No Reservations

In Egypt, the Muslim day of rest is Friday, so here, weekends run Friday & Saturday, with classes meeting from Sunday thru Thursday. A bit confusing? I know. I still wake up with the “what’s the date, day, time, place I am in look” every single day generally, even though I have now been here for three weeks. Since I have modified my schedule enough to only have Monday/Wednesday classes, theoretically I have four day weekends, every single weekend. Well this past weekend we decided to go to Mount Sinai & Dahab for quite an adventure (and all the photos have now been uploaded online… see left).

A little background first, however; Mt. Sinai is on the Sinai peninsula (in Asia but still in Egypt), but was taken over by the Israelis during the Six-Day Way in 1967 until peace was signed in 1979, so the area is heavily fortified with tons of security checkpoints, still reflecting the past and anticipating the future since Sinai is seen as an easy point of entry into Egypt. The bus ride from Cairo to Sinai (via the Suez Canal) is about seven hours, with an additional 1.5 hour ride to Dahab on the eastern coast on the Red Sea.

Thursday AM, we (Carrie, Meghan and I) were off, with a backpack and bag a piece, and no reservations beyond the 11am bus ride to Mt. Sinai. We decided to leave a day ahead of everyone and go to Dahab for the day instead of taking a seven hour bus ride, spending about 18 hours at Mt. Sinai and immediately returning. The bus ride to Mt. Sinai was very interesting; an older model bus with tons of people just getting on and off at their own leisure. Our bus driver was slightly crazy (would yell at basically everyone, except tourists, saying either they didn’t pay enough or they hadn’t properly checked their bags) and he also had quite a lead-foot. On the bus, I had several good conversations with locals. One man, Ahmed, was from the area and had decent English. He was coming from Cairo; he taught math locally and was obsessed with calculus (differential equations) which is amazing because most Americans don’t understand calculus, let alone Egyptians. Anyways… I also met a gentlemen, never quite caught his name, who got on the bus randomly, and also left the bus randomly. He spoke decent English as well and decided the bus ride was a perfect place to roll up joints of Hashish. I was offered some; and declined, thankfully because despite his good natured-attitude, I couldn’t help wonder what his intentions were.

We arrived at Sinai at 6pm, the three of us and one more tourist. Upon arrival, since it was iftar or the feast dinner, the town was rather deserted. Deserted as in, no noise whatsoever, no shops open, no people around, rather creepy since we didn’t have hotel or bus reservations anywhere. We managed to find a minibus driver and hired him to take us to Dahab through the mountains of the Sinai desert. Several cigarettes and checkpoints later, we arrived in Dahab, an old Bedouin village turned backpackers paradise snuggled beautifully between the Sinai mountains and the Red Sea, across the Gulf of Aqaba from Saudi Arabia. After finding the little camp we wanted to stay at (affectionately called Alaska Camp in the desert) we walked along the water to get some dinner. The food was great at an Egyptian take on Italian food called Portofino, but the best part was sitting on the beach, with the waves crashing 2 meters from our feet on the sand. Following dinner, we sat in another restaurant on the water, smoking shisha and enjoying fantastic milkshakes, talking about issues in the Middle East and genuinely enjoying each other’s company. What a day, what a day.

Waking up late in our nice air conditioned hotel for about $6 was nice the next morning. Even better was sneaking onto the private resort beach down-shore. Dahab in Arabic means “Golden” so the sand at Dahab was golden. After walking along the beach for a little, we stumbled upon one of the best beaches I have ever seen. The water was the bluest I have ever witnessed and with the backdrop of sand and mountains, it was also the prettiest. We laid around for a bit, going in the water, and generally being in awe of windsurfers who were taking advantage of the strong winds to play around in the cove. Carrie, Meghan and I walked over to inquire about the windsurfing, only to learn that: A) You can’t just do it for one hour; B) Courses were taught in 5 days with students not even getting into the water until day 3; and C) It was over 100 Euro just for a one-day package. Scrap that. We decided to walk back up to town and find a cool place to eat and just relax.

