Conquering Mt Sinai

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We were up early this morning for our trip to St Catherine and Mount Sinai. With our boxed breakfasts from the hotel and passport in hand (there are security checkpoints everywhere in Egypt) we headed off with our driver in a van. The first stop was the “Tourism and Antiquities Police” office in town to clear the details of our trip. From there we took a road that led straight out town and towards the mountains. In the early morning light, the entire scene of mountains and desert looked almost like some not quite real painting. The road here is flat, but fairly curvy as it snakes around the mountains.

At our second police checkpoint, we reached a t-junctions where one road leads down the coast to Nuweiba and the other leads off into the interior towards St. Catherine. The mountains opened up shortly after this junction and we found ourselves looking across a large panorama of desert with mountains in the distance. Here the rocky desert gave way to a more sugary textured sand which piled up along the sides of the low hills in giant dunes. We passed yet another police checkpoint and then had 45 minutes of desert before we started to see the signs for St. Catherine.

With the windy road through the desert, Joshua was not feeling the greatest when we arrived in the parking lot of the monastery. We amused ourselves watching a herd of goats playing on the hillside while we waited for our driver to find our guide.

Our guide was a young Bedouin guy who walked very quickly up the road towards the Monastary. It quickly became evident that he spoke only a little English as he pointed out what we understood him to say was the “School Room”. This seemed a bit confusing, and when we entered the low stone building that he had indicated, we where suddenly face to face with hundred of human skulls in a pile. This turned out to be the “Skull Room” where they kept the remains of former monks.

The monastery looks somewhat like a fortified castle. When we got to the gates, our guide explained that he would wait for us outside. As he was our “guide” this was a bit strange, but we entered the gates and quickly found ourselves inside a small chapel.

Neither photography nor video is allowed inside the chapel. Entering though wooden doors that date back to the 5th and 7th centuries, the church is hung with dozens of lanterns and incense burners. On the walls are Byzantine paintings on wood showing a variety of scenes such as the ascension of Christ, many dating back to the 7th century. Much of the text on the displays was in Greek. Further inside the chapel, there was a small display in a glass case. This contained some of the remains of St. Catherine who had been tortured and killed.

A few monks were in the church. They had long full beards and were dressed in robes like those of the Russian Orthodox church. Many of the visiting women had their heads covered in kerchiefs. Near the exit from the church was a large wooden cross with carved serpents on either side.

Just outside the church is the site of the burning bush that where is is said God spoke to Moses. Here a visiting orthodox priest was reciting incantations while a Kerchief clad woman knealed beside him. A bush, with low branches, sits of the site of this biblical event.

After this courtyard, there were stairs leading to the sanctuary. Evy, Joshua, and Benjamin paid for the extra ticket to enter this area where they saw gilding books including the gospel according to St. John, highly decorated vestments, and letters with the signatures of the Prophet Mohammad and Napoleon giving protection to the monastery.

After leaving the walls of the monastery, we found our guide. We weren't sure if he was going to accompany us to climb Mount Sinai, but it turned out that this was to be his main function. We opted to walk rather than take camels (we weren't sure exactly what financial obligation a camel ride might entail and we didn't want to face the hassle of negotiating a price). We also had the choice of the longer, but less steep “camel route” or the more direct stairs. We took the stairs and began our climb, passing the camel station on the way.

The stairs, which began just past the monastery at the foot of the mountain, were very steep. After about half and hour, we stopped for a snack and some water. Despite the cool morning air, we were quickly heating up with the climb. At this point our guide told us that there was going to be a total of 3000 steps (later we found out this was just to staging point 750 steps below the summit).

After close to an hour of climbing, we came across a miniature church on the mountain side. By now the views were quite spectacular and the monastery was a small building in the distance below. At this small plateau, people had build small piles of rocks and so Joshua and Benjamin put a Canadian stamp on things by building Inuksuks. From this vantage point, the mountains in the distance had a variety of hues: some were reddish, others more green, and some more a purely colour.

By now our legs were really beginning to feel the climb, shaking uncontrollably when we stopped. We continued to climb for yet another hour or so, finally reaching the yet another plateau, this one with a small hut that sold tea. Someone had had written a sign that read “Starbucks Coffee”. It sort of reminded me of the episode of the Simpsons where they visit the first Quikmark at the top of a mountain in India.

After having tea, we ate our lunch here beside a stone walled compound where some of the monks live. This plateau turned out to be top of the 3000 steps. We now still had 750 more to go. These steps are steep, almost like a set of cellar stairs that just keep going. We continued for yet another half and hour to a spot where the camel path meets the stairs. Remarkably, there were small stalls at this level selling chips, pop, and the usual tourist niknaks. After not seeing any other tourist for the entire 3 hour climb, this seemed a bit surreal.

A further set of steep stone stairs led for another 10 minutes or so to the final pinnacle. Here, a small church stands at the point where it is said God delivered the ten commandments to Moses. With a incredible view in all directions at the surrounding mountains, shadows growing in the afternoon light, you can see how this would be the kind of place the almighty might choose to hand down a few words of advice. We spent about half and an hour here at the top, admiring the view and the significance of the location, before starting our descent.

Having spent close to three hours to climb the mountains 3750 steps, we were down in what seemed like a remarkable hour and a half, though by this point our legs were really feeling it. Our Bedouin guide seemed unaffected by the excursion. I guess this is just a regular day for him.

At the bottom we thanked and tipped our guide and called our driver on his cell phone. Soon we were contently sitting in the comfortable seats of the van, on our way back to Dahab.

The sun was now lower on the horizon on this return trip, casting them mountains into shapes with sharp shadows. We passed Bedouin with groups of camels at the side of the road along with the odd stray camel, seemingly just meandering across the desert. The sky seem a sort of lighter blue here than at home. Whenever I have seen this in photos, I have always assumed it had something to do with the exposure of the photo, but now I see that it really is a paler blue. As well, I have always pictured a desert as a huge expanse of sugar like sand, featureless except for the dunes. Here the desert looks nothing like that stereotype: it is clumpy and crusty with boulders and limestone hills. At some point these limestone hills gave way to more smooth sandstone. Later we saw more grey mountains, striped with red stone that ran diagonally through them.

When we got back to our hotel, Benjamin and I signed up for the PADI SCUBA course at the dive centre. We were fitted for equipment and bought one copy of the Scuba manual. We were assigned three long chapters to read in the manual for the following day. Benjamin read first, finishing about midnight. I left the readings for early the next morning.

Evy's thought on Mount Sinai

Well after having gone some ways our guide told us that there were 3000 steps up. We aren't sure if that is true though our legs tell us that it was more! Anyhow, after the 3 hour climb, the views were well worth it. The mountains are so old that you can imagine going back in time. Mt Katherine is taller than Mt Sinai and you could see the trek up outlined in the mountain. It is a much higher climb and Joshua put his foot down when asked whether he'd do that climb. Apparently, mountain climbing will not be in his future choice of careers.(Hurray!) We can see a very far distance, including the Red Sea. It was the best day for climbing actually since it was beautifully sunny but the cool winds of the past few days are still around making it very bearable. Couldn't possibly imagine doing this in high temperatures. At the top of the mountain there is an Orthodox Greek? Church. Our guide is not very clear. We could peek in and see the panelling and icons. I'm not sure how old it is or why it was put there. There are older rock walls around and many other paths so you wonder how much has happened up here. In the valleys below you can see the outline of either Bedouin villages or their farms.

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