Mount Sinai

Watching the sunrise from atop Mount Sinai was a once-in-a-lifetime experience for me and my trekking partners. And for several busloads of Japanese tourists.

I was part of a group of ten people trekking in the Sinai desert for a week to raise money for a children’s charity. The Sinai wilderness is barren, silent, mystical. In the entire trek we saw almost no-one else.

We were at altitude with no moisture in the air, 1,000 miles from the nearest city. This made the night sky a thing of absolute awe and wonder. As we lay there one night marvelling at the billions of stars, one of the trekking partners mused, “No wonder so many religions come from here. Anywhere else on the planet we might think “My, isn’t humanity clever”. Here you look up at such a sky and think “We are totally, totally insignificant…”

On the final night we camped on the back slope of Mount Sinai, the mountain where Moses received The Law. We awoke at 2:00 AM to trek round the front. There, thousands of ancient steps have been carved out of the mountain leading to a chapel on the summit. Our objective was to climb the steps up to the chapel in the dark to watch the sunrise over the Sinai wilderness.

We set off in pitch blackness. After a few hours we had rounded the base of the mountain. There was a dull glow in the distance. As we approached, we discovered that it was a parking lot. It was full of buses full of pilgrims preparing to climb Mount Sinai just as we were. Our solitude was shattered.

We happened to fall in at the base of the steps in the midst of a group of particularly energetic Japanese pilgrims. Fulfilling every Karate Kid stereotype, each pilgrim was wearing a headband with something written on it in Japanese. Up ahead in the dark their leader would yell “YURIKI!” (courage in Japanese). The pilgrims would then lustily respond “YURIKI!” in unison. We soon left them behind. Our group was much fitter and had grown accustomed to the thin air at altitude. But for some time we could hear their call and response fading ever further below us in the dark.

After a couple of hours our little group reached the summit. We hunkered down against the outer wall of the chapel, poured some coffee, and faced eastward waiting for dawn. In time the sky began to glow pink. Then the top of the sun’s orange disk broke the horizon, flooding the vast desert wilderness below us with light. It was absolutely magical.

About this time, the bedraggled leader of the Japanese tour group finally reached the top. Exhausted and panting for breath, she uttered a feeble “yyyyyuuuuurrrrrrikiiiii”. The few pilgrims who had managed the summit with her gasped out an equally feeble response. Perhaps next time they might consider taking altitude tablets. Hey, the tablets worked for Moses…

[If you know others who might enjoy a lighthearted story to begin their week, kindly forward them WordsfortheWeary. The more the merrier.]

[Apologies for the small photo, working on improving]