MOUNTAINS, MIRAGES AND THE ODD MIRACLE....

During her trek around Egypt, Annette Crummack faced up to the challenges of the Sinai Desert by climbing Mount Sinai. At night. With just a camel for company.

LEAVING behind the screaming chaos of Cairo we headed east, taking the long dusty road across to the Sinai via Suez.
Beyond the war-ravaged port, Egypt really began to open her formidable heart to us as we moved on right into the core of the Sinai.

Making up a sizeable slab of northern Egypt, this humbling region holds the secrets of the country's oldest history and mystery, for it's actually that 'great and terrible wilderness' described in the Bible.

Like any unfamiliar wilderness, the desert can be foreboding and intimidating, but its ever-rolling film set landscape soon instills a mesmerising sense of calm and wonder.

As we drove further in, the panorama changed swiftly and frequently yet seamlessly, as nature's extremes melted together in the blistering heat of summer. Colours came and went, light dazzled then dulled, as we plunged into deep wadis, the torturous road hemmed in by the shadowy bulk of jagged mountains.

Despite its dramatic setting, my map showed the desert road to be quite simply 'nowhere' with nothing for mile upon mile. Yet the immense emptiness itself is intoxicating, as its savage purity and the ear-aching silence that makes you shout just to be sure you can still hear, should there be a sound to be heard.

The wild west sci-fi scrubland of the Sinai stretches for a boot-busting 24,000 square miles. Often barren, always desolate and frequently dangerous, the Sinai is never a land you could become blasé about. Just as you feel you're accustomed to its charms and challenges, it throws something unexpected at you. Trekking through it for hours, the blurring horizon becomes bleaker and bleaker until its suddenly broken by stunning lakes of turquoise and aquamarine. The sun dances silver spangles over the shimmering surface, and choppy waves toss up flashes of white as they collide. Like a fascinating folly, it's frighteningly hard to resist a diversion, a stroll in their direction just in case… Ignored, they eventually fade like phantoms, as all good mirages do.

Mirages, miracles, they're pretty much old hat in Sinai, as I discovered on my 'journey of self discovery' and pilgrimage to its spiritual center-Mesa Jebel aka Mount Sinai herself…

Mount Sinai is a hard faced hulk of grey and red granite, looming like a crumpled iron mass shot through with rust. Its summit is a point of pilgrimage for thousands each year, and so I found myself at its rocky feet at 2am one unforgettable night in July…

Climbing through the night avoids the punishing heat of the Egyptian summer and an early start ensures a spectacular reward-the sunrise of a lifetime viewed from the summit. I'd opted for the easier of the two routes up to the 2285m peak: the 'camel path' is a winding track gently snaking its way up two thirds of the slope. There it joins the route favoured by devout pilgrims -the Steps of Repentance, 3000 in all, and many over a metre high.

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