Our trip started at the hotel at 23:30, I had taken a short nap before I went to diner, so we went shortly after diner, already in complete darkness, on the road with the small bus that would bring us to the base of the mountain.  The temperature was a pleasant 27 degrees Celsius.  When we arrived at the parking lot near the Saint-Catherine monastery, we started walking the 'camel route', which is the easiest way to get on top of the mountain.  There exists also 'stairs', some 3000 of them, which is not only the shortest route but obviously the strenous route and at night a little bit dangerous route.  After escaping from the camels - obviously someone taking the camel route wants a camel ...? - we arrived after an hour or two at a small tea house nearly on the top, we drank a tea and ate a sandwich, and were ready to go the last part - here you have to take the last part of the stairs route, which took another half hour.  We were the first persons on the top this night, so we had a good spot to sit behind a rock, protected from the wind, and I started to get dressed for the night, which means get out the gloves, woolen hat and down jacket out of my bag... The temperature : near to zero degrees Celsius.  It was a clear night, and it was so quiet up here - till the masses arrived... it was getting soon too crowdy to stand and more and more people were hiring blankets from the bedouins, some people were only dressed in T-shirts , shorts and slippers...