Sunrise at Mt.Sinai and St.Catherine monastery. Entrance included

Le minibus est venus nous récupérer à l’hôtel à 21:50, et nous avons commencé le trekking à 1:50. Un guide nous accueille dans la voiture, nous explique tout le programme et passe ensuite le relais à un guide bédouin pour l’ascension du mont. Le guide bédouin étais particulièrement attentif et avais de bon conseil. Nous étions un groupe mixte de 12 personnes et avons atteint le sommet à 4:45. Le soleil s’est levé à 5:45 Le lever du soleil fut absolument splendide et restera longtemps dans nos mémoire. L’ascension n’est pas si compliqué jusqu’au 750 dernières marche. Mais vous pouvez largement faire des pauses dans les escaliers car compliqué du à leur irrégularité. C’est une expérience merveilleuse et ouverte à tout âge, nous y avons vu des enfants jusqu’à des personnes plus âgée. Si vous vous sentez grandement en difficulté, vous pouvez louer des chameaux à 15euros pour la monté et la descente. Car la descente n’est pas forcément plus simple malgré qu’elles soit plus rapide. Le monastère est aussi magnifique à voir. N’hésitez pas à acheter un poncho aux bédouins avant l’ascension (5euros) car il fait très froid tout au long.

This trip was a great experience. It is a long drive in the night from Sharm El Sheikh but with plenty of stops along the way. There are many tour busses leaving together at the same time and we travelled in a convoy with police armed with AK47s for safety. The hike is long and pretty steep in the night. We were given flashlights, but the experience was better without as you can see all the stars in the black sky. There are a lot of tourists but I liked watching the trail of lights snaking up the mountain in the night. It was really cool watching the sunset reveal the hidden landscape full of mountains. St. Catherines Monastery was quite nice to walk around. The only thing that detracted from the experience were the relentlessly annoying people everywhere asking for money, trying to get people to rent camels or buy ponchos/blankets.

St Catherine’s monastery was amazing. Both the setting and the historical importance. Seeing the ancient manuscripts was a huge highlight. Our tour guide was very knowledgeable, good driving and everything was on time and well communicated. Our kids were 11 and 9 so in between the young kids and teens section. They were the youngest there by far but they managed fine (mum and dad more struggled) staying up all night and heat on way back down the mountain are all things you need to take into account to weigh up if this is for you, but it’s worth it. The only thing that could really be improved on is our Bedouin guide (who is separate from sun tours I believe) rushed us really fast at the start of the walk for no reason as we had plenty of time and kept overtaking the other groups. This stopped us being able to enjoy the walk at an easy pace and also made us feel that he was trying to get us to take the camels / buy drinks as getting hot and then get sweaty and then cold from the sweat to hire the rugs at the top. Once the camel rides were over (which is the east part of the walk anyway) he slowed right down and could tell he was as exhausted as us! We were at the top well before sunrise just a shame we could not enjoy the walk more.