Sinai Sunrise
Egypt
Essential for a top trip, in my opinion, is a combination of rich culture, history and fun. For this reason, Egypt was the perfect location for my adventures last year. With only 16 days and a strong determination to cover as much of the country as possible, whilst still finding time to relax, a challenge lay before me.
Sixteen days in the land of the camel (as I will always remember it after being forced to straddle one with flowing chiffon turban in tow), of the pharaoh, a land oozing with culture and diverse history dating back light years before, many argue, the Egyptians arrived, is still a lifetime short of that which one could spend there.
From Cairo to Aswan, to Dahab and the summit of Sinai, the pinnacle of my trip, I was constantly entertained – at the chance meetings with other travellers, at the beauty of my surroundings, by the aromas and the buzz of a different life (from mine) that filled my senses.
Taking tea with villagers on the Nile was a treat, as was my likely first and only invite to an Egyptian wedding – dancing and tea drinking in a walled field with 500 or so children, men and women, base speakers blaring Egyptian tunes with the men swirling me round and round (I must have been dreaming).
Our escort at the wedding, a young Egyptian man who taught English and had greeted us and our captain as we docked at the village (he was keen to practice his English, and also I believe to educate us in Egypt and its people), took us into his home prior to the wedding party – where his mother, sisters and aunties were baking bread for dinner. We sat and watched television and smoked a sheesha with the men. The house was fully fitted with electrics, and a television, which amazed me purely because their home was constructed of mud, and in parts was missing a roof. Some of the luxuries of the West, yet at other times a basic existence. That our escort found us in the West wanting, that he missed his home dreadfully when he was studying there, was not shocking in the least. The longer I stayed in Egypt the more I began to miss it, before I had even left.
During three days of gentle drifting down the Nile, from Luxor to Aswan, along with my two travelling companions at the time, a comic scally friend and a Norwegian law student, images of people long ago flooded my mind. There they were, trading and transporting goods along the banks. The lushious green banks, forming grassy steps from the peaks of the bank to the tip of the Nile, induced a wild urge in me to run up and down the length of it.
Occasionally we would float past fisherman teetering on the edge of their boats looking for creatures in the not so clear waters of the Nile, would be woken with a start to find a cow sniffing at my face or stirred by the bubbling of the sheesha. I would peer through sleepy eyes to find my captain puffing merrily away, his crumpled face moulded to form the perfect smoking pucker…he would always pass it to us, when one of us woke, along with a small tea with sugar.
Of course, it isn’t all smoking fruity sheeshas and lying horizontally. There are temples and pyramids and all sorts of ancient buildings to explore and be inspired by, from Giza in Cairo to the Valley of the Kings and Queens. Hatshepsut with the inviting ramp (why inviting? – because it’s so long and wide – and free of people if you get there early – it makes you want to run down it like a child. So we did, we ran and ran and ran – my comic scally friend and I – all the way down the imposing ramp away from Hatshepsut, and at the bottom turned around and saw in all its glory the mark of a once important man, a Pharaoh).
From Giza, to Valley of the Kings and Queens, to Luxor, to Edfu and to finally, that part of my trip where I get to chill, to relax, to sunbathe and swim, to dive the Red Sea and check out the famed underwater wildlife. What better place to head for than Dahab, location of the big chill, where everyone walks slower than a snail, where time hasn’t yet been invented and the only seats are oversized cushions.
As the madness of the tour slowed, and I had taken in many of the places I wanted to see, Dahab transformed me into the ultimate sloth. Smoking sheeshas, chatting, relaxing and exploring – eel garden and the coast line, various local Dahabian cuisines and the top fruit milkshakes at ‘Sharks’ café (mango and strawberry, mint and lemon, any combination you could concoct, they had!).
Dahab was where, one night at ten o’clock, we set off for the Sinai trek, to behold the place where Moses took the Ten Commandments from God. Thinking back on what is simultaneously a physical and spiritual journey, a shiver runs through me. An outrageous Australian, a laid back Brit, a politically astute American, my comic scally friend and I grabbed a cab and took the two hour ride to reach Mount Sinai.
On arriving at the base of Sinai, one can be presented with a 2-4 hour climb dependent on all types of factors, such as level of fitness, number of fag breaks, incidence of camel obstructions, lack of lighting (I had only a lighter for light – which as you can imagine is a painstakingly slow way of finding your way about – but since the boys had wandered yards ahead of me, it was all I had to spot rocky areas and mountain ridges).
I had lost the mad Australian minutes from the beginning as the boys had lost me. We reunited at the top of the climb, sitting in a small ruin of rocks. A shimmer of gold had begun to form on the horizon. We had a smoke, waited, and watched as more and more groups of people ascended the mountain, clambering onto peaks for the best viewpoint.
One of the group took off to purchase some hot chocolate, and returned with choc chip biscuits as well. This instigated a ten-minute debate on the difference between biscuits, cakes and cookies and those elements that constituted each. A conversation destined never to reach a happy conclusion due to none of us sharing the same birthplace. This debate almost distracted us from witnessing the magnificent rise of the sun over Sinai.
Gradually the shimmer of gold and red waxed and grew; lighting the entire sky before us in one long perfectly formed horizontal line, setting off hundreds of cameras clicking wildly in unison. It was five in the morning.
When light came and I turned around to look at the people that had made this climb, I was convinced that no other part of their trip could have been as inspiring as this, that not a single one of them didn’t feel as I did at that moment…that I was in the heart of Egypt.
