| | When he was dropped from being a Patagonia spokesman because he climbed Utah's delicate arch, Dean Potter quipped that he didn't know why people attached so much significance to that one rock- to him every rock was holy. So likewise, we decided against another ascent of the world's most holy mountain, Gebel Musa (Mount Moses aka Mount Sinai) and opted for Gebel Katherina, another venerable peak in the Sinai Desert, which again impressed me with its awesome landscape. It is not a sahara-like sands but a Red Rocks/ Southwest USA-like set of rugged canyons and peaks.
The most holy mountain, Mount Sinai, with its church just visible if you look close enough on the summit.
With the most terrible info from a couple online sites and some good directions from locals, we made it to the top of Egypt- Gebel Katherina, the highest mountain in all of the Sinai and indeed the whole country. The sunset was gorgeous as its light hit Mount Sinai (Gebel Musa) across the valley. The round-trip 10 miles/ 3500' gain was the perfect reintroduction to real physical activity since my bike accident more than a month before.
Strange that I have been to the highest summit of only 2 countries- Kazakhstan and Egypt- neither country of which is extremely high on my favorites list. In Kyrgyzstan, Germany, Poland, Romania: countries that I like a lot, I've only been to their 2nd summits or close, but not quite, to their high points. In Israel, Ukraine and Lithuania-my favorite places, I've not really been to any mountains at all. Odd, no?
Early alpenglow on Mt Sinai, Viewed from Mt Katherina. It got a lot better but my batteries died. Liora has some shots of it.
On the approach to the peak of Egypt we hiked up the wadi, or dry river bed, which contained many walled-off orchards in its center, meaning the valley was even narrower. The crosses on gates of the orchards led us to believe they belonged to St Katherine's monestary, the monestary at the foot of Mount Sinai. In this wadi we we encountered a group of Bedoiun women and their kids, with their donkey which the oldest boy claimed was "better than a car." Apparently celebrating a holiday from school, they invited us for tea and bread. The bread was being cooked in charcoal, so the ladies took it out of the ashes, wiped/ brushed the ash off (more or less) and gave us some. It was the best ashy bread ever, and in fact the best bread we had the whole trip. This cultural experience was Liora's favorite moment of the whole trip!
Our friends!
Liora thinks that Gebel Katherina is the real mount Sinai- i.e where Moses received the 10 commandments- because God would pick the highest mountain. I think that God would pick the most rugged mountain, and even with the tourist steps hewn in the rock, Gebel Musa is still more rugged than Katherina. So by this logic we might have gotten the right one (Liora and I climbed Gebel Musa 5 years ago so are covering our basis in either case..).
In reality, I dont think its too possible to know where the real Sinai is since it was ostensibly climbed by Moses alone, in the wilderness, 3500 years ago.
According to Wikipedia, "earliest Christian traditions place this event at the nearby Mount Serbal, and a monastery was founded at its base in the 4th century; it was only in the 6th century that the monastery moved to the foot of Mount Catherine, following the guidance of Josephus's earlier claim that Sinai was the highest mountain in the area. Jebel Musa, which is adjacent to Mount Catherine, was only equated with Sinai, by Christians, after the 15th century." So even the earliest monastary is almost 2000 years after the fact- pretty shoddy odds,even in a region not known for its absolute impeccable ability to pinpoint historical and biblical places. But nice hiking in any case, and all mountains are holy, as Anatoli Boukreev said: "Mountains are not stadiums where I satisfy my ambition to achieve, they are the cathedrals where I practice my religion."
Posing below the most recent "mt sinai." Not so frigid as locals warned.
Despite the overwhelming pattern of tourists hiking in the sinai late at night (i.e. leave at 1AM to see the sunrise), I think its far more normal to hike these peaks in the day, or to watch the sunset even. Certainly in the winter it's much warmer this way- and actually a pleasant hike as opposed to a crowded, noisy frigid ordeal. We saw no others on the actual hike from noon until 5. There are literally hundreds of people on Musa for sunrise. Also, you are "required" to have a guide, but since the local tourist monopolist "Sheik Musa" charges exhorbitent rates, and guides are not, in fact, required by aw, they only tell you they are required. Similarly, at the pyramids I was asked "do you want to ride a donkey or a camel?" to which I replied I will walk, to which they said "its not allowed to walk" which of course like saying you can't drive in California. So we didnt use any guides and got along just fine, despite being warned that our route needed a guide (by a guide of course, who was lazily sitting around town)
After this brief but glorious day of outdoors in the Sinai, it was back to the noise and pollution of Cairo. The main destination was "Islamic Cairo." Since the entire city, minus the small coptic area, is Islamic, there is some ambiguity about where this actually is. However it basically means the old town of Cairo, which has been cleaned up for one narrow tourist stretch. Beautiful buildings and cool street scenes, the most interesting of which was a bizarre man who had half a dozen cats sitting around him in a semicircle, talking to them like a schoolteacher. One of only many odd sights in this complex and quixotic megopolis.
View of "Islamic" Cairo from a minaret window
On the way from Sinai there were tons more scrutiny and checkpoints due to the Gaza situation (the Gaza border with Egypt was apparently breached during the Israili assault) but we nonethless had no real hassles. I did enjoy the drive up the west finger of the Red Sea (the gulf of Suez) which I saw for the first time; I also enjoyed the street food at our minibus' pit stop along the way. Egyptian food uses fava beans almost solely (even uses them for Tameya, a variant of Falafel) so a few alternate ingredients from this pit stop, like tomatoes, were delicious!
Liora dresses conservative for "Islamic Cairo"
I have often used the National Museum as a judge of a country. In many ways it reflects the attitudes etc.
The Egyptian National museum has some of the most amazing relics of any museum in the World, rivalling even the British museum (which pillaged its best stuff from Greece Syria and Egypt in the first place). However, the displays are explained only briefly, typwritten with a plethora of typos, put on index cards- and have not been changed in 50 years. Only the most famous pieces even have a card! It's more a warehouse, complete with all kinds of random things stores amongst the artifacts!
Contrast this to, say, Israel, whose "bible lands" museum (not even the national museum, which I will talk about next post) captivated us for hours with only a few artifacts. Displays and explanations are everything for a good museum. Of course the system here is to pay a guide to describe things to you. This somewhat explains the shoddy displays, but still it's hard to believe that a museum with so many awesome busts statues paintings sarcophogi mummies etc, from Akenaten, Tutankhamen, Ramses II etc all here, but really very little learning can go on due to little information. I did however learn that dwarfs were revered in ancient Egypt. Everything else I had to know before coming in to get even some modicum of understanding...
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| | Posted 1/15/2009 10:07 PM - 34 Views - 2 eProps - 1 Comment
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