro, Alexandra found what no book could have prepared her for: herself. One year down the path, Alexandra's life changes couldn't be more profound - from a career in corporate finance into founding a social enterprise; from being a hopeless city chic scared of a week in the wild into a hopeful adventurer scared of a life in the city; from being intimidated by her first travel to Africa into planning to cycle all the way from Cairo to Cape Town. All because of Kilimanjaro, a simple idea and the courage to follow her intuition. There's only one constant, and that's change. But there will be many more stories, and they remain to be written. Follow @AlexandraTanbai on Twitter to stay tuned.