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Published: November 15th 2008
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I took an exam early this week so I could skip out of town on Thursday and go climb Mount Sinai with a couple of friends. I was afraid I wasn't going to get a chance to do it what with the plans I've already made for upcoming weekends and holidays, but I found a window and took it. After an eight-hour bus ride Steve and I arrived in al-Milga, a village nearby Mt. Sinai, or what the locals call Gebel Musa. We got there at about 7 pm and were to start climbing at 1 or 2 am, to be at the summit for sunrise. So we got a bite to eat and talked to a few shopkeepers, who were very friendly and spoke very good English, which was surprising. As we walked out of a shop, we were accosted by a group of 20 local kids who implored us to come to play soccer with them. It was quite an amusing sight to see Steve (a 6'5" French-American) kicking the ball around with 12 and 13 year old Egyptian kids, but my theory was reinforced that no matter where you go, the kids are always the nicest and friendliest.
Most of them spoke excellent English too, which they told us they were taught in school. As we prepared to leave to meet up with our friends who were on their way to the mountain, the kids all whipped out their cell phones and demanded our phone numbers, assuring us that they would come to Cairo and show us around. Steve and I decided that the people of the village of al-Milga are the nicest we've met in Egypt.
We were supposed to be picked up by our friends in the van they had hired from Dahab, but they had no service so after waiting for an hour or so on a street corner in the village, which was by now dead silent and deserted, we walked down to the one supermarket that was still open and hitched a ride to Mt. Sinai from the owner in the bed of his pickup truck. We met up with our three friends, found a guide we liked, and started up the mountain at about 1:15 with our guide and three others, two men and a woman from Denmark.
I did some research on Mt. Sinai before I left, and the
Lonely Planet travel guide described the climb as "a moderate hike." In retrospect, either I'm incredibly out-of-shape or that is the biggest load of nonsense I've ever heard. It took us 3 and a half hours (maybe a little more) to get up the mountain, dodging camels and stiff-arming vendors the whole way. There were coffee shops every 200 yards all the way up the mountain, right up to the steep final approach to the summit. However, even at night the climb was beautiful. The moon was full so we could see the valley and the surrounding area fairly well as we worked our way up. And I stress the word UP. Every time we thought we were getting near the top, another flight of a few hundred rocky steps would come into view. We went up, and up, and up, and up, until about two-thirds of the way there I asked our guide exactly how much altitude we were gaining. Apparently the monastery at the foot of the mountain where we started is at about 1200 meters and the summit is at about 2200 meters, which equates to vertical gain of about 3,400 feet, with the summit at 7,500
feet (the second-highest in Egypt). That's way up there.
We finally got to the summit at about 4:45 or 5:00 am, and were greeted by a chapel on the edge of the summit, along with about 50 Greek Orthodox Christians. (St. Katherine's Monastery is Greek Orthodox and a popular pilgrimage destination.) Even in the moonlight we could make out the breathtaking view. Or maybe it was breathtaking because at the summit it was about 15 degrees and windy and I was ill-prepared with a fleece jacket. Either way, we rented a few blankets, bundled up, and sat down on the stone ledge overlooking a 3,000 foot-deep gorge.
I must say, watching the sun rise from 7,500 feet up in the air, cold and sleep-deprived, next to a rambunctious crowd of pilgrims belting out Greek hymns, is not the most
comfortable way to do it. But it has got to be the most memorable. The sky started to light up at about 5:00 am, slowly turning yellow as the faint pre-dawn sunlight spread across the horizon. Behind us, the full moon was setting over a purple western horizon. Just before sunrise, the horizon turned a blazing reddish-orange... and then
the sun burst up into the sky, lifting the veil on the entire landscape. The mountain ridges stretched out in all directions as far as the eye could see, and a permeating morning fog was burned off to reveal puffs of clouds nestled into the valleys and around the lower summits below. It was even more spectacular since we had been awake for 24 hours or more, and the mountains and clouds were starting to move in quite unnatural ways. The bizarre rock formations were playing tricks on our eyes, so as everyone else shuffled back down the steps, we decided we should probably head down too.
I grabbed a *strong* Turkish coffee from the first stand I saw, and it dawned on me why they have so many coffee shops on the mountain. It's not for the way up, but for the way down. Without that coffee I probably would have tumbled head over heels down the side of the mountain. But the climb down was absolutely spectacular. We picked our way down the Steps of Repentance, a 3,750-step flight of stairs cut into a steep side of the mountain about 600 years ago by St. Katherine's monks.
We descended into the valley through the clouds and some of the views from the cliffs completely floored with me. One of my friends, Christina, stated that she had been to the Grand Canyon three times and that Mount Sinai was, in her words, "way cooler." A few hours later we got to the bottom. Two of the girls were headed back to Dahab, while Steve, Christina and I arranged to get back to Cairo.
Inexplicably, the only bus back to Cairo left at 6 am, so we hired a private taxi to take us to the bus junction at the Red Sea. I napped along the way and was highly disoriented when we arrived at the junction and were unceremoniously dumped off at a military checkpoint. It was quintessential Egypt: a kid kicking an empty oil barrel across the street, two soldiers sitting on the side of the road smoking shisha, and one in a guard tower sticking his AK-47 out the window. On one corner stood a (very) small mosque blaring prayer music, and next to the mosque a large pile of burning trash sat smoldering. No bus station though. We informed one of the guards that
we needed to get to Cairo, and he instructed us to sit down. No more than ten minutes later, a bus came through and picked us up, and off we went back to Cairo.
My trip to Mt. Sinai was my favorite I've done within Egypt by far. It was a completely different affair than I'd expected, and quite an experience. If any of you are in Egypt in the future, I must insist that you climb Mt. Sinai. But make sure you're in shape, because it's not the leisurely stroll that the guide books claim.
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