The Plan was to sleep until 22:30, have dinner/breakfast and then ascend to the peak in 7h, in order to watch the sunrise from there. However, at this height and with my level of adrenaline/excitement, sleeping was not the easiest thing to do, hence I woke up for the maybe 10th time at ~22:45 after 2-3h of sleep in total.
Dinner was quick and without any appetite I forced down 3 bowls of soup and a plate of pasta. Sounds like a lot, but at 4600m it will give you reserves for maybe the next 600m of ascend and I should have forced myself to eat more in hindsight. We left relatively on time at 23:30 and started climbing. 45-60 minutes of hiking/climbing, a 5 minutes rest (or less, because you could not stop moving for too long or else you would get too cold) and repeat for 7-8 times in pitch darkness and a freezing cold. If you were looking up, you could only see the trail of headtorches of people, who got up earlier, in the dark and could only guess what sort of torture was lying ahead of you. After maybe the 3rd break I was so exhausted and shivering that my autopilot switched on and all I could do was breath and step in the rhythm of the music in my earphones while following the feet in front of me, without looking around. People were throwing up all over the place and as the tube of my waterblatter froze I was close to giving up, as I had no water to drink; But since giving up was not an option in my head I kept walking in a trance with a terrible headache. I am not sure if I was hallucinating or if my eyes were just too tired, but the stones in front of me and the shoes I kept following and looking at were taking different shapes for a splitsecond and my vision went blurry from time to time for a second at a time. Maybe at the 5th break or so the porters came with hot ginger tea with lots of sugar, which restored my storages a bit and warmed me up for maybe 5 minutes. But all my calories were burned and each step was shaky and wobbly. Soon we could see the Stella point at 5685m and because we took a bit too long the sun was already rising behind us with a breathtaking view. I dont know what my body was running on, but somehow, 2 steps up, 1 to catch my balance I made my way towards Mark, who gave me one of his Energy gels, without which, I am sure I would have passed out and never made it. Since we missed the sunrise from the peak we were in no rush anymore and took a short rest at stella point. Now, for the first time not looking at the shoes walking in front of me I could see what was going on around me:
Most people had adapted the same walking pattern as me, trying to catch balance every other step and taking a short break every 10-20 steps gasping for air. Others were pushed, carried, pulled or dragged along by porters. And some people were missing, took longer breaks or didn’t make it all the way. Peter was probably the worst, prettymuch hanging inbetween two porters getting pulled up the last meters and babbling weird sentences like "I am definitely...something" or "I am finding it struggling" (he is a native speaker I might add).
The hardest thing however was to stay awake and every minute my eyes would fall shut and someone had to wake me up or say something loud to get me back to reality, because at this altitude, falling asleep can be deadly due to a lack of oxygen.
("When oxygen concentrations drop from 19.5 to 16 percent, and you engage in physical activity, your cells fail to receive the oxygen needed to function correctly. At oxygen concentrations that drop from 14 to 10 percent, mental functions become impaired and respiration intermittent; at these levels with any amount of physical activity, the body becomes exhausted and at 6 percent or lower humans wont survive.") Just for reference, at the peak it had between 9-10% Oxygen and we were hiking for 8-9h upwards in that climate after 2-3 hours of sleep and a few exhausting days prior.
The peak was only 210m above us and we couldn't stay at that altitude for too long so we made our ways to Uhuru peak, which we could already see in the distance. The goal so close in front of me freed up some reserves I did not know existed and it was not too hard anymore, only every 300m-500m a break and not every 10 steps. I was able to nearly walk normally and gained some distance on Claire, Polina, Marianne and Alex who were with me, so that I could afford sleeping for 30seconds on each stop, knowing that they would wake me up when catching up.
The last 200m Alberto, who was already at the top, came towards us and we had finally made it. Take Picture. Leave. There really was no Energy left for Euphoria or excitement, I did not even realize what we had managed to do, as we were on our way back down, towards more than 10% Oxygen in the air. I fell asleep every time i had a break (every 3-5 minutes) and was woken up by Alberto speaking to me. We were taking a different route back down, at least I think so, because I didn't see anything on the way up, but the feet in front me. Back at Base Camp (4600m) at 13:00, I fell asleep in the tent on top of my sleeping bag with all my kit on and I don't remember how long I was able to sleep, but soon I was woken up by a porter telling me that we had lunch at maybe 16:00 and that we had to go down even further to 3000m. Hence, barely being able to get up I went to dinner to listen to Kilian (main guide) announcing that an incredible 31/33 had made it to the top, which given a normal 73% success rate amongst people who think they can make it and train for it. However there was a problem was; someone was still on their way down, after spending a bit too much time at peak and going was going crazy (more about that later). This meant that he had to send more porters up there and we would, also due to the state we were in, only go back down to 3700 for dinner at 21:00 and then sleep.

Nearly 24h awake after 2h of sleep, 1400m up and 2200m down...looking back up the mountain I only very late realized how much it was we had accomplished; looking at our faces on the picture at the peak probably also shows it quite well, not being able to really smile or pose...