I rode a
couple of hundred Km into the middle of Sinai… To a place called St Catherine’s,
which is a many centuries old monastery out in the middle of the mountains in
the middle of the Sinai desert… And it is the alleged location of the famous Mt
Sinai… Yeh where Moses went to have a chat with God and got the “Ten
Commandments”… Though it has to be said that there seems to be quite a lot of dissension
as to where Mt Sinai was “actually” located!
So I rode
on out there, through some quite beautiful desert I might add, and found a camp
ground for the night… I was just gonna see the monastery but it turned out the
mountain was not that big so I decided to hike to the top. It is of course quite
a Religious tourist destination and pilgrims have been climbing it for
centuries.
It was no
pilgrimage for me though and I just hiked it for the exercise and the view and
contemplation value. I decided to hike it on the afternoon of the day I arrived
and stay at the top for sunset and then return to my camp. I set out at about
3:30pm and it took me 2 hours to scale it on a broad well defined path (not a
trail at all) though it was a bit rugged in a few places. The top section is
some 750 steps to a small Greek Orthodox chapel and a small Mosque built on the
summit (elevation gain is about 700m). So I toddled off along the trail with my
trusty little point and shoot camera (just in case I should be accosted by a
chatty burning bush – which apparently has happened here before?) and a litre
of water. I got to the top with about 30min spare before sunset. I looked about
a bit and thought about it all for a bit and then toddled off back down the
track in the rather darker than hoped evening (almost no moon to light my way).
The down section was a lot more uncomfortable for my poor knees and feet than
the up but after another couple of hours (the dark slowed me down) I was back
at camp.
I then
slept a rather restless night… not due to any religious dreams or visitations
but rather due to the lack of a breeze and the “visitations” of quite a few
mosquitoes… I had decided not to use my tent since the weather seemed nice and
clear… bad choice it turned out!
In the
morning I found my motorbike had a flat tire so I took a couple of hours to fix
that (I need to get a “bead-breaker” for
my tool-kit to speed that up!) and then I headed for “the promised land”…. A couple
hundred kilometers to the border with Israel
