Today was the earliest morning of the whole tour: we had to get up at 2:45 am to climb Mount Sinai and watch the sunrise. Somehow I couldn't believe it myself: here I was, getting up in the middle of the night to CLIMB A MOUNTAIN!! Well, it promised to be some sort of an experience, so I thought I'd give it a try. After all, the mountain's height is 2285 m, although its biblical claim to fame is disputed amongst archaeologists. For those with no religious background: God is supposed to have delivered the Ten Com-mandments to Moses on the summit of Mt. Sinai. Its local name is "Gebel Musa" and it is the second highest mountain of the Sinai peninsula (after the nearby Gebel Katarina which some historians believe is the actual mountain Moses climbed instead). We arrived at the mountain base at 3:30 in the morning and had about 3 hours to climb to the top before the sun would rise. To be honest, I though we were the only crazy fools who would do such thing to themselves and I was amazed to see the crowds of people who actually came to do the same! In the end, when everybody set off with their flashlights and headlights on, I thought we looked like an armee of orcs, sneaking up the mountain trail with our torches, like trolls marching in the darkness - okay okay, that happens when you watch too much Lord of the Rings...

In the end, I found myself walking with Sarah and Alyson again. We were moving more or less at the same pace, me usually walking a bit faster but then taking longer breaks waiting for them to catch up. The rest of the group had passed and was on their way to the summit but we preferred to take our time along the so-called "camel trail". The name is actually well deserved because every few meters there's a camel man with one or two camels waiting to take on those pilgrims who can't make it any further. In fact, it is quite special to hike in complete darkness with just your little light on the ground in front of you to see where you put your next step, just to suddenly find yourself in front of a huge camel shadowing your path! After all, it was tempting to just take a ride but we forced ourselves to keep walking.

The sun started to rise around 5:15 and we were still quite a long way from the top. Actually, the camel trail ends a good bit below the mountain summit and then you have to climb the rest taking +/- 750 stairs (Vincent actually says there are 800 steps but I guess it all depends what you classify as steps on this stone-cut staircase). The thing is, once you start climbing the stairs, you need to make it to the top in order to be able to see the sunrise. On the stairway itself, it's not possible. Therefore, Sarah, Alyson and I decided to stop shortly before the stairs. Instead of trying to hurry upstairs just to find ourselves amongst hundreds of other people or even to miss the magic moment, we preferred to stay where we were and to enjoy the sunrise by ourselves. Thus, only acompanied by a few lonely camels, we saw the sun rising from just below the mountain top of Mt. Sinai at 5:40 on this beautiful morning. It was a mystical and somewhat intimate experience to share.

After the sun had shown up to a certain extend, we decided to have a look at the stairway and see if we still wanted to make it. When we arrived at the base, people had just started to descend, so we waited... and waited... and waited for the way to be free. Well, I can't say exactly how many people came down that stairway but I swear there were at least 500. When seeing the steep and rocky decline, Sarah and Alyson decided to pass on the steps but the more people I saw coming down, the more I thought I wanted to get up there myself. Somehow I thought: "Probably, I am here only once in my lifetime, so what good is it to force myself to climb Mt. Sinai for 3 f*** hours, just to give up 750 stairs away from the summit? If all these people can do it, so can I..." and I started to climb up the stairs. I admit I didn't count them but 750 steps is a lot! Given the irregularity of the steps, the continuous attempt to avoid the masses of people coming down, and the several misleading moments of thinking 'oh, finally there's the top', just to find out that it was not, the climb was VERY VERY tiring. On the way up, I felt like an athlete, speaking to myself "come on, you can do this" etc. In the end, it took me 25 minutes to arrive at the top and you know what? IT FELT GREAT!!! Oh, I had such a feeling of achievement, you have no idea. Anybody who ever went on a hike with me knows that I am not a very passionate mountain climber and usually I don't care about reaching some hilltop just to feel good. But this time I had my ambition and I did it. I was so proud of myself...

Then again, it was somehow a bit disappointing to see that there's in fact nothing really special about the summit. The place is pretty small ( I actually wondered if all the people I saw descending had piled up on each other just to be here) and the view is nice but not stunning - all you see is rocky mountains. On the summit itself are a Greek Orthodox chapel and a small mosque, both locked for tourists, and quite a few Bedouins trying to sell some of their traditional arts and crafts. What was great, however, was the space I had once most of the other tourists had left. In the end, I was so happy that we had chosen to watch the sunrise in privacy from below the mountain top and that I could be on the summit with only very few other people around. I can only recommend this timing to anyone who ever comes here. It was kind of hard to leave the mountain top once I had made it there but I had to join the rest of the group who were already on their way back. Vincent was waiting for me at the bottom of the stairs and we continued downwards together. The descent to the very bottom of Mt. Sinai took only 1,5 hours. After we had a short break to shower and rest, we took off again to visit St. Katherine's Monastery. The monastery has been a place of pilgrimage since the 4th century, when the Roman empress Helena had a small chapel built, beside what was believed to be the burning bush from which God spoke to Moses, and founded a monastery. The chapel is dedicated to St.Katherine, a legendary martyr of Alexandria, who was tortured on a spiked wheel and then beheaded for her Christianity. Her body was supposedly transported by angels away from the torture device (which spun out of control and killed the non-Christian onlookers) and onto the slopes of Gebel Katarina, the highest mountain in Egypt, about 6 km South of Mt. Sinai. The monastery is one of the oldest monasteries in the world that are still in use without interruption over that many centuries.

Although most of the monastery is closed for the public, we could visit what is believed to be a descendent of the original burning bush. We were told that whenever people have tried to cut a branch of this bush and plant it somewhere else, the branch died but at its original location here at the monastery, the bush grows for over 2000 years. Apart from the bush, we could also visit one of the Coptic chapels of the monastery. Inside this chapel I had one of the most disappointing encounters ever: visitors could write their wishes and prayers to God on small pieces of paper which were then given to a monk sitting there to bless them. Some of us did that but when Sarah wanted to hand her piece of paper to the monk, he refused it and said only prayers in Russian were accepted!! - Since when does God speak only one language??? I was shocked, I couldn't believe he actually refused people's papers!

Overall, the people in this monastery were not very pleasant; tourists were 'pushed' to hurry through the chapel, people whispering to ask questions about the decoration were shushed to shut up and overall the whole place had no trace of God's holy presence. Around lunch time it felt as if a whole day had already passed by but we were only about to start the second part of the day: our desert trek. By bus we were brought into the Sinai desert to meet our Bedouin guides. We had lunch with them before setting off for our 2-day trek in the desert. I must admit it was a strange feeling to see our bus leave with most of our belongings - we only kept our daypacks and basic necessities with us. This afternoon we started with a smooth 3-hour walk across more or less flat terrain. A highlight was the 'White Canyon', a narrow passage of beautiful white rocks (see pictures in the photo section). Around 6:30 pm we arrived at a Bedouin camp in an oasis where we would spend the night. Here I met Selima, a little Bedouin girl, and her friends who gave me a 'friendship bracelet' in return for finishing my pack of cookies...

Apart from that, the only specialty about this Bedouin camp was the fact that Jess established a bug bite record: she had at least 25 bites on each of her arms that night. So we all slept tightly covered in our sleeping bags. At the end of the day, I still felt great about my personal achievement of climbing Mount Sinai, plus hiking through the desert on this very same day. My butt still felt the donkey ride, my legs were shaking but my spirit kept grinning until I fell asleep. Well, I should have enjoyed it as long as it still lasted...