Hiking Egypt’s biblical Mount Sinai

Posted on 10 August 2011

You may have heard the story of the burning bush. But have you heard about how the mountain upon which it grew burns brightly too? Every morning the whole of the Sinai Mountain is set on fire. It starts with a brilliant yellow ember in the distance throwing light into a purple sky, and slowly the golden glow spreads, eventually engulfing the entire peak in luminous orange and dazzling lemon.

Alan and I started our hike up the legendary Mount Sinai at the ungodly hour of 01h00. Wanting to avoid the heat of the desert sun, it was pretty much our only option. With our headlamps to guide our path, and a young Bedouin man to guide our headlamps, we trekked up the 7 km to Elijah’s Plateau, stopping along the way for midnight snacks. It was an exhausting ordeal; my poor body, which was used to being deeply asleep during that time, trudged along the bumpy, camel-smelling path in a dream-like state. In the darkness, I could see little of the view, but the wide expanse of stars made the experience all the more dreamily beautiful.

We reached Elijah’s Basin around 03h00 and thought we had accomplished the hardest part. We were wrong. The remaining 500 m were to consist of a torment of 750 steep, narrow steps circling around the mountain towards its peak. Known as the Steps of Repentance, these were hand-laid by one monk as a form of penance and form part of a longer path consisting of 3750 steps. Indeed, it felt like penance to climb them in the early hours of the morning. But climb them we did, reaching the summit around 4 am.

It was just before sunrise when we stretched ourselves out on an east-facing rock with Mount Moses behind us. A lightening sky was unfurling before us, revealing an endless expanse of shadowy mountains. Bathed in a pre-dawn purple, they rose and fell like the ocean, spilling over to the brightening horizon.

And then it happened: morning burst forth. The sun emerged from beneath the shadows of rock and exploded powerfully across the sky. The mountains caught alight and flared a royal red, while the sky in the West shimmered silver and lilac in response. Mount Sinai was ablaze and we had the profound joy of witnessing the spectacular moment.

Exhausted but full of awe and wonder, we descended. The early morning daylight exposed to us the majesty of the mountains we had climbed in the dark and I was amazed at how far we had actually hiked. Back at Elijah’s Basin, we decided to hire two camels to take us the rest of the way down. While it was a mesmerising experience to be bumping along atop a camel through the rocky desert mountains, Alan and I both suffered too many aches and bruises to continue all the way down in such a manner.

By the time we reached the bottom of Mount Sinai on foot, the sun was already hot and harsh. We spent half an hour visiting St Catherine’s Monastery which was built in the sixth century in honour of the saint who was tortured to death on a spiked wheel. His body is said to have then miraculously appeared at the top of the highest mountain in Egypt.

The famous burning bush is said to still thrive in one of the courtyards of St Catherine’s. I stood watching it for a while, remembering the story of God speaking to Moses, and waiting for it to catch alight. But I couldn’t help thinking that God has shifted his fire; if once God spoke through a blazing bush, he now speaks through the glory of the morning sun and the fiery glow of a mountain caught in the flames.






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