October
8th, the last day of our Survey of Egypt in the
Sinai, started out well
enough, but I would have a problem later on, so I suppose that its
befitting that this should be our thirteenth story in this episode.
We started out early, but not as early as usual from
Sharm el-Sheikh. My team
was sad to leave this beautiful, beautiful city, as most people are.
I have never brought anyone to Sharm that didn't want to stay, but
alas, we had to move on up the coast, and make it back to Cairo this
day. However, seeing as how we had not shot a single photograph
during the daylight
at Sharm, we first stopped by the old market on our way out of town.
Of course, this
early in the morning there was not much activity
there, but we spent a few minutes anyway, before leaving for our
first scheduled stop at
Ras Mohammad.
These days, Egypt has a number of national parks, which in Egypt
are called protectorates. Of those,
Ras Mohammad,
located at the very tip of the
Sinai, is one of the
most famous protectorates in Egypt, though we would not see a large
part of it because much of Ras Mohammad is actually beneath the
water. In fact, it is best known for its large variety of fish and
coral. Nevertheless, the surface is beautiful, and it is also well
known as a bird habitat.
Here,
the water is crystal clear and sparkling, and we lingered for a
while, enjoying the quiet morning and the sounds of birds that were
scattered all along the shoreline. I could only wish that I had the
time and equipment to photograph underwater, but I did not, and so
we would have to settle for what we could get.
As we moved on up the west side of the
Sinai, the landscape
was rather barren. It seems a long way between any signs of
civilization, with mostly, once again, passed though what seems like
an extended beach front of sand and more sand. with very little else
to see. My team became so
bored
that they began taking photographs
of each other, but soon we
arrived in Al-Tor,
the capital of the Southern Sinai governate, and roamed around a bit
before moving on up the coast and our next destination, the ancient
mining area of
Serabit el-Khadem.
Serabit el-Khadem
is not an easy site to find on one's own. One must go off road for
some distance. It is actually an interesting drive though, with
unusual mountain formations and areas where the landscape turns from
white to red, almost along a set line. Here and there we found paved
roads, though none for any great distance. In fact, even though
there
are
some mining operations in the area and we were able to ask
directions from some passing trucks, it turned out to be impossible
to find Serabit el-Khadem on our own. After an hour or so, we
finally got close enough that we were able to stop at a Bedouin camp
where we found someone to go with us in order to lead us to the
exact location.
At the foot of the path leading up to
Serabit el-Khadem,
I was surprised to find that the government had built a small lodge
and developed the area rather nicely. Even the stairway leading up
the mountain was well done, the steps being much less crude than
those
leading
up Mount Sinai.
Even though I had sworn off climbing the prior day, after getting
down Mount Sinai, I, along with Tamer, my assistant, Osama from the
press office and the Bedouin as a guide, started up the mountain.
Because the steps were much better and it was only 1,100 meters up,
that seemed like a cakewalk compared to Mount Sinai. It really was,
in fact, but Osama, who was being true to his Ramadan fast, which
meant he could not even drink water, had to turn back
about
halfway up.
I suppose I wasn't thinking. We went up with only one large
bottle of water, which would have probably been fine, but
unfortunately the artifacts are not situated at the top of the
climb. Worse still, our Bedouin guide, who seemed to have some
problems communicating with Tamer, indicated that it was just a
short distance away. Indeed, as we walked along the mountain ridges,
he continued to indicate that they were just beyond the next bend.
So we walked, and we walked Actually, there are a number of
artifacts
and inscriptions along the ridge, but we were looking for the
ancient ruins of the Temple of
Hathor.
All this time I was fine. I had a hard, long day yesterday, and
Tamer and I were both getting tired and wondering how much further
we would have to go along this ridge, but there was nothing wrong.
Then, as the temple ruins came into view, an old enemy of mine
suddenly rose it's ugly head. Years before, I had been on a strict
diet while also exercising aggressively. One day, after skipping
breakfast and waiting on a late lunch, I was
walking
about a store when I suddenly began to feel queasy. I sat down for a
while, but that didn't seem to help. Then suddenly I found myself on
the floor. I had passed out and worse still, I was not able to
recover. I woke up shaky, unable to stand, and an ambulance was
called as the store employees placed a fan on me to cool me off.
When the paramedics arrived, they quickly determined that my
blood sugar level had fallen off the chart. In fact, they said I had
almost died. This all turned out to be a blessing. Once detected,
the blood sugar level was apparently easy to correct, but in the
process of an examination at the
hospital,
they discovered a very early lung tumor. Hence, what almost killed
me saved my life. Otherwise, I was in perfect health.
Now though, a number of kilometers along a mountain ridge, 1,100 meters up, a number of miles off road from the coastal highway, and then more miles from the nearest aid, I felt exactly the same as I did when I had passed out several years earlier. I suddenly thought about the fact that the day before had been very strenuous, that I had nothing to eat this morning, and now it was 2:00 pm on a hot ridge, and I knew exactly what was wrong.
