Sinai Sunrise
I'm going to take a wild stab in the dark and suggest that not everyone on Easyjet flight 2911 from Bristol had packed exactly the same things in their luggage as me. You know, things such as thermal base layers, hiking socks, snood (two of them), Rab down filled winter jacket, fleece lined walking trousers, thickest available winter beanie hat (as worn in Iceland) and a bright orange bivvy bag with a whistle attached to a carabiner. Not when the plane was bound for the Egyptian beach resort of Sharm el-Sheikh. Normal people would be thinking more along the lines of Bermuda shorts, Hawaian shirts and flip flops for the more adventurous moments of their own holidays. Surely that's all you need for a fortnight of flopping by the pool and overdosing on the all inclusive whilst gradually developing a liver disorder under a reservoir of pina coladas in the sun?
Some time last summer, after one of those Thursday mornings when, over breakfast we'd read the weekly Travelzoo email listing their top twenty deals, and on impulse booked a bargain fortnight at the Cleopatra Luxury Resort in Sharm El-Sheikh, I thought I'd better start doing a bit of research. Find out exactly what kind of shenanigans we could get up while we were in Egypt. And where do I always look when I want to find out about a place? Well, YouTube of course. And having asked Alexa to tell me about Sharm el-Sheikh (yes we do have a telly that does that), a small stream of suggested videos began to appear among the forest of landscape photography vlogs on the landing page. One morning as I nursed myself to life with a vat of coffee, Doug, a quietly spoken and affable young American, showed up on my screen. I'd never seen Doug's channel before, and he wasn't even in Sharm El-Sheikh. But he had done something very interesting indeed; in fact Doug had done a thing that until now I didn't even know was a thing. In the very small hours of an inky black December night, accompanied by a Bedouin guide, Doug had hiked to the summit of Mount Sinai. Yes, that Mount Sinai. Moses and the ten commandments, the forty days and forty nights and all that business. It stands to reason that Mount Sinai, or Jabal Mousa as they call it in these parts, should be here on the Sinai peninsula. One energetic hike later and Doug, wearing everything he'd brought to Egypt, was on top of the freezing cold summit, watching an orange sun rise over miles and miles of dramatic mountain scenery. And I was hooked. Despite being twice the age of my new hero, I decided I needed to be like Doug. It took no time at all to learn that it was entirely possible to reach Mount Sinai on a guided tour from our resort. And so I dreamed. Dreams are the place where the seemingly impossible can turn into reality.
In the intervening months I wavered. By now I'd read the Foreign Office travel advice for Egypt, and while South Sinai was considered safe, the map suggested that part of the road we'd have to follow would straddle the boundary where things might get a little more racy. And after more than a year of open warfare just a few hundred miles further north, I wondered exactly how secure our passage would be. No, it was a silly idea. Far too risky. And one thing had been made abundantly clear. There was no way Ali was spending several hours cramped on a bus on winding roads. If I went, I was going alone. So I'd stay beside the pool and gorge myself into a gastric coma along with everyone else. Two weeks stolen from harshest January under the tropical sun. Perfect.
But of course these excursions run from Sharm all the time. Every week, several times, hundreds of tourists are ferried in a fleet of coaches to the monastery of St Katherine at the foot of Mount Sinai. If it were really as dangerous as the carnage of my overactive imagination, then the tour buses wouldn't come here at all would they? After all, the peninsula has been through some troubled times and they don't want to put the punters off. So finally, not long before boarding that flight, I booked myself onto a bus bound for the mountains and allowed myself to get slightly excited. I watched Doug again. Twice. Suddenly I was only just over a week away from standing on the roof of the desert. A very cold roof indeed. I needed all of that gear and more besides.
It's going to take more than one bite to tell the full story of an adventure that was as memorable as they come, for so many reasons. But then again, it's going to take more than one picture to share the sunrise views across the mountains and the distant Gulf of Aqaba too. Episode two to follow then…….
