Welcome to Mount Sinai, also known as Moses Mountain, in the eastern Sinai region of Egypt.
I got in here at night and started a 1AM trek up the mountain to reach the peak,
at an altitude of almost 2,300m or 7,500 feet, by sunrise.
Initially, with the full moon our path was really well lit up, but it soon went behind the mountain so we had to use flashlights.
A few hours later when the moon was gone completely, I saw the most wonderfully clear sky and view of stars and the milky way I ever have seen before.
As we continued, this highly touristed path had a lot of camels and touts trying to get us to jump on one.
While it was a little annoying, at least when they were far in the distance too dark to be seen on my infrared camera,
you could see a silhouette of several camels after one another, which reminded me of the nativity scene of the three wise men going across the desert.
We continued up the mountain all night long, stopping regularly at tea shops for a quick rest and to warm up.
Finally, when it was starting to get light we were nearing the top.
I was really starting to feel so exhausted after a combination of the long trek and almost two days without any sleep!
I rented a blanket at the last tea shop since the top can get chilly with the wind.
On the peak itself you can see a church and mosque.
Those in my group and I found a great place to watch the sunrise and I shared my blanket with an English girl.
Hello everyone and welcome to the peak of Sinai. I'm with Sorava.
- Hello. - We've just hiked up, and it was actually a very easy hike, wasn't it.
It was a fun hike.
It was a fun hike, we had loads of stops. It's not too cold, but we're sharing a blanket because it was really cold a few minutes ago. And the view is spectacular.
My favourite part though was seeing all the stars.
That was amazing, that was really good!
I've never seen so many stars, because there was less atmosphere to block them.
And they are all so big as well!
So traditionally, this is the mountain that Moses came up to get the ten commandments.
I don't know if this was the real mountain, because there's not so much archeological evidence.
I think they think it's a different mountain.
I like this anyway. We know that thousands or millions of people have done this little pilgrimage to see this spectacular view and this amazing sunrise. Check it out!
So thanks for joining us and... any last words?
I hope the sunrise is a good one.
Oh it will be,it will definitely be a good one because we've earned it!
Alright, see you later!
Suddenly, we saw the sun peer out of the horizon. It wasn't just a beautiful sunrise,
but one we had earned from the hike, so I really felt like singing to celebrate.
It was definitely worth it! I was so tired, but I still had a little bit of energy left in me to clown around a little before we started the descent!
We took a different route of a draining steep 3,000 step descent,
which certainly sapped all that energy from me! Hours later when we finally made it to St. Catherine's monastery,
one of the oldest ones in the world, our entire group was too tired to appreciate it apart from seeing the famous burning bush... which looks like this apparently.
An incredible experience worth remembering! But it was onward back to Cairo for me,
with the peace and tranquility of a biblical mountain hike being exchanged for...
Yikes! Well, I still had one last thing left to do in Egypt! I had already walked this path,
but I got a taxi to actually see the Great Pyramids of Giza and the Sphinx up close.
Because I arrived before 8AM, I actually had the entire seventh wonder of the ancient world almost all to myself!
I walked around for almost 2 hours, to appreciate the sights,
and there's not much I can say about these pyramids that others wouldn't say much better, as I wasn't really in Egypt for Ancient Egypt.
There's a place you can go to get a nice picture of the pyramids with the desert behind them,
but I thought it was more appropriate to see how the Sphinx is looking on toward modern Cairo.
While I saw some historical sights, I was really here for modern Egypt and its people, and it was a fantastic two months getting to know them.
I hope you've enjoyed following me along on this adventure, and that you'll join me in the next ones to come! Thanks for watching!