Climbing Mt. Sinai, a how-to guide.

1. Locate Mt. Sinai on a map.(Hint: it’s on the Sinai Peninsula.)(Second Hint: you may have to look for Gebel Musa, Mount Moses.)
2. Locate nearest beach town.(Hint: if it isn’t the nearest, it’s the best—Dahab.)
3. Eat a ridiculously large dinner at Ali Baba restaurant.You’ll need the energy, right?Be sure to include one of Ali Baba’s famous “thick shakes”—a milkshake that occasionally is just a huge glass of ice cream.(For starters, try Mango/Strawberry, Banana/Peanut Butter, Chocolate/Peanut Butter, or Strawberry/Vanilla.)
4. Climb into a 14-passenger van from your Dahab hostel around 2200.There’s eleven in your group, plus three Japanese tourists, and a random Spaniard with a large backpack.There’s also a driver.Stop after 15 minutes to let in a “guard.”This is a fat man in shirtsleeves, carrying a handgun, who provides security for us foreigners.He does this by sitting in the front seat (taking up a seat-and-a-half) and sleeping.
5. Complete the two-hour drive from Dahab to St. Katherine’s Monastery in approximately 80 minutes.Sleep in patches when the vehicle isn’t careening down the highway with no regard for life or limb.(Headlights off, of course.)
6. Everyone piles out of the van to buy tickets.The ticket office is, obviously, some 15 minutes away from where you actually pile out again to start the climb.
7. Re-exit van at St. Katherine’s Monastery.Find the bathroom before beginning the four-hour climb.There are two women seated outside of it collecting money from people exiting.Stand in line for the bathroom, use bathroon with no toilet paper (which is why you brought your own, isn’t it?), and while washing your hands observe the four signs reading “Do Not Pay Any Money to Use this Bathroom” in English and Arabic. Leave the bathroom without paying.Refuse to turn around when the woman collecting baksheesh outside the bathroom begins screeching at you.Keep walking.
8. Meet your guide: Musa.He is a short, wiry man in a white gelabiyya (who climbs a mountain in white cotton?), red kufiyya, and brown shoes.Musa will be taking the eleven of you (plus the three Japanese and the Spaniard) up to the top of Mt. Sinai to watch the sunrise.It’s almost 100.
9. Begin the climb by heading through security.This is the most thorough security check you will find anywhere in the Arab Republic of Egypt, I kid you not.This goes far past the airport, the bus terminals, the university, the dorms.Who knows.
10. Start climbing!Musa takes you along the “Camel Trail,” a trail up the mountain that puts switchbacks as we know them to shame.The moon is bright and nearly full, the stars are out as well.The ascent is steady, and not terribly steep.Going is pretty easy for this famous peak.Musa ruins your night vision every three minutes or so by turning on his small flashlight and more often than not shining it back on the group.Generally at eye level.
11. Take a path through several large rocks.Allow the rocks to move and grunt at you.Realize that the rocks are something far worse than rocks: camels.Camels you’ve woken up.Thanks, Musa.
12. Continue the ascent, winding back and forth, back and forth up the trail.Stop at the first rest hut, where Musa and the man greet each other warmly.You’ve brought food and drink, so there’s no need to buy a bottle of water for LE 10 (when it should cost LE 1.5) or a Snickers bar for LE 12 (when it shouldn’t be more than LE 3), but it’s nice to sit and let people catch up.One of the Japanese girls falls behind.Very far behind.She decides to ride a camel to the top.The group must now keep pace with a camel.People walk faster than camels.
13. It gets chillier as you climb, and steeper, but still neither cold nor difficult.Continue in short sleeves and keep the best pace you can.Occasionally allow Musa to yell at you for getting too far ahead.
14. Look down the way you came.The lights of other climbers (seems like everyone except your group is climbing with a light) make a glowing snake from the base of the mountain up until almost where you are.Flashlights waggle back and forth, making the snake writhe its way up the camel trail.Look up the trail: it’s rather dark.
15. Reach the last rest stop, a place called Elijah’s Basin (because apparently here, under a 500-year-old cypress tree, Elijah heard the voice of God), approximately 2.5 hours after you began climbing.The air temperature isn’t that cold, but the wind is intense.Your hair, heretofore secured in a ponytail, is whipped around your face and into your eyes until you can’t see without holding it back with your hands.Everyone piles into one of many available rest huts.Two girls break down and buy hot tea.Decide it’s time to wear more than just a short-sleeve shirt (even if it is performance material), but changing would be awkward in this crowded tent.Hop outside and crouch behind a low stone wall.Slip a few times and pray not to tumble down.Pull off one tshirt, pull on long-sleeve t-shirt, put t-shirt back on.Try not to think of what your father would say to you climbing a mountain in a cotton t-shirt, jeans, and sneakers.
