Mount Kilimanjaro stands on an otherwise featureless part of the East African plateau, on the Tanzanian side of the Kenya border, side by side with the smaller Mount Meru. Both mountains are extinct volcanoes, with Kilimanjaro actually being the agglomeration of three distinct volcanoes, whose violent creation is geologically associated with the creation of the Great Rift Valley, 100km to the West.

These two great mountains create a micro-climate around themselves and the rain-shadow created to their South and East supplies the beautiful and superbly fertile land in which the towns of Moshi and Arusha are situated, full of banana groves and coffee plantations. Mount Kilimanjaro National Park and Forest Reserve occupy the whole of Mount Kilimanjaro and its surrounding montane forest.

Kilimanjaro National Park comprises all of the mountain above the tree line and six forest corridors that stretch through the montane forest belt.