The Secrets of the Desert

After spending a summer in the lush, green forests and towering mountain faces of the Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming, I was not enthusiastic about coming to the desert barrenness of Egypt, but I looked on it with a child-like anticipation of new experiences and a whole new ecosystem to learn about. The Sinai is a desert. From the outside it looks simple, straight forward, harsh, maybe even unbearable. Have you been to the desert? It is so much more than that. I’d already had one very memorable stay in the desert town of St. Katherine before I joined some friends from my church on a desert hike from St. Katherine to Dahab. Even just the mention of such a feat to one who is familiar with the Peninsula brings accusations of insanity and questions of reasons. Nevertheless, for a pioneering, adventuresome spirit such as mine, this feat is a necessary feast for my physically intense personality.

The common Egyptian riff, "Just wait until you get there," was prevalent on this trip as well. Starting from when my friend initiated it until we crammed eight young adults into a rented minivan and arrived on the scene in St. Katherine not even knowing when we were to start our adventure, this theme hung above our heads creating a childlike anticipation of the soon coming challenge. Amidst talks of politics, economics, religion, and coffee, I tried with no avail to both rest and study on the ride to the Sinai, but the fellowship of friends kept distracting me. I realized quite early on that my interaction with these new found friends was a much needed oasis to revitalize me in the current 'desert-like' time in my life. I only knew a handful of our group, but within two days time, we all had many memories to share. So we rode jammed into this van as if we were on the Indianapolis Speedway to arrive at the Fox Camp in St. Katherine at 11 pm. We were anticipating just a couple hours of sleep or less before we began our cross-desert hike in the light of the high moon so as to avoid the heat of day. At 9 am the next morning, we were still waiting at the camp not quite sure of when we were going to leave. The night before, we had quite an adventurous sleep that tested our individual abilities to stay warm under the stars with few resources at hand. We woke to a refreshing breakfast of leaf thin pancakes, jam, and eggs. And this was the start of our trip.

After another car ride to about 20 km outside St. Katherine, the conditions of which I would liken to a cattle car, we were introduced to our guide who randomly volunteered on the spot to hike with us across the desert to Dahab. I do not know too many people who are just waiting around to volunteer last minute without any preparation to walk for miles on end through the blazing sun leading a bunch of crazed youth into the desert. Atiya, our guide, wore a long white robe with short pants underneath, a blue head wrap (which I became jealous of later on wishing that my handkerchief was approximately three times its size), and Velcro sandals meant for a 12 year old causing his ankles to hang off the edge at least an inch and his feet to collect a thick, protective layer of sand and dirt. All that he carried was a one liter bottle of water in a red carry case. I was concerned, interested, surprised, and yet impressed. By the end of our trip, he was quite exhausted, but throughout the course, he was a wonderful, mysterious guide.

We began our hike at 10 am the first day. While crossing the first stretch of dessert, seemingly aimlessly, the barren hills rolled out in front of us with a very distinct base separating them from the desert floor. All of my knowledge of “Leave No Trace” (an environmentally conscious concept for outdoor sportsmen) went out the door as our group just spread out and left tracks in multiple locations. Throughout our hike, we would alternate hiking alone and with others; it was a wonderful opportunity to not only get to know each other but also to spend time alone and reflect. Several times I reflected on the LNT ideals: whenever I saw a random sandal camping in the sand, looking at the remnants of our rest spots which would be found years later by some archeologist, trying to dig holes in the sand to use for waste products which would only go two inches deep before they hit solid rock. These were all little reminders that we are in Egypt, not an American National Forest.

We soon left the rolling hills behind and entered the classic wadi: tall rock walls on either side with a narrow pathway scattered with boulders…the obvious signs of former water movement. I was delightfully surprised to see a small oasis with a palm tree nuzzled in the middle of this Wadi. GREEN! It was a refreshing sight, but instantly out of sight again. Nevertheless, the rocks (which have captured my heart for some time now), the sand, the desert plants (far and few in between) were beginning to take shape in my mind. I was beginning to distinguish the shapes, colors, and characteristics more. The desert was coming more alive! In a short time, the scenery changed again, and we came across a tree. I can’t begin to tell you how beautiful one tree can be. What was even more surprising was the truck with all of our gear in the back parked by the tree. I had to question where the vehicle came from and how in the world the driver drove all the way out there. Granted much of the time we were hiking on what seemed to be a dirt road, but we hadn’t seen anything except desert for hours. Nevertheless, we had an amazing meal comprised of beans, fruit, salad (which is almost always cucumbers and tomatoes), halawa (a sesame desert), and some meat like substance which might have been a relative to either spam or tuna at some point in time. After the meal and partaking a wonderful cup of tea (loaded with sugar as is most appropriate in Egypt), we departed from under the shade of our umbrella-like tree.

