Deviate

You do not how long you will stay in Dahab, but while you are on the Sinai Peninsula, climbing Mt. Sinai is a must. You have been told by others that it is an unforgettable experience, and before long you find out they are right.

Mt. Sinai has some biblical significance to some. It is said to be the place from which Moses descended with his Ten Commandments. The mountain stands at 2,285 meters, towering over the Monastery of Saint Katherine. It has two trails leading to and from it. One, the camel trail, is easier to climb. The other is a series of 3,750 steps, called the Steps of Repentance, laid by a monk as a form of penance.

The Monastery of Saint Katherine was built in the 4th century, starting as a small chapel next to the burning bush where it is believed that a god spoke to Moses. Monastic order was created by the Roman empress Helena, and it was dedicated to Saint Katherine, a legendary martyr of Alexandria, who was tortured and beheaded for her Christianity. Throughout history, pilgrims endured dangerous conditions to trek to this isolated location, but nowadays it is littered with tour buses, camels, and cafés.

Your journey begins at 11pm with a micro-bus-ful of foreigners collected from hotels near you. After two hours in the cramped bus, you arrive at the base of the mountain, near the Monastery. The air is crisp and cool. You are lined up single-file to walk through a doorway that is made to look like a metal detector. Not one beep, but bags are searched. You are organized into groups by bus, and each bus is assigned a “tour guide”. The “tour guide” informs you of your meeting place and time at the end of the journey and the trek begins.

You have been walking for about half an hour and it is 2:15am. You hold a flashlight in front of you, and only able to focus on your steps and the feet of those in front of you. The stars, which have now become much more abundant in the sky, and your flashlight, are your only sources of light. The air is dusty from feet-shufflers and smelly from sporadic piles of camel shit.

“Oh, look! Camels!”
“Now that’s a good idea! How much?”

Idiots.

You speed up your pace of walking to try to avoid the seemingly endless amount of stupid foreign people and now also the hopeful camel driver who has discovered his bait.

Soon, you arrive at the first of a series of rest stops. About a hundred people are all flocked together drinking and talking. You continue walking and decide you can rest somewhere else. Shortly, you are no longer surrounded by English speaking people. Assuming your group surpassed you, you continue with the new group. Another rest stop. Your new group is herded inside for over-priced tea. You keep walking.

After about 10 steps, you are alone. Suddenly, everything is quiet. There are no more shufflers, no more voices. No more nothing except your pounding heart and rhythmic breath. You keep walking. It is a little bit scary being all alone, in the dark, halfway up a mountain, but you decide it is better than the herd. You stop for a rest and look at your surroundings. All around you are mountains, and the lights below seem far away. The stars and the moon shine brightly. You can almost see their milky threads, and you feel peace. After a few minutes, you force yourself to carry on walking because you do not know how much further you have to walk, but you are convinced you have fallen behind and must reach the top before sunrise. As you continue walking, you periodically stop to look up at your surroundings. You are passed by groups of camels, who have taken foreign quitters aboard. You rest anywhere but at rest-stops, except for the last one. By then, the trail has turned into steps and you think that must mean you are almost at the top.

A light! I have reached the end! No, it is only another rest stop.
“You are almost there, only three more minutes from here.”

Little do you know, the last “three minutes” are the steepest. You take frequent rests and regularly check the time. It is 3:40am. While you want to reach the top as soon as possible, you can afford to take another rest.

I am sitting on a mountain, in the middle of the night, in Egypt. How cool is this?

Finally, you reach the top. You are expecting the top to be flat and littered with people spread out on blankets, but you are wrong. The top has several different levels; so fortunately, there is a good view for everyone and there is almost no one there. So far, there is only a group of three people, huddled under a blanket. You stake out a spot, perched in between two rocks away from the others.

“Would you like a blanket?”
“No.”
“You feel warm now, but after 10 minutes you will feel very cold. Only $2.”

He was right. It is very cold. You brought everything you had to use to stay warm, but it is still cold. The worst part is the wind. After about 20 minutes of continuous shivering, and exhaling your warmth into your sleeves, you discover that you can use your sheet as a shelter from the wind. Your shelter helps. It is still cold, but tolerable. You sit and wait, patiently shivering, for the sun to rise.

Soon, you hear voices. More people are arriving and taking pictures. Cameras snap off like popcorn- first very few, then more frequent. You wonder what all the fuss is about and poke your head out from under your sheet.

There is light.

The sun has not risen, but there is a very dim strip of light poking out from the horizon. It is amazing. You forget that you are cold, climb to top of your perch, and pull out your camera. Soon, the sun peeks out from under the Earth. You feel fortunate to be witnessing this moving experience. A new sun is being born for a new day. It is the source of all life on this planet, and soon it will be the thing that will make you feel warm again.

After the sun’s full emergence, religious groups begin to sing songs of worship, and at the sight of a singing teenage girl, with outstretched arms and tears streaming down her cheeks, you note it is time to go. People are taking pictures of each other and you wonder how you can get a picture of yourself to prove you were here.

“Excuse me, will you take a picture of me?”
“Sure, if you will take one of me after that.”

Her name was Noreen. She was an American visiting Egypt with her mother, to see her sister at the American University. They had come to climb the mountain, but Noreen left her exhausted mother and sister at the last rest stop. She asked you if you wanted to climb down together.

At the first/last rest stop Noreen rejoined her mother and sister and you resume your trip down. The trip down is just as exciting as the trip up. The trip down you can see where you are going and what surrounds you. It is breathtaking. You keep pulling your camera out to capture the beauty of this landscape, but nothing can capture the experience. Even as you write this, you struggle to capture it.

You pass rows of seated camels, and peel off extra layers of clothes. The sun now beats down with a powerful strength and you are so glad you decided to bring sun-block. You walk with a smile.

A few hours later, you reach the bottom, and your smile slowly fades. Your face now droops with fatigue and your body aches from walking. At the beginning of your trip you were told you must meet back at the bus at 9:30am, and the Monastery doesn’t open until 9. You already know that you will not have much time to see inside the Monastery, so when you reach it, you have only one goal in mind: toilet.

The line for the women’s restroom is about 10 meters long, and a man at the entrance is collecting one pound from every urinator. The man somehow overlooks you, so you do not pay. You pee in a cement hole, splash some sink water on your face to wake up, and leave.

The outside area of the Monastery is packed with people. Even if you cared about seeing it, you wouldn’t enjoy it with so many people. You decide to head back to the microbus before anyone else, and try to catch a few winks in the back. Others had the same idea, but the microbus had not returned yet. Finally, the group of foreigners, you have not seen since this trek started, pile into the bus and ride home. Everyone begins to nod off and people are falling all over each other with exhaustion. You decide it will be impossible to sleep, so you listen to some music to try and stay awake, and enjoy the scenery along the road.

You finally return back to your hotel around 1:00pm and conclude if you sleep now, you will not be able to sleep later, so you change your clothes and go for a refreshing dip in the Red Sea.