Adventuring with Moses...

Last weekend was undoubtedly one of the more eventful weekends so far. It was a three day weekend and everyone was going somewhere. However, I had a fieldtrip to the Fayyum scheduled on Friday and so I wouldn't be able to do anything until Saturday. Zeke, Demetri and Anita decided to leave on Thursday to climb Mt. Sinai (where Moses received the 10 commandments) and then go to an eco-lodge on the Red Sea coast for 2 days. I was bummed that I wouldn't be joining them on their trip and that I would be sitting at the dorm while everyone was out of town. After some thought I decided that this was not an acceptable situation. The hell with it, I wanted to go to Sinai too! I decided to leave Saturday morning, spend the night at the summit and come back Sunday. It couldn't be that hard, right? Right?

So, Friday came and went and since time flies when you're kinda nervous it was soon Saturday morning. I haven't done much traveling on my own so this would be interesting. I went to the bus station, hopped onto the 11 a.m. bus and enjoyed the 7 hour bus ride to St. Katherine's Monastery at the base of Mt. Sinai.

Suddenly, there I was, standing at a round-about, in the dark with massive mountains towering around me with no one else in sight. One sign pointed to a street-lamp lit road leading to the "St. Katherine's Tourist Village" and another sign pointed to the more ominous and dark path leading to "St. Katherine's Monastery". I was hungry and tired but I didn't feel like walking to the Tourist Village so I decided to start the hike right then.

With the help of my flashlight and a police officer I made my way to the little tourist information office (complete with cafe and kitsch iconography store) on the way to the monastery. I decided to check in with the tourist police first. Zeke had told me that they would probably insist on me taking a guide since it was at night, which was a hassle and expensive but I wasn't entirely sure how to find the path.

- "Where are you from?"
- "America, but I'm a student at Cairo."
- "What are you doing tomorrow?"
- "Going back to Cairo."
- "Are you alone?"
- "Yep."
- "You have a flashlight?"
- "Yep."
- "Okay! Have Fun!"

I was expecting a little more concern for my safety. But, whatever, before I knew it I was already out of the door and on my way. Up the road, past the Monastery and onto the not-so-obvious-in-the-dark trailhead up onto the mountain. Due to the dark I was unsure of which mountain Sinai was. I planned to just follow the path and was confident that I would get there eventually.

My confidence lasted until I got to the first fork in the path. Left? Right? I wasn't so sure anymore. This was a coin flip. They probably all go up the mountain, so I decided on going right. Right always feels better. That is, until the path got really rocky fifteen minutes in and I saw lights descending on the other path. I turn around, got back to the fork and took the other path. I meant to say that left always feels better.

I met the people coming down and they happened to have a bedouin guide with them. I asked him for directions.

- "Hello"
- "Are you going up the mountain? You know where you are going?"
- "No. Not really."
- "Do you need a guide?"
- "I don't think so."
- "Okay. Just stick to the right on every fork after this until you hit the stairs. Go to Cafe #2 when you get to the top, my son is there!"
- "Uhh... okay."
- "Remember: Cafe #2."

Well... at least he wasn't pushy.

So I made my way up, staring at the flashlight-lit path all the way up. I had a little trouble finding the stairs but after 5 minutes of panicking in the dark I was able to make them out. It didn't help that my flashlight had a 5 foot range.

I was surprised because from what I had heard the mountain is usually packed with people going to sleep at night. It was about 9 pm by this time and I had not seen a single person since the bottom. Strange to say the least. After another hour I made it up to the top... finally! It was a good feeling. I looked around, saw a Bedouin kid who tried to sell me a blanket and mattress. I told him I wanted to go to the summit (there were about 100 more stairs to the real summit) to see where all the people were sleeping. I climbed to the top only to see that there was no one there. Not a single person. This was strangely eerie. No worries, I was sure more would be coming later. I went back down and ended up being invited to sleep in a hut with the 4 Bedouin kids who were running the cafes near the summit. We talked quite a bit, using the best of our Arabic/English skilled to communicate. I learned that apparently most of the people come a couple hours before sunrise and I was just extra early. They were incredibly nice (we had an arm wrestling tournament) and I ended up going to bed around 11 pm.

I woke up at 3 15 a.m. to the sound of them getting up and preparing some tea. They were working feverishly getting everything ready and sure enough, 5 minutes later, the first groups began appearing. One of the Bedouin kids took me up to the summit and showed me the best place to sit for the sunrise. It was a rock outcropping on the far side of the summit with a perfect view. By 5 a.m., the first signs of sunrise began and the summit had well over 200 people watching, chatting and singing. I heard Americans, Brits, French, Spanish, Italians, Russians, Japanese, Israelis and more obscure nationalities I couldn't quite put my finger on. The sunrise was beautiful and I finally got to see what I had climbed and the surrounding mountains. It was astonishing.


The stars at the summit were unbelievable and I somehow managed to catch a shooting start in this one...


The cafes from the summit...


Anita had told me that the bus back to Cairo leaves early so as soon as the sun had risen above the horizon I started to make my way down to mountain. I was one of the first back at the monastery at around 7 15 a.m. and I headed straight for the tourist information. I asked when the next bus back to Cairo was and to my surprise, he informed me that it had left an hour earlier at 6 a.m.! Not only that, but this was the only bus back to Cairo all day. I couldn't believe it.

Dazed, I made my way the kilometer and a half to the Tourist Village only to find that the bus station was closed and that the tourist information had not lied to me. I had some breakfast and then dejectedly walked back to the monastery where I knew I could use the bathrooms.