The scenery changed again several times throughout the course of the day. The rolling rock piles, which I would liken to small mountains, grew closer and closer until they coalesced into single walls that towered on either side of us. Again the walls opened and the mountains appeared and slowly disjoined eventually leading us into a delta-like area which I imagined to be similar to the Sub-Saharan deserts farther south in Africa: umbrella-like trees sparsely planted, large expanses of flat, desert land, a hard ground which looked as if water had washed it in a single direction, mountains spaced some distance apart and cut on the edges looking almost like short towers. I was in an entirely different country. At this location, we began to see life, and there was quite a bit of it. We were greeted by a group of young Bedouin children whose only word in English was “banana.” There were several caddy-shack type houses built in a slipshod manner with whatever rocks and materials were at hand and short stone fences bordering them. In the distance I could see these beautiful buildings in comparison with yellow and red bricks standing out more than a giraffe in crowd of lions. I asked Atiya what these were (in broken yet understood Arabic), and he said they were government built schools for Bedouin children. I smiled, and pictured classrooms equally full of students and goats. We passed a woman dressed completely in black from head to toe gathering water into pots from a well outside her house, the locus for all the plant life within a half mile radius. After we passed her, we headed back into the enclosed area of the wadi and headed toward out campsite for the night. Eight hours and 25 km down, only 35 more to go!

When we arrived at camp, our group all fell into a series of stretching and message techniques to relieve our bodies. Our wonderful Bedouin guide and cook just lied down on mats by the fire and starred at us with what seemed to be an amused glance. No, we are not from the desert. We need to stretch. Our dinner, cooked over the fire, was an amazing mixture of vegetables, potatoes, and chicken accompanied by the traditional cup of tea flavored sugar. Than we lied down in our sleeping bags on these thin, cloth-covered pads and fell asleep looking at nothing but stars expanding in every direction dotting the black dome above our heads.

I woke to the sun before the rest of my group and watched the Bedouin woman prepare bread for our meal. She alternated forcefully kneading the dough in a large bowl with beating the sand out of the surrounding mats. Of course there was no hand washing in between these tasks, but I thought nothing of it later on as I set myself to the all too challenging undertaking of eating the board-like bread with jam and cheese which provided necessary carbohydrates. We set out again after a cup of tea and a slathering of sun block lotion. One thing I did learn on this trip is that the sand provides an amazing cup holder! Though the sun wasn’t much of an issue at 7 am in the morning, we still wanted to prepare in advance. Ramy, one of the people in our group, put on enough lotion (which he’d borrowed from one of our female hikers) to turn his Middle Eastern skin white and cause him to smell like a perfume shop. We departed to jokes about Ramy’s new skin color, Tae bo, and Billy Blake and the sly comment of our faithful leader, “Let’s make like shepherds and get the flock out of here.”

Immediately we hiked upward into an area which reminded me of a set from Disney’s Lion King or the surface of the plant Mars: many small, scattered boulders, a few desert bushes here and there, and what looked to be holes in the surface. From this area, we descended into another valley over the large, smooth, rounded boulders of granite, which would make the floors of the Santa Maria degli Angeli e dei Martiri Basilica in Rome, Italy, look cheap. This change in scenery happened too many times for me to journal on this website, but if I ever write a book about my experience, there will be much detail. Around every bend was a new, spectacular sight beyond belief and imagination! Our second day brought a whole new series of adventures: the scat discovery game (I found the scat of sheep, goats, more sheep, and more goats – this game is not as fun in the desert as it is in Wyoming); the sign of life in the desert…flies enough to populate a rainforest; we ran out of water, and ‘yours truly’ (me) was the only member to suffer from stage three dehydration; we walked on the ground that we most likely one of the crossing places of the Children of Israel from Biblical times. After a 12 hour day of walking into the dark hours of the evening, we crammed (as turned out to be our usual state of vehicle travel) into the back of the truck which had supplied us through our hike, and it dropped us just outside Dahab to return again to society.

Sitting in a restaurant by the sea just an hour and a half later after two days of hiking 70 km, I was ready to give my feet, which had developed several foreign growths over the course of the hike, a little rest. Nevertheless, I was already looking for the next opportunity to get into the desert to do some more hiking and climbing. Granted, I dearly miss the luscious, refreshing, invigorating flora and fauna of more humid climates, but there is something mysterious, something alluring, something enrapturing about the desert. You should try going there. Just lay out a mat and sleep under the stars. Take care of the scorpions and all the other little bugs which love nothing more than sneaking around under your mat, but they don’t care about you if you don’t bother them. Treat the camels with such revere as well and you’ll have a lovely time. There is something spectacular around the next bend if you just take the effort and have the courage to make the approach.