16. Begin the “Steps of Repentance.”These steps actually began 3000 ago at the base, back behind the monastery, but you took the camel trail instead.Now all you have left are 750 stone “steps,” supposedly laid by a monk from St. Katherine’s as a penance.Whatever he did, it must have been a doozy.The steps are uneven in the dark.Yes, it’s very dark but easier than trying to manage with a small flashlight.It’s much steeper now.You’re actually climbing and can see progress as opposed to the steady switchbacks of the camel trail.
17. Reach the top.The wind blows so loud in your ears you can hear nothing but its wild whistling.It’s now just after four a.m.Wait a few minutes for everyone else to make it to the top.Musa yells at you again for going ahead.You apologize.He knows you’re not at all sorry and tells you as much.Smile, he’s right.Wander around a bit at the top looking for somewhere to camp out.Find a narrow, rocky ledge.Put down seven people and seven heavy, dirty, smelly, warm, rented blankets.It’s still not very cold, but there’s no protection from the wind.Everyone tries to sleep for a few scant hours in the tearing wind before waking to watch the sunrise.
18. Lay on your back on the top of Mt. Sinai.Watch the stars.Feel free to touch them if you want, they’re that close.See one shooting star.Then a second.Pick out constellations.A third shooting star.
19. Blink.
20. The world is no longer black.It is, in fact, a deep dark blue.The rocks all around you and as far as you can see are a blue-black, the color of a velvet evening gown.The sky is just two shades lighter.But it is lighter.Sit up.Everyone else is still asleep, spooned into each other for protection from the wind.Tie a scarf around your head in an effort to keep your hair out of your face.Good call.
21. Lay back down and watch the stars disappear.Sit back up and look out across the peaks around Mt. Sinai.Right now they’re misty and still covered in shades of blue.As the sky lightens every moment, they become more brown, and then more red.
22. Alarms go off and your companions begin to stir.It’s almost time for sunrise.But looking east, clouds and haze obscure the skyline.
23. Watch the east as the sky lightens.Keep watching.The sun rises behind a wall of haze.That’s pretty disappointing.Note for the first time a group of Japanese tourists on an outcropping just in front of you.Good God, they are loud and obnoxious.
24. Call sunrise a bust.
25. When you finally see the sun for the first time, it’s a few inches above the horizon, and still less-than-impressive.The Japanese, on the other hand, find this highly impressive.Extending their palms to the sun, they sing.Then they turn around and continue posing each other for pictures, in most of which someone is giving the peace sign.
26. Musa comes to collect you for the trip back down.You were thinking of taking the Steps of Repentance all the way down, but a few members of your group have taken a turn for the worse (what is this—Oregon Trail?), so opt for the Camel Trail back down.
27. Begin to descend the Steps of Repentance to Elijah’s Basin.Actually look at what you climbed last night.Feel abject terror.You climbed these narrow, misplaced, uneven, steep steps at three a.m. in the dark.Get an excellent thigh workout on the descent.
28. Make your way back down the camel trail.It is now populated with more camels.And more men and boys trying to get you to ride one down the mountain.As you climb down, the sun rises and burns off all the haze so that within an hour of sunrise, the sky is a brilliant, hurt-your-eyes blue.Mt. Sinai, like the mountains around it, is not brown or black.It is red.A bright, adobe red.It is also a fairly sheer face.The church at the top, next to the ledge where you slept, is barely visible and looks precariously perched on the cliff.
29. Reach the bottom in something like two and a half hours, a little less than what it took you to climb.
30. Enter St. Katherine’s Monastery.Be prepared for the crush of people inside of it.All these people on top of a mountain is one thing, all of them inside a monastery is definitely another.See the Church of the Transfiguration.Be impressed but don’t take pictures.Roll your eyes slightly at the tourists who do.
31. Inside of St. Katherine’s, make sure to see the Burning Bush.Or, rather, a descendant of the Burning Bush that came from the real Burning Bush as a clipping in the 10^th century (if the monks of St. Katherine’s are to be believed).Be not-as-impressed.Weren’t you expecting flames?Maybe embers?Burn marks?Something.
32. Pile back into the van.Doze on the ride back to Dahab, which takes something like 100 minutes this morning.Headlights are still optional.“Guard” is not.
33. Pile out of the van.You are covered in reddish dirt, smelly, and exhausted.You have also climbed Mt. Sinai, watched the stars, and seen the sun rise (after a fashion).Victory!
34. Go get some lunch, it’s almost noon.