My wife has a thing about the Bedouin. The unrequited love affair began 15 years ago during a trip to Sharm el Sheikh. Tiring of snorkelling the endless Red Sea coral, we came across an advert offering an overnight trip into the desert. The memory of the reds and oranges of the wind-gnarled rocks, the calm otherworldliness of the people and the adventure of sleeping out beneath the stars had haunted her — and to be honest, me too — ever since.
Children intervened, prompting a series of tamer holidays on Mediterranean beaches, but this autumn, a month or so before the half-term break, we had an idea. Why not head for the desert again, but this time with the kids? So, a few weeks later, there we all were — Roberta, myself, Elisabetta, 12, Alexander, 10, and Matthew, 6 — deep in the Sinai Desert, contemplating the mind-boggling emptiness of it all as we rolled out our sleeping bags and settled down under a gleaming moon. On the edge of our impromptu camp, munching contentedly on their nosebags, were our camels; and beside them the two young Bedouin, Faraj and Mohammed, who had guided us through the desert.
We almost didn’t go at all. Travel agents showed little inclination to arrange such an ambitious trip at such short notice. And then there were October’s suicide attacks on the Red Sea resorts of Taba and Nuweiba, followed by a Foreign Office warning about more trouble to come.
Well, lightning never strikes twice in the same place, does it? We typed “Sinai” into Google and found an Egypt-based company ready to tailor-make us an eight-day tour. It would start with Cairo and the Pyramids, take us through the desert and even throw in a couple of days by the sea for just £237 apiece. Another £330 each bought us last-minute returns to Cairo on Alitalia. With no special jabs needed, and visas available on arrival, we were ready to go.
We spent only one night in Cairo — nowhere near enough to do the city justice, but enough time for tea on the banks of the Nile and a dash to the giant Khan el Khalili market. The haggling required to secure a spangly belly-dancing costume and a few bags of spices just about finished off the children for the night.
Next morning, we had a quick tour around the pyramids before piling into a minibus — just for us, the children noted with delight — for the seven-hour ride under the Suez canal and across the Sinai Desert to St Catherine’s Monastery, a stone fortress nestling in an oasis at the mouth of a valley. We were accompanied by Omar, an affable Egyptian in his late twenties, who had studied journalism but found it easier to make a living as a guide.
After the heat and dust of the desert, the lush gardens and the spotless rooms, with their modern bathrooms, were a pleasant surprise. Eating dinner at the long tables in the refectory, we listened to tales of adventure from returning travellers.
The 6th-century monastery, home to two dozen Greek Orthodox monks, has some impressive icons and a collection of preserved manuscripts second only to the Vatican’s. The children, predictably enough, were more interested in the charnel house — space in the cemetery has always been short, so monks are exhumed after a few years and their bones are piled up in the cellar.
Our reason for coming was to see dawn over Mount Sinai, so we set our alarm clocks for 2am, and Omar hurried us towards the surging mass of humanity (and camels) that had assembled to follow in Moses’s footsteps.
Under a full moon, we plodded resolutely along the winding path. But did you know that Mount Sinai is 7,497ft high? Halfway up, a wooden shack offering tea and coffee appeared, and we slumped on the low benches, the boys beginning to despair of making it further. Putting aside her pride, Roberta hired a pair of camels from a Bedouin drinking coffee at the bar. Alexander promptly jumped on the saddle and disappeared into the darkness. His younger brother took more persuading, in the end agreeing to mount the beast only if his mother joined him. She was only too delighted to oblige.
By 5am, we reached the final assault — a flight of 700 steps too steep even for the camels.
So we left the boys to sleep on a pile of pillows in a nearby teahouse and made our way up. Dawn over the summit was spectacular, even if we had to pick our way through a crowd of Russians to find a space on the rock. An enormous tourist trap? Yes, of sorts, but well worth the experience.
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