Hans is in a bad way too, swaying all over the place. We stop again for a bit. The guide's not exactly thrilled. He's freezing too. When we're about to set off again I notice he's nearly fallen asleep. I come to with a vengeance and shake him by the arm. He opens his eyes, says, ‘Yes, yes,’ and sets off again. I begin to wonder if the two of us can manage with just one guide. What would we do if something happened to him or one of us lost it completely? I mustn't think like that. I ask him once again how far it is to Stella Point. ‘For me, six minutes,’ he says. ‘For you, I don't know.’ Well at least that means it can't be hours away.
I pull my last vestiges of strength together and think of the disappointed expression on my daughter's face when I tell her that her mother didn't make it to the top. Though, God knows, it's nothing to be ashamed of: this is sheer torture, for us at any rate. For the likes of Messner (the famous mountain climber) who picnic on peaks like this, it would no doubt be just a stroll. We rest again, pull ourselves together, and forge on. Hans looks at the altitude meter and says Stella Point's still a hundred meters above us. I can hardly believe it's so far. The guide takes our knapsacks and immediately we feel a bit better. We struggle onwards. Then suddenly the guide reaches out his hand and says, ‘Congratulations, you have reached Stella Point.’
I'm knocked out. Here we are at Stella Point which doesn't look anything special, and the altitude meter is out by a hundred meters. But then I turn round and see the sunrise. For the first time in more than six hours we can see more than dark rocks and blackness. This thin stripe of deep red is hugely moving, but it doesn't quite justify foraging under all my jackets to find my camera. It's even colder up here than it's been so far. Somehow or other I clamber into my waterproof over-trousers although none of it fits properly. What matters is keeping warm.
Hans keeps saying: ‘I feel so bad, it can't be good for you up here.’ I don't feel too bad though now: I don't feel sick and I haven't got a headache. But then I feel next to nothing at all. I'm completely drained and stripped of all emotion. Our guide is urging us on, and I hear Hans say: ‘Come on, let's keep going, we've got this far, we'll manage the rest.’ If he can be that optimistic in the state he's in, I simply have to go on. Later I will thank him. If it hadn't been for swaying old Hans, I would have seen no point in continuing.
It gradually starts to get brighter now and we can see that we're now trekking up along the rim of the volcanic crater to our right. I still have to lean on my sticks to pull myself along. To our left now the great wall of the glacier slowly starts to appear. I sit down and tell myself that this would make a great photo. When the guide sees me struggling to get my camera out of the bag, he helps me and even takes the first picture. It's just gone six a.m. and the sun is rising fast now as we fight our way upwards along the rim of the crater. Hans is wobbling from side to side more than ever and I'm starting to get really worried about him. Our guide is a good ten meters ahead of us.
We have to squeeze round a little rocky outcropping right on the edge of the crater. All of a sudden I'm wide awake as I see Hans sway and yell at him, but it's too late. He topples over backwards head first. I leap across and grab hold of him as his torso hangs over the edge of the crater. The guide comes rushing back too and gets him back on to his feet. From now until we reach the summit, he keeps a tight hold on him.
Great walls of ice now rise up against the gentle pink of the sky. At one point I hear myself sob. I'm actually sobbing to myself and don't recognize my own voice. I simply can't control my tears and don't even know why I'm crying. Is it exhaustion? Or the beauty of the view? Or just realizing that I'm up here on the roof of Africa? I simply don't know. I hear the guide say: ‘Stop crying. You're wasting energy.’ But I can't halt my loud, deep sobbing until we actually reach Uhuru Peak. It's seven a.m. as our guide congratulates us on reaching the summit. He's exhausted too even though he's been here a hundred times.
Apart from us, there are another six people on the top of the mountain. I sit down next to the sign marking the summit and take my waterproof over-trousers off so we can take a decent photograph. The guide advises us to hurry up: we ought to begin the descent as soon as possible given how ill Hans is feeling. He takes a few photos of us with half-frozen fingers. I automatically take a few pictures of the panorama and wait for a huge surge of emotion to overwhelm me, but it doesn't happen. It doesn't even occur to me to fulfill my original intention to look over the border into my dearly loved Kenya. I just feel empty, a husk, a zombie.
Hans feels the same and is white as a sheet. He's sorry to be here instead of his father. He never thought he'd reach the summit, being a smoker. It's time to go. As we edge along the crater we pass the next group of zombies. They too say nothing but just plod on towards the summit. We find ourselves running and sliding down a steep slope of volcanic ash. It's like jumping down a mountainside covered in deep snow, except that it's dust.
Hans has bad headaches and keeps tripping over his own feet. I'm worried whether he'll ever make it as far as the camp which is 1,200 meters vertically beneath us. My training pays off here although I'm incredibly thirsty. Even though it's really warm by now Hans won't take off his gloves, hat or jacket. He worries me more and more because his speech is getting confused. I keep hearing him say: ‘It can't be good for you, feeling as bad as this.’ We stop for a rest and a drink. I give him a painkiller for his headaches and a couple of aspirin to thin his blood.
We all tuck into my dried fruit, and after a couple of minutes he's starting to feel better. But even though he's sweating he refuses to take anything off. The guide puts his arm around him to support him and the two of them set off together downhill at a run. It takes two hours of sliding and running downhill before we see the camp below us. I recognize the others from our group looking up at us and wave to them. Nobody waves back. Finally we make it back to the camp, nine hours after we left.
The mood is less than euphoric. The native assistant guides are the first to come up and congratulate us. Then Petra's boyfriend comes up and congratulates us too, but with not much enthusiasm. However she shouts out her congratulations from their tent. The retired dentist is even more dour, saying ‘Congratulations’, but not another word. Even so he takes a photo of me when I ask him to. Hans crawls into his tent and immediately falls asleep from exhaustion. There's not much time to pack up our things and get a bite of lunch as we have to descend 1,800 meters down the Mweka route to get to that camp.
I find myself sitting in my tent waiting for lunch. I've nobody to share my experience with because nobody else is interested. At least I can send a text message to my nearest and dearest, even if I haven't got enough battery power left to actually make a call. Napirai comes straight back with: ‘Super Mama, I always knew you'd do it!’ Markus is equally proud of my achievement and says he'll tell the rest of the family.
Our descent takes us back through all the different climatic zones in reverse order. Delving back into the increasingly thick jungle I'm delighted to see all the exotic plants in bloom, but the downhill trek is hard on the legs and knees in particular. After two hours of it I'm no longer paying attention to the pretty blossoms on the bushes or the broad valleys spread out beneath us. All I'm aware of is the blisters starting to form at various places on my feet. I put sticking plasters over the worst but it only increases my desire to reach the camp as quickly as possible. As we descend the humidity increases and everything is sticking to my body. Eventually after three hours we reach the camp and just manage to scramble into our tents before the heavens open. It pours down in stair rods for fifteen minutes and afterwards everything is sodden and even the interior of the tent feels damp. I couldn't care less as long as I don't have to do any more walking, after twelve hours on the trot! It's late afternoon now and we have time to kill before dinner. I long for the orange basin full of hot water like I've never longed for anything in my life. I also need to do something about my feet as we have another long trek downhill tomorrow.