Day 8: Mt. Sinai / Aqaba, Jordan - Let My People Go!

Watching the sun rise from atop Mt. Sinai.

At 11 PM the night before, I hopped on a van which drove me to Mt. Sinai. After stopping at about 6 checkpoints and overcoming 15 speedbumps, we arrived at the foot of St. Catherine's monastery at about 2:00 AM.  Our friendly guide, Mussa, a chain smoker who hiked up to the peak in sandals, gleefully led us to our trail head where we were met by... a sea of camels. Apparently Egyptians have caught onto the idea of lazy fat tourists and hawk camels to transport us to the top of sacred holy sites. I wonder what a grown 45 year old man thinks as he rides a camel up a mountain with an 8 year old boy walking along side him leading the camel.

At any rate, I forsook the camel in a move of true repentance so I could feel the full brunt of the 8 km or so hike up to the apex. The moon was nearly full so the path was well lit, allowing me to avoid to avalanche of camel poop produced by fat tourists sitting on camels' backs. Walking up Mt. Sinai under the full moon and stars is a very surreal and tranquil experience. Everything is a shade of blue-grey. It looks completely different from the day time.

Climbing the last steps to reach the peak.

At the top of Mt. Sinai are a church and a mosque, along with a bunch of people peddling everything from rocks, to coffee, to blankets and mattresses. Smart. There were almost 1000 tourists at the top who had not slept and just hiked 8 km. My strategy was simple. I didn't do all this to risk falling asleep as the sun was rising. I was going to stay awake. I found a nice spot for myself, squatted out my territory, and waited another hour or so for the sun to rise, serenaded by the hymn singers in the background.

It was worth it.

I'm not a very religious person, but the experience was still incredibly powerful. People from all faiths were on their knees praying, singing, and impromptu religious services were held. Coupled with the physical view, I'm glad I sacrificed a night of sleep.

With the sun up and the weather warming up, we packed up and started descending. Instead of taking the easy trail, we took the "Steps of Repentance," 3000 steps carved into the rock by some monk who thought his life really sucked so he decided to make my life suck just a little bit more. The good news is that nobody else took this route, so it was peaceful and beautiful. The bad news is that I had to go down 3000 damn steps.

View during the day time.

St. Catherine's Monastery.

We arrived at the bottom at about 8:30 AM, and waited for St. Catherine's Monastery to open at 9:00 AM. I'm not very knowledgeable about such matters, but this monastery is particularly famous for:

1) Being at the foot of Mt. Sinai

2) Containing lots of historical religious iconography

3) Purportedly marking the site of the Burning Bush

The iconography was indeed awesome. Much of it was over 1500 years old and was spared during the period of iconoclasm because, I believe, the monastery is rather out of the way. In addition, the monastery library houses some rather important documents such as the Codex Sinaicticus.

This bush is supposed to mark the site of the Burning Bush.

So what's the best thing to do after staying awake, hiking, and having religiosity beaten into you for a whole night? Why, tire oneself out completely by traveling to Jordan, of course! The dessert pick up was successful and I found myself, along with a traveling companion, being ushered to Nuweiba to catch a ferry to Aqaba, Jordan. The ferry was scheduled to leave at 2:00 PM. It left at 2:30 PM. It was supposed to arrive at 5:00 PM. It arrived at 12:30 AM. 

I hadn't eaten for 30 hours, and I was ready to slaughter a donkey on the side of the road just to use its corpse for a mattress.