Sunrise on Mt. Sinai

Once we decided that we were going to stay in Egypt, the next stop for us was St. Catherine. To get there, we took another overnight train out of Luxor. The next morning, we arrived in Cairo at 6:30 a.m. Then, with a bit of concern, we watched as other travelers left the station and were met by prearranged drivers, until finally we were the only passengers left standing on the platform. At that point, an armed guard came up and asked if we were waiting for a ride.

“Yes.”

“What nationality are you? English?” he asked.

I hesitated. “No, American,” I said.

“American?! Aye!” he nearly shouted.

“Welcome to our country,” chimed in a second person.

Suddenly, walkie talkies crackled to life. All we heard was a string of Arabic sentences, laced several times with the word “American.”

“Come,” the first officer said and motioned for us to follow him.

Well, we had little choice. We weren’t quite sure what was going on at first, but they merely escorted us to the front entrance of the train station. They politely asked for the name and number of our scheduled driver and then one of the soldiers went off to phone him. Then they waited with us until we were safely in the van and on our way. Once we realized what was happening, it didn't seem like such a bad thing to have our own security detail.

Shortly thereafter, we left Cairo, leaving behind a sea of brown buildings and drab, hazy skies. Then we drove for six hours, past Suez and into the Sinai, through a dry, empty desert landscape that became progressively more rugged and lunar-like. For a land that has very little vegatation, the Sinai is an important and strategic piece of land. It serves as a bridge between Asia and Africa and between the Red Sea and the Mediterranean. In early afternoon, we arrived at St. Catherine, a small village whose claim to fame is that it’s located at the base of Mt. Sinai, the biblical mountain where Moses is said to have received the Ten Commandments from God. A popular activity is to hike the mountain in the predawn hours and watch the sun rise from atop Mt. Sinai.

That afternoon, Lisa and I went for a walk in town and, strangely, failed to run into a single other traveler. Hence, when we got up at 2 a.m. to head over to Mt. Sinai, we wondered if we were destined to be lone travelers hiking the trail in the dark, chasing the spirit of Moses. However, we soon discovered dozens of other people in the vicinity, including a large group of French travelers who had come on a tour bus in the night. From 2:45 to 5:15 a.m., then, we navigated our way by flashlight up a rocky path that climaxed in a steep set of several hundred steps cut into the rocks. Along the way, we were kept company by Bedouin tribespeople who hawked hot tea, cold coke and camel rides in the moonlight.

Finally, atop the rocky summit of Mt. Sinai, we sat down to rest our aching legs and await the dawn. The sky inched its way out of blackness, with a swatch of red-orange light peeking over the horizon and glowing steadily brighter for several minutes, until suddenly the sun made a dramatic appearance – an orb of fiery brilliance climbing above the mountainous peaks of the Sinai to a round of applause and gasps. There we were, atop Mt. Sinai at sunrise, and for a moment at least the specter of terrorism seemed far away.

Here is Lisa with other hikers, waiting for the sunrise atop Mt. Sinai...
















the hike back down the mountain...