Sinai Sunrise
I'm going to take a wild stab in the dark and suggest that not everyone on Easyjet flight 2911 from Bristol had packed exactly the same things in their luggage as me. You know, things such as thermal base layers, hiking socks, snood (two of them), Rab down filled winter jacket, fleece lined walking trousers, thickest available winter beanie hat (as worn in Iceland) and a bright orange bivvy bag with a whistle attached to a carabiner. Not when the plane was bound for the Egyptian beach resort of Sharm el-Sheikh. Normal people would be thinking more along the lines of Bermuda shorts, Hawaian shirts and flip flops for the more adventurous moments of their own holidays. Surely that's all you need for a fortnight of flopping by the pool and overdosing on the all inclusive whilst gradually developing a liver disorder under a reservoir of pina coladas in the sun?
Some time last summer, after one of those Thursday mornings when, over breakfast we'd read the weekly Travelzoo email listing their top twenty deals, and on impulse booked a bargain fortnight at the Cleopatra Luxury Resort in Sharm El-Sheikh, I thought I'd better start doing a bit of research. Find out exactly what kind of shenanigans we could get up while we were in Egypt. And where do I always look when I want to find out about a place? Well, YouTube of course. And having asked Alexa to tell me about Sharm el-Sheikh (yes we do have a telly that does that), a small stream of suggested videos began to appear among the forest of landscape photography vlogs on the landing page. One morning as I nursed myself to life with a vat of coffee, Doug, a quietly spoken and affable young American, showed up on my screen. I'd never seen Doug's channel before, and he wasn't even in Sharm El-Sheikh. But he had done something very interesting indeed; in fact Doug had done a thing that until now I didn't even know was a thing. In the very small hours of an inky black December night, accompanied by a Bedouin guide, Doug had hiked to the summit of Mount Sinai. Yes, that Mount Sinai. Moses and the ten commandments, the forty days and forty nights and all that business. It stands to reason that Mount Sinai, or Jabal Mousa as they call it in these parts, should be here on the Sinai peninsula. One energetic hike later and Doug, wearing everything he'd brought to Egypt, was on top of the freezing cold summit, watching an orange sun rise over miles and miles of dramatic mountain scenery. And I was hooked. Despite being twice the age of my new hero, I decided I needed to be like Doug. It took no time at all to learn that it was entirely possible to reach Mount Sinai on a guided tour from our resort. And so I dreamed. Dreams are the place where the seemingly impossible can turn into reality.
In the intervening months I wavered. By now I'd read the Foreign Office travel advice for Egypt, and while South Sinai was considered safe, the map suggested that part of the road we'd have to follow would straddle the boundary where things might get a little more racy. And after more than a year of open warfare just a few hundred miles further north, I wondered exactly how secure our passage would be. No, it was a silly idea. Far too risky. And one thing had been made abundantly clear. There was no way Ali was spending several hours cramped on a bus on winding roads. If I went, I was going alone. So I'd stay beside the pool and gorge myself into a gastric coma along with everyone else. Two weeks stolen from harshest January under the tropical sun. Perfect.
But of course these excursions run from Sharm all the time. Every week, several times, hundreds of tourists are ferried in a fleet of coaches to the monastery of St Katherine at the foot of Mount Sinai. If it were really as dangerous as the carnage of my overactive imagination, then the tour buses wouldn't come here at all would they? After all, the peninsula has been through some troubled times and they don't want to put the punters off. So finally, not long before boarding that flight, I booked myself onto a bus bound for the mountains and allowed myself to get slightly excited. I watched Doug again. Twice. Suddenly I was only just over a week away from standing on the roof of the desert. A very cold roof indeed. I needed all of that gear and more besides.
It's going to take more than one bite to tell the full story of an adventure that was as memorable as they come, for so many reasons. But then again, it's going to take more than one picture to share the sunrise views across the mountains and the distant Gulf of Aqaba too. Episode two to follow then…….