We did just that and found a fantastic Persian restaurant, another “on the beach” restaurant but this one, you just sat on the ground, relaxing with pillows, enjoying the breeze and the views. Following our meal, we relaxed; we smoked some shisha and I learned how to play Backgammon. Three hours later, we decided to go for a camel ride, but since the camels weren’t there we were swayed into horseback riding to get the camels. After bargaining, we got the price to an acceptable level and took it. But we never got the camels. One hour later, and slightly upset, we only paid the guy half of what we originally proposed and called it a day by ordering margaritas at a rooftop bar overlooking the Red Sea. All of our meals were enjoyed at restaurants hugging the water. What a beautiful day… only to be trumped by the hike up Mt. Sinai.

After taking a “personal taxi” with an Egyptian and his Swedish wife back to Mt. Sinai, we met an unfortunate roadblock (literally). At the base of the mountain is a security checkpoint where the tourist police basically force a guide (for 50 LE) upon you. Despite our other group of friends managing to slip past the barrier without a guide, we argued for fifteen minutes with the police before finally giving in and accepting our guide. Upon arrival at St. Katherine’s Monastery five minutes past the checkpoint, we realized that we didn’t need a guide…. or so we thought. Once settled in (with our bags in storage since we weren’t shelling out $55 American dollars for a room), we decided to get an early start on the hike up one of the most important religious mountains in the world. Oh wait – we can’t get past another checkpoint without a guide – so we had to find another guide who was willing to take us up the mountain. (We eventually realized the only reason we needed a guide and a security guard was because we were American. Yes! I love being a tourist!)

We hiked. And we hiked. And we hiked some more. Six kilometers up the camel path until we reached the final 750 steps up to the summit. By steps, I don’t mean steps by American standards. I mean rock steps; saying they were uneven was an understatement. The hike, until that point, wasn’t awful. We stopped a few times, but when we reached the steps, it became grueling. By that point, you are almost at the summit, but camels cannot go any further, so to reach the top you must climb the steps. They were quite intense and by seeing the fortitude and determination of the elders (including monks, nuns and other clergymen), I began to realize how important this journey really was.

After passing say ten stands selling everything from Coca and water, to renting blankets and mattresses, we made it! The summit was a lot smaller than I imagined. In my hiking glory days (aka my travels in Israel in January), when we reached the top, there was always tons of space to roam around and take in the natural beauty, but at the top of Mt. Sinai, there is a tiny Greek Orthodox church, a few rock-carved terraces, and that is about it. I’d say enough room maybe to hold one-hundred people comfortably, but instead there were a few hundred more. We arrived at about 3:30am and got maybe one hour of sleep under the most beautiful sky I have ever seen.

Hundreds upon hundreds of stars (I can’t even describe the beauty), tons of shooting stars and a few AUC students lying on the ground on the top of Mt. Sinai enjoying one of the important sites in religious history (for those of you unaware, Mt. Sinai is where G-d spoke to Moses and he received the 10 Commandments) sure was a sight to be seen. Since there was no light pollution, you could see so many stars and other stars in distant galaxies, which just added to the awe of the experience. At about 5am, when dawn starting showing itself, we all huddled together under a few blankets on a rock, hanging over the edge of the mountain and we finally began to see the beauty of the surrounding mountains. We were perched high above the rest of Sinai, able to see the horizon over Saudi Arabia as we eagerly awaited the pending sunrise. For me, it was even more intense, seeing the sunrise at Mt. Sinai on Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. Quite possibly the most incredible thing I have ever done. I said a few blessings in Hebrew (as I took photos) of the sun rising behind the mountains and finally showing itself to the hundreds of people making the pilgrimage. The feeling was so inspirational; seeing the sunrise from Mt. Sinai, the same point that Moses did when he received the commandments from G-d, was second only to touching the Western Wall in Jerusalem.