Eid Al Fitr and Dahab (Hiking Mt. Sinai)

Now, back to our hostella (my new word for posh hostels). Apart from the employees at the front desk being aware of only about half of their offered services and trips, there was something else that I thought was odd. There were absolutely no women working here, just 7 or 8 men ages 25-35. The initial presentation of the hostella was so good that I just figured that there had to be a woman working on the team because I just couldn't believe that these amateur young men could keep the place running so well. I keep mentioning how Penguin Village offered day and overday trips to local attractions so I’ll now write about the one expedition we actually did set out on. For some reason we all really wanted to climb Mt. Sinai at 1:00 in the morning so that we could reach the top in time to see the sunrise. The total expense of the trip was $18, which covered the cost of our four hour bus ride to the base of the mountain and back to Dahab , our guide who led us up the mountain with the light of his cell phone, and our entrance fee to St. Katherine Monastery, located at the base of the mountain. We left Dahab at 11:00 PM sharp for our two hour bus ride to the mountain base. When we got out of the bus at the mountain base we all quickly put on as many warm layers as we had thought necessary to bring. In actuality it was probably only 60 degrees but it felt more like 40 compared to the tropical, beachside weather that we were used to. Then before I knew it, our bus driver was introducing us to our guide and within two minutes we were setting off. Our guide told us that we would first have to climb seven kilometers of hills before we reached the final ascent up the mountain known as “the stairs of repentance”. All the time that we were walking we were in near complete darkness with mountain silhouettes on either side of us but with the clearest starlit sky imaginable above us. We started out walking on a fairly flat dirt road at first but we soon started our actual hike up the surrounding hills. When we began climbing our first major hill I started to worry because I couldn’t see anything and thus had no idea when and where we could take a break. But before long we reached a little hut situated on on a level plane to the side of the main trail. This hut was lit by gas lamps and was manned by a local resident who was selling water, tea, and candy bars, all neatly arranged and displayed next to his front counter. We rested at this hut for about five minutes, during which I rehydrated as much as I could in case we wouldn’t be stopping again anytime soon. But after another 10 minutes of hiking we reached another hut almost identical to one we had just rested in. Thus the routine of the hike became hiking for 10 minutes under the light of the starlit sky and our battery lit cell phones and then resting in mountain huts that doubled as convenient stores. We reached the stairs of repentance I think some of us were a little surprised to see that the stairs weren’t the intricately carved, stone steps that we had imagined. Rather they were just a series of semi flat rocks stacked one on top of the other, though at times were indeed flat enough to be considered stairs. These stairs, in my opinion and in the opinion of the group I think, were of low-medium hiking difficulty. The steps were fairly evenly spaced apart and fairly regular in the height. They helped set a nice pace and were ideal for practicing one’s hiking step. When we reached the final resting hut before the last 50 or so steps to the summit it was about 4:00 AM. We now had nothing to do but sit and freeze from cold air and wind chill until sunrise. Luckily, the huts were now selling blankets. For anywhere from $2.00-$4.00 we could grab a blanket and be allowed to squat in a hut for about an hour and half. This was clearly a complete scam, however ,because the owners of these huts (there were several all next to each other here) clearly didn’t wash the blankets and had a piles and piles of them inside and all around their huts. We were at their mercy and had to consent to renting overpriced blankets to avoid slipping into hypothermia. The good news is that we brought plenty of water and therefore never had to ask what ridiculous prices they were charging for something that they actually did need to replenish regularly. For the next hour and a half or so we basically huddled together under blankets for body heat. Then at about 5:30 we took our blankets, climbed the last fifty steps, found a nice piece of real estate, and huddled for warmth some more until the sun rise. When the sun finally did rise I was shocked to see just how many people had also climbed the mountain this early in the morning and who were now sitting on the summit of Mt.Sinai witnessing this gorgeous spectacle. I even go so far as to estimate that there were as many as one hundred other hikers on the mountain that morning. As soon as the sun had warmed the air around our clumps of bodies and blankets, we began our decent down the mountain so that we could have plenty of time to tour St. Katherine’s monastery. For some reason, though, we decided not to retrace our steps down the mountain the way we came but instead to take another trail with pointed signs reading “St. Katherine’s”. Since other people were taking this path as well, we decided that it had to be safe and that it had to lead somewhere. Oh, and as for our guide, we really hadn’t seen very much of him since 4:00 AM so, when we did see him, at around 6:30 we just said a quick hello and left while he was trying to find the other hikers in our group (not the other gap year students but other people from Penguin Village who also went on the hike). Back to the hike though. The trail we took was absolutely incredible. We were finally seeing all the incredible views and details that we had missed during the night. My one complaint about the decent down, however, would be that it was too fast. But this is understandable because we really didn’t know for sure where this trail was leading us and we needed to at the base of the mountain in time for our shuttle. When we finally did reach the Monastery, I think we were all just too tired to really appreciate it. After all, none of us had gotten any real sleep that night except maybe for the naps we took the day before. But I do remember enjoying the walk through the church and seeing the crowd of people surrounding the famous burning bush, or rather what some claim to be the famous burning bush from the Bible. But other than that I really wasn’t interested in anything else other than getting back in the bus and sleeping. Thus was our one planned activity during our five day vacation in Dahab. The rest of the time we just swam, tanned by the beach, napped, read, and dined. And that was our break for the most part.