On my way out of the bathroom I met a guy who worked at the iconography store. His name was Beha' and he invited me to sit with him. We ended up talking for two hours, teaching each other English and Arabic. He insisted on giving me free food and drinks from the cafe and after learning about by precarious situation made it his personal mission to find me a way back to Cairo. If we were unsuccessful he made it clear that I was welcome to stay with him at his place while waiting for the next bus the day after. He was really amazingly hospitable. So he and his manager drove me back to the tourist village, on the way showing me an amazing cow shaped natural indentation on a cliff-side (supposedly from when Moses threw the golden cow idol against the mountain wall) which is something that almost no one sees. They then took me and after 10 minutes found me a minibus with one seat left that would take from 10 to 14 hours to get back to Cairo. It would be making many stops but, and they were very proud of this fact, it would be free. Of course, since they were very happy with their efforts, I could not refuse so I bid them farewell, thanked them profusely and climbed on board.

As soon as I got onto the bus I knew something was odd. It was filled with mostly elderly folks and children- all Arab and all staring at me in silence. I made my way to the back of the bus and sat down in the one empty seat. I was instantly surrounded by kids and teenagers who blasted me with questions. Yelling, "What's your name?", "Do you speak Arabic?", "Where are you from?", "Do you want to play a game?" and so on for the next 3 hours. I got to know everyone on the bus quite well, they were all amazingly nice and there were a few kids around my age although none of them spoke more than a few words of English. I think I said "mesh aref" (I don't know) and "mesh fahem" (I dont understand) at least three hundred times, but it was fantastic for my Arabic.

Deer in headlights:


The one guy who was 21, Saeed, (to my right) was there with his wife- they had married only two months ago. There were three families on the bus and all of them were Christians (which was great because I could eat on the bus since they don't observe Ramadan) on a church tour of the Sinai Peninsula. I tried to sleep but every time I put my head down to relax they would either scream more questions at me or they would all start reciting hymns along with a woman singing into the partially working microphone at the front of the bus (it skipped when we hit a bump which was every .01 seconds). It was really all very tiring, especially since I has only gotten a few hours of sleep that night.

And so they kept me busy in this way for 3 to 4 hours, bombarding me with incoherently fast Arabic until, unexpectedly, we finally found the bus driving along a beach. When we stopped and got out I noticed that there was hot water coming out of the sand and streaming into the seawater. As best as I could understand, this was the site of a natural spring and we were going to go into a cave on the nearby cliff side for some reason which I couldn't completely catch. Ten minutes later all twenty of us entered into this cave.

The first chamber was large enough to stand in and had pebbles lining the flood- really nothing special. Once in it for a few minutes the others signaled to me to lie down and shuffle through a foot-and-a-half tall tunnel into a second chamber. This chamber was significantly hotter than the other and I began to sweat quite a bit. Ah! The lightbulb in my head flickered on: this was a natural sauna. A really hot natural sauna. We continued into a third chamber, again this one was significantly hotter. It was probably around 120 F. Then there came the fourth chamber. Not only was it unbearably hot but there were all twenty of us crammed into something that could not have been more than 20 square feet. There was a serious lack of oxygen. By this point I was feeling numbness crawling up my legs and into my arms. Not a good sign. I was sweating profusely and needed some water. "Are we finished", I asked. "Yes, almost", they responded. Finally, after what seemed an eternity they started moving. But in the wrong direction. Yep, another cavern. Cavern #5 was ridiculous. It was so hot I could barely sit on the rocks. I now looked not as if I had just gotten out of a shower but as if I was under one. I couldn't believe how much I was sweating. It got the point where my entire body was numb and I could barely close my hands. Finally they began to move back out of the cave. I almost passed out a few times as we made our way back to the first chamber, but they wouldn't let me out faster. I was so relieved to make it back out to fresh air. It was quite an experience although admittedly not completely pleasant. I was sweaty and covered in dirt. Mmmm. Dirt.

We left the cave sauna and drove another two hours before we reached the Suez Canal. It was already 6 pm by this point and I was getting a little nervous about how much longer it would take us to get to Cairo. I tried to ask the driver (who incidentally REALLY did not like Iranians) if it might be faster for me to get off at the canal and take a bus from there. All I got from his response was something about a microbus, 20 kilometers from Cairo and 1 o'clock. He was a large man with a shaved head and Raiders t-shirt so I decided not to ask again and just go with the flow.

An hour later we stopped at a church. As the others all piled out of the bus I stayed behind to put on my pants (I was only in my swimsuit because of the sauna- which they found hilarious). As I struggled to put my pants on the driver came up to me and told me that I was going to catch a microbus to Cairo. I asked him if this would be at 1 o'clock. "No", he said. "Now". Uhhh, okay. I was pretty sure I was at least 200 kilometers from Cairo at this point, really in the middle of nowhere. He took me out to the highway we had just gotten off of and starts to flag down any car he sees. After five minutes a microbus stops, he tells them something about Cairo, me not speaking Arabic and then pushes me onto the bus. This all happened very quickly.

On the bus now, I had no clue where I was or where I was going. I paid the money collector guy a pound. I got a little confident after 5 minutes and asked him how far outside Cairo we were. He asked the driver who, to my unabashed relief, said 15 kilometers. 15 kilometers! I was so happy. The bus dropped me off at the airport and it was a 20 pound cab ride back to Zamalek. What a fantastic feeling getting into the dorms at 7 30 pm having completed such an adventure. Sinai to Cairo on a pound. That's an accomplishment.

It felt like victory.