Climbing Mt. Sinai

We absolutely loved Dahab. The hostel we stayed at (Dahab Dorms in The Red Sea Relax Resort; highly recommended)  was cheap and really nice and right on the boardwalk. Dahab didn’t really have any beach but it did have beautiful Oceanside restaurants. At most of these you ate sitting on low benches or cushions on the floor. I loved the atmosphere of Dahab. It was great.

One of the things that Kelly was really excited about was climbing Mt. Sinai. Our hostel was able to book us an excursion there and even packed us a pretty good breakfast. We hopped on the bus to the foot of the mountain at roughly 11pm and then met a semi-drunk Asian guy who was travelling around the world. (If I remember correctly, he had recently biked all the way through Spain or something) We slept for most of the ride until we reached the foot of the mountain around 1 or 2 in the morning.

At that point we hauled ourselves out of the warm van and into the frigid mountain air. The mountain was made entirely of rock; there was very little vegetation. This made it pretty difficult to hike up the mountain in the dark, on shifty rock shards. Especially cause we had to get out of the way of the lazy tourists who were riding camels up.

The hike took a few hours and for the most part wasn’t too bad. We were tired and my asthma was acting up, but it wasn’t until the very end that things got ugly. The last bit involves incredibly steep side of mountain stairs. (I literally had to stop a few times to catch my breath; it was very intense) Then once you survived that the very top was windblown and literally freezing. We still had two hours before sunrise so we rented some overpriced camel blankets (some had questionable stains but we were too cold to care) We settled down against the side wall sitting on one of the blankets and then pilling about three on top of us. KP got the crap seat; the wind was blowing straight at her. I sat down next to her and, luckily for me, the Asian guy sat down on the other side of me, creating a semi-not-freezing sandwich. We hung out in cold-half-asleep-comas and ate some of our box breakfasts.

  The sunrise when it finally came, was amazing. It was still utterly frigid, and I kinda didn’t want to get out from under the slightly smelly camel blankets and take pictures, but it was beautiful. I hardly remember climbing back down the mountain, but we did it somehow.