The rest of Egypt was a bit of a blur. It took us only a day to travel back up the red sea coast, away from the relatively fertile lands of the Nile and back into the desert and then on into the beautiful mountains of Sinai. After a really nice rough camp just on the Sinai side of the Cuez Canal we then carried on to St Catherine's monestary at the base of Mt Sinai itself. The intention to spend a peaceful night on the top of the mountain and wake early to see the sunrise on the holy mountain.

A romantic notion indeed.

The climb to the top of the mountain was spectacular if somewhat hairy in the dubious light of a Petzel headtorch, and when we arrived to a deserted mountain top lit slightly by the moon the monestary on the mountain could not have seemed more haunted and alone particularly to the accompanyment of the lone priest chanting to the sky. The stuff of novels, to be sure. The poiniancy of the moment was somewhat marred, of course, by the 5000 people who arrived shortly after us and proceeded to shout their goddam spanish and german heads off ALL NIGHT. Ahem. So it's a public mountain, and they have every right to be there, but when you see someone in a sleeping bag it would be normal would it not to assume that that person is trying to sleep and at least, for example, not park your frigging deck chair right next to them and shout down their ear all night. Or is that just me?

So after a sleepless night I am noone's friend, and with that many people on the top of the mountain it was virtually impossible to either appreciate the view and actually impossible to find anywhere to park a tripod, so I lugged 7kg's of gear up that goddam mountain for what turned out to be no reason whatsoever.

I have to say I have had better mornings. And by the time we had waited for the water-colour sunrise and cueued up to decend the mountain behind the slow moving hoards, the base of the mountain and the truck was a welcome sight indeed. On to Dahab and a welcome rest.