Egypt Trip Report
St Katherines Monastery at Mount Sinai, Egypt
The trip to St Katherine's is pretty, especially at
the end when getting into the Sinai desert. We watched the sun set over the Suez
River. (Unfortunately, crossing the Suez is rather boring, as it's just an
underground tunnel). When we finally got to St Katherine's, the fight began with
taxi drivers to get a reasonable price to be taken up to the Monastery, a couple
of miles away. There were two other backpackers, and, fortunately, one of the
employees of the monastery was also looking for a ride. With his help we managed
to pay 50 cents apiece to take us up to the Monastery.
The Monastery is the closest hotel to the trails up Mount Sinai, and is a comfortable good option. It cost us $60 US a night, but that included dinner and breakfast. Dinner was very good, although the meat (as everywhere in Egypt) wasn't that great. The vegetarian option was the same meal minus the meat.
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The popular option to see the Mountain is to climb up at 3am-4am to watch the sunrise. Not for us - we're on vacation. The crowds marching past our room woke us up, but we woke up at a leisurely 8am to meet them as they were coming down for breakfast.
We visited the Monastery first, as it closes at 11am. We saw the descendant of the burning bush, and the Church of St Katherine. It was the only tourist site we saw in all of Egypt which didn't charge admission. There's also a little museum on site, which is worth visiting, but there was a small admission fee for this.
The pathside vendors sell water at a not too ridiculous price - $2US for a large bottle of water at the top actually seemed pretty reasonable. Camels ply the path almost all the way to the top, for those feeling lazy. The remaining 30-45 minute hike up to the top is what would have concerned me during a sunrise hike. It's a pretty steep scramble up the trail, and I can only imagine it wouldn't be too fun with a huge convoy of tourists jockeying for position to see the sunrise. At the top, there is a locked Greek Orthodox Chapel and a great panorama. During the day, we had the top to ourselves - very peaceful.
The steps down aren't really steps in most places, more of a series of strategically placed rocks. It’s certainly not something that we would want to hike in the dark, or with small children. By the time we got back, we decided to stay another night instead of continuing to Sharm-el-Sheikh.
This is part of a larger trip report from a backpacker's trip to Egypt.
You can also look at our Pictures from Egypt or select from the sections below.