Moshi

About Moshi

Moshi is the town at the foot of Kilimanjaro and the usual base for a climb: you sleep here the night before you start, and you come back here when you walk off the mountain. It is the regional seat of Kilimanjaro Region, sits at roughly 700 to 950 m above sea level, and on a clear morning the 5,895 m summit fills the sky above the rooftops. The town is small and easy to get around. It covers only about 59 km², which makes it the smallest municipality in Tanzania by area, and the 2022 census counted around 222,000 people. Kilimanjaro International Airport is about 40 km away along the Moshi to Arusha highway, which makes for a short transfer after a long flight. The national park headquarters is at Marangu, about 44 km from town. Kilimanjaro National Park recognises seven official routes. We run the Machame, Marangu, Rongai and Umbwe routes with Moshi as the base before and after the climb, and our 7-Day Machame Route Climb finishes with the drive back down to town on the last day. Our Lemosho climb is planned from Arusha, so it's worth checking your itinerary before you book flights. Two nights in Moshi make sense even for the fittest climbers. The first is for the briefing and the kit check with your guide the evening before you set off. The second, at the end, is for a hot shower, a proper bed and a celebration dinner before the flight home. The slopes above Moshi belong to the Chagga, the people native to this side of the mountain, and their farms grow coffee and bananas on the lower slopes. Catholic missionaries introduced Arabica coffee to the region in 1893, and the Kilimanjaro Native Co-operative Union, founded in 1929, still collects coffee from village societies representing more than 150,000 small farmers. A coffee tour on a family farm is the easiest way to see how it works, from the bush to the cup. A spare day before or after the climb is easy to fill. Materuni Falls, on the green slopes above town, is one of the local landmarks, and our Materuni Waterfalls, Coffee & Chemka Hot Springs Day Trip pairs it with a Chagga coffee farm and an afternoon at a clear hot spring. For wildlife without a long drive, our Mkomazi National Park Day Trip from Moshi gives you a game drive and gets you back in town for dinner. Moshi also has the Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Centre, a referral hospital with more than 450 beds, which is reassuring to know about if you are heading to altitude. If you are climbing, plan Moshi into your trip rather than treating it as a transit stop. A rested start and a comfortable finish make a real difference to how you enjoy the mountain, and both happen here.