Egypt: Day 5 - Mount Sinai and St. Katherine

It's 3.30 am. Finally decide to wake up and get moving. Hm... I seem to have pulled on a pair of pants, my jacket and a pair of socks sometime during the night. Cold + mosquitoes maketh not a good combination. Wash up as best as we can and pack up our gear and walk over to Hamada's room. Chap probably hates us thoroughly - this is the second time we're waking him up at an obscene hour. We pass him the keys and walk the kilometer to the highway. After a 15-20 minute wait, we catch a cab; he offers to take us to St. Katherine for LE 100. And we set off. 15 minutes in, he turns around and asks, "Driver gooood???" and we reply, "Yessss!!!". "Where you from? Indi? Ah! Indi gooodd!!!. Amitabh Bachchan????" Everybody here seems to like Indians, and I've developed new respect for the big B. When you get people from the farthest reaches of Egypt knowing your name and those of your movies...

Mt. Sinai

We reach St. Kat about 7.30 am. Wait until 8 or so to get our bags stowed in some guys's room. LE 3.00 baksheesh each. Then we walk to the back of the monastery and begin the climb up. During the climb we meet a huge number of tourists climbing back down. They seem to have reached here and done the climb at night and climbed back down in early morning, after watching the sunrise. The two of us seem to be the only people attempting the climb up at this time. The way up is a very long route. Just at the beginning we look us and see a small hut on the top of a nearby peak. That's our destination I think. As we climb on and on, we nearly give up a couple of times. But we persevere and reach the top after almost 2 hours. It is then that we realise that the hut that we had seen before the climb is on a different peak at a height of about half of where we are standing. The view from up here is awesome. And brown. The only trees we see are 3 cypress trees, one of which is supposed to be 5000 years old, which stand on a small plateau about 10 minutes down, known as Elijah's Basin. After about 10 minutes' rest and a few photographs, we head back down and take the second route down, known as the 3000 Steps of Repentance. These were laid by one of the monks at the Monastery a few hundred years ago in repentance. This route down is significantly faster, but harder on the knees and heels. And on the balance too. But we get back down in about an hour and 15 minutes, alive and in one piece.

At the top of Mt Sinai, after an exhausting 2 hour climb. The climb down was faster but harder on the knees. But the view and the thrill of standing up there were worth it.

Back down we discover that all our plans thereon have to be changed. One of the components in our travel plans - the bus from St. Katherine to Sharm-el-shaikh no longer plies the route. The only bus leaving this town is a bus to Cairo at 6.00 am. Which is tomorrow. And to compound our misery, our Bible, the Lonely Planet is missing. I search high and low and we're both massively depressed. Me more so, having been directly responsible for the loss. After an hour of searching and questioning people, we declare the book officially lost, and ourselves officially stranded in St. Kat, at least for the night. Yay. We take a cab to the village to try our luck and see what can be done. Get there and decide to eat something, not having eaten anything for almost 24 hours.

But first things first, we decided to try and locate the bus-stand from where we can get anywhere out of this place [I was about to write God-forsaken, but with Mt. Sinai standing sentinel, that's exactly what this place isn't]. Turns out that our information is correct, and that the only bus serving this town is the "Only one bus Katreen - Cairo tomorrow morning - sickoos". How about a taxi to Sharm? A few eager operators jump at us - LE 250. Nothing less and so nothing doing. Satya has the idea of returning to Cairo and taking a train to Luxor from there. That way we get there at almost the same time, save some money too, but get to see fewer places. Rather reluctantly, I agree and we decide to stay the night. We sit outside the "Restaurant for Friends" and munch moodily on 2 - 3 felafels and a Coke. Fairly tasty, but doesn't do Satya's stomach any good. I, of the metal plated stomach species pass the test unscathed, for now at least.

After lunch we walk into a souvenir shop to ask for directions and to change some cash. The owner's name is Mr. Shukri. 60+ year old man, who owns a villa in St. Kat and houses Alexandria. Has 2 kids in LA, and has visited 45 countries in his lifetime. He advises us to stay at the Al-Fayrouz hotel, which is a 10 minute walk away. Off we go, backpacks in tow. We quickly locate the hotel and discover that it is a large courtyard with a row of houses off on the right and a small room with a small and dismal "Reception" sign. Knock knock! Nobody's home, and the fact is borne out by a couple local young men. So we cross the road to the row of 5-star hotels. El Wady el Mah-something cost USD 50 per night for a double room, and Daniela village hotel cost USD 56. Whew! But as they say here in Singapore, boh-pian. So we choose the lesser of the two evils and ask the manager of the former for a room. He says that he does have a room, but if we're looking for something cheaper, he recommends the Zaituna camp, 5 km down the road. Which sounds like a good idea, except that the likelihood of getting a taxi at 5 am to get back to the village to catch the bus at 'sickoos' is not too high. We convey this fact to the hotel manager and he says, "Oh no problem! You can catch your bus down the road... Only one road to St. Kat, two ways and lots of accidents!" This piece of news has the curious effect of making us feel both good and scared at the same time. But we think it's pretty decent of the manager to give us this advice at the expense of his own business. We later decide he probably didn't want a couple of scruffy looking ruffians like us hanging around his establishment.

We decide to go to Zaituna. Crossing back to the other side of the road, we wait outside a phone booth where a be-gelbeyya'd gentleman is making a call. What has attracted us is the presence of a shiny new Toyota pickup outside. "Excuse me, can you give us a lift to Zaituna?". He says ok, and then I pop the stupid question, "How much? Bikem?" An opportunistic look crosses his face and he quotes LE 20. After negotiating down to 15, we get in and drive down to Zaituna, which is sited next to another 5-star hotel. The question arises, who in his right mind is going to stay in a 5-star hotel 5 km from anywhere, literally surrounded by nothing? The owner/caretaker of Zaituna, one Khaled comes over to us and says, "Only sleep, no food." After establishing that we can shower there, we check in. At the price of LE 30 per night, we are not too likely to complain.

We're shown to our room - a large dormitory that can take 17-18 persons at a pinch. And the two of us are the only people in the dorm. In the whole camp. Probably in a 5 km radius as well. The cabin is a concrete structure which has the windows boarded up with plywood and a patterned cloth ceiling. The sleeping area is a raised concrete slab on which the caretaker placed 2 mattresses, pillows and blankets. Water takes a couple of hours to heat up, and we have a pleasure of bathing in the ladies' shower, which is the only one which has hot water. About 7 pm, we decide to have dinner and begin to hope that the deserted hotel next door has some sort of restaurant. We repack our stuff and lock them to a wooden post, and walk over to the Morgenland hotel. A ten minute walk later we find the restaurant which is currently being patronised by a tour group. Buffet dinner, with rice, spaghetti, some dals, babaghanoug, etc etc, with some decent dessert at the end. Costs us LE 28 each, but we do it justice. The management literally chases us out. We walk back to our room and retire for the night. Early day ahead.

Now is know what 6 days of stubble feels like. It's not good.