DCXP’s panel of specialist leaders is one of the key ingredients to your successful and enjoyable adventure. They are professional in their approach, capable, level-headed, personable, qualified and experienced. Your leader’s primary responsibility is for the group’s safety and well-being and they will also manage your local crew to sure things ‘work’ for the team as whole and each team member.

Billi Bierling

Billi Bierling, has been mountaineering in the Himalayas for nearly 10 years and works between trips as a journalist (she is a qualified journalist from her former life!). Even though she comes from an Alpine town in Bavaria she started hiking and climbing in the UK, where she did a lot of rock in Wales, Scotland and the Lake District. She first went to Nepal in 1998, where she set foot on a glacier for the first time. However, she got hooked pretty quickly and kept on coming back for more. Billi has also done high-altitude mountaineering in Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador and Argentina. She moved to Nepal in 2004 and when she is not running around interviewing mountaineering expeditions for Miss Elizabeth Hawley, she gets out and leads expeditions to trekking peaks such as Mera and Island Peak for Chessell Adventures. In 2009 she made her first ascent of Mt Everest the highest peak on the planet.

Silvano Mahimbo Mvungi 

Silvano is DCXP’s man-on-the-ground in East Africa. The Tanzanian leads climbs of Kilimanjaro and Mount Meru and Mount Kenya, and his offsider David conducts fabulous private jeep safaris in the game parks of Tanzania and Kenya. Silvano lives adjacent to Kilimanjaro National Park and has climbed Kilimanjaro hundreds of times by every route. He knows Kili back to front, hid English is very good and he does an excellent job of managing trekkers ascent rates and our local crew of assistants, cooks and porters. Silvano is ably assisted by really good cooks who provide fresh tasty food from a tent kitchen