This past weekend I took a trip to St. Catherine in the Sinai Desert with a couple friends. This was a long awaited trip as my climbing friend Nick and I have been trying to get out there to for several weeks. I must admit that he has been trying more than I, primarily because he is more willing to sacrifice class time in case of the "random happenings" which can never be anticipated.
**One side note of interest is our preparation for travel. First off, it had included the attempt at getting a bus schedule. Our investigation usually ended with the casual mention that a bus might leave from a certain station at such and such a time, but who really knows. Furthermore, you can never be too sure whether this information is completely accurate, nor can you confidently be reassured that there will be a bus present to return you to your place of origin. Secondly, in our attempt to actually find climbing routes and places to sleep, apart from a couple decently reliable sources, we were usually told to “just wait until you get there” (a recurring theme in this country). Thirdly, a lot of trips and outings amongst locals and foreigners (specifically AUC students) are usually planned last minute without specific details, figures, directions, etc. These details usually remain obscure throughout the course of the trip. Talk about an adventure.
After a few God-ordained meetings and a couple “leaps of faith,” I was on my way to St. Catherine with my friend Omar, in his amazingly beautiful car with a private driver, to the desert to meet Nick who’d traveled via a hired mini-bus with four other students the night before. Once the city melted out of sight (which, like Las Vegas, happens quite quickly; once you’re out of it, you’re out of it), the Red Sea came and left, and the mountains started to rise like brown giants before my eyes, my heart leapt with anticipation! This anticipation drained significantly when, four hours into our drive, I realized that I had forgotten the second climbing rope. With only one rope only two people can climb. This doesn’t much help a climbing group of three. This heart wrenching cognizance prepared me even more for the “just wait until you get there” mindset. Sometimes one can only throw preparation to the wind and go with what he has. Learning to keep a solid, optimistic mindset in such circumstances is one of the intents of the desert.
St. Katherine is truly a place of wonders and relief. It is a small, quiet, quaint little town nestled amongst the brown giants that stretch across the peninsula welcoming visitors, tourists, those seeking rest and refuge, and pretty much any living thing (especially cats, which are quite prolific at the Holy Valley Hotel). This little town rests upon the theme, “Let’s just take what comes our way, and the rest we’ll leave behind.”
Whereas Nick was much too relaxed to remove his tent and it’s contents sprawled out on the ground from the Fox Camp (which is a lovely, cheap little camp where you can sleep on the ground, smoke shisha in a Bedouin tent, eat meals under a little grass hut, and wonder what all those green plants on the edge of the property are), Omar, the driver and I decided to stay at the Sheik Moussa Camp. Contrary to popular thought, Sheik Moussa is not presently owned by Sheik Moussa. It’s owned by a lovely British man named Mark who just recently bought it from the Sheik and renovated the kitchen (always a good decision). We slept in a room with four rug-clad mats on the ground, pillows that had covers which looked as though they had been there since the early 80’s (either that or the cats bit all the holes in them), an adorable white window with shutters which was definitely worth the picture, and a wide mirror on the opposing wall. A king could not have asked for a more lavish space.
In the nights, we ate homemade meals of curry chicken and rice with rum and Coke (I drank water), sat around the dinner table with talk of politics and stars, moved to the fire with it’s burning coal embedded in a round metal bowl, sat on mats on the ground underneath the Bedouin tents talking and singing and drinking and smoking until we each drifted to our personal mats to sleep with not a sound outside our windows.
Though I could go on and on about the wonderfulness of St. Catherine, I will sum up as many of the main points as I can. We climbed, and we climbed well. Omar, Nick and I had to be a little creative in delegating who was to climb what for how long, but it all just fell into place. “Just wait until you get there.” Omar didn’t quite make a record for climbing Mount Moussa (the possible location of Mt. Sinai and the manifestation to Moses) in approximately an hour, but I think I beat the record for hiking up the mount in a state of dehydration in less than one and a half hours. That was fun, in a half-sarcastic sort of way. I missed the sunset, but I enjoyed a lovely cup of tea with two Bedouins (one of them our guide) at one of the candy stands on the mountain.
The following day, as Omar and Nick attempted another climb in the mountains, I rested under the sun on a rock high above the dirt path where camels carried their masters and their master’s goods to who knows where. I heard a group of woman and children below, and decided to assess the scene. As I carried out my reconnaissance, I was invited to join the women who were sitting in the shade of a rock off the beaten path caring for children, chatting, cooking, sewing handicrafts and looking at the two M&M spectacles (Omar & Nick) dancing on the rock above them with disbelief and a mother’s “I can’t believe you are doing that!” attitude. I quite enjoyed partaking food with them and watching them interact in such a relaxed atmosphere as if there was nothing that mattered more than sitting under that rock with each other. They hold such a beautiful culture that knows how to cherish the rest, the silence, the simple, the fellowship. I recall one conversation with a Bedouin man who managed the camp where we stayed. I asked him if he’d ever been to the States. He said no, but he would someday. “I am a Bedouin. I can travel anywhere. Insha’Allah.”
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