It
is not something that creeps up slowly, it happens rather fast, and
at that moment I knew that I would probably not make it back down.
This was no air conditioned store and an ambulance was not ten
minutes away, but rather hours at best away. In fact, I was also out
of water by this point. There was no way that the Bedouin and Tamer
could even carry me back down. I was not going to just give up, but
I made a certain peace with the world, because I really thought this
was going to be the end. I sent Tamer on with a camera to take the
photos, and I slowly shuffled my way back along the mountain ridge,
getting dizzier with every step.
Then,
out of nowhere, I saw some people coming along the ridge. They
turned out to be young German trekkers, with water and food, and
kindly willing to share it. They even had sugar cubes that they gave
me. Go figure. My mother thinks they were really angels, and indeed
they seem to have come from nowhere. They did not have a vehicle at
the bottom when we got back down.
It was still not an easy trip back along the ridge and down. Tamer thought we were more than 10 kilometers back along the ridge, but I highly doubt that. After he caught back up to me, I was still shaky but better. For some reason, my knees seemed dried out as we finally reached the stairway, and I had to lean on him to get down. Finally, I was back in the air conditioned car and began to feel even better as I consumed water and anything I could find in the car to eat.
Unfortunately though, that drew an end to our explorations that day. We had intended to make several other stops, but while feeling better, I was in no condition for any more adventures this day. I did manage to get out once to take a particularly pink sunset, but I barely realized it as we passed beneath the Suez Canal on our final leg back to Cairo.
One point to be made about
Serabit el-Khadem
is that, as an archaeological site, it really is not worth the visit
unless one is simply dead set on seeing every minor site in Egypt.
It requires
considerable travel time and several hours worth of
climbing and hiking. It is really, in fact, a trekking stop, for
those who wish to combine this sort of adventure tour with some pharaonic sightseeing.
I have never felt threatened by Egyptians. What happened at
Serabit el-Khadem,
far off the beaten path for almost all tourists, could have happened
in any remote region in the world, including the United States. It was my
stupidity that caused the problem, and I should have known better,
but it does bring up an important lesson, and that is,
don't take
any wilderness lightly. Since the very earliest of times, Egypt has
been a place of two lands, interpreted in different ways. One way is
that there is the civility and the order of the Nile basin, opposed
to the the chaos of the wilderness deserts, and this is as true today as
it was then.
Trekking, particularly in the Sinai, is actually a fairly common
type of adventure tour. In fact, there are
guidebooks for
doing so, though they should probably not exist as anything other
than a reference for most tourists. I say that because, while it is
possible to wing it on one's own, that is a very, very bad
idea. The
German trekkers that I ran into at
Serabit el-Khadem
in fact had a professional guide, while I did not, and that was
really the difference between them and what happened to me.
Indeed, I am the real accidental tourist. I play it a little
loose; I do wing it, because I do convince people to go to Egypt, but if anyone is
going to get into trouble, I want it to be me. I am a bad traveler
in the first place. I lose stuff, such as airline tickets and
wallets. Sometimes I wear American Embassy caps into Cairo ghettos
late at night, just to see if someone might get hostile,
but that
never works. I just get invited to dinner by some friendly Egyptian.
What it amounts to is that, if I am safe in Egypt, anyone is,
irregardless of what happened at
Serabit el-Khadem
which, like I say, could have happened in any remote spot on earth.
This morning I heard some sad news. I found out that the young
manager of a convenience store where I often stop in the morning was
killed in a car wreck while leaving work. Only a few months prior,
his wife had given birth to a new child. To me, this brought home
the fact that most people die from car wrecks, other accidents,
heart attacks, cancer and such,
not at the hands of some hostile
character in some foreign land. Yet so many people I speak to seem
so afraid to venture out and see God's world and the majestic
monuments built by his creations because of this, when in fact they
are more at risk of slipping on a bar of soap in their own bathroom.
I must admit that what drives me is fear; the fear of someday waking
up in a hospital bed with cancer or some other deadly ailment, and
realizing that I spent my life being afraid to do anything or see
the world. That will not happen, and I can only equate my near miss
in the wilderness of the
Sinai with the time last winter when my car swerved out of
control on some ice. God will take me, one way or the other, when he
pleases, and not before.
But if all this seems a little wild and crazy, normal tourism to
Egypt is not. It is an orderly, well secured visit to major tourist
areas that are not located in any wilderness. There are no physical
trials required to visit
Giza, Luxor,
Aswan,
Alexandria or
Sharm el-Sheikh it is all
done in the comfort of an air conditioned bus,
usually while staying
in five star hotels. Egyptians are always friendly and great hosts,
and you will find that to be true all over Egypt, no matter where
one visits. What is the most frequent response we hear from
tourists, over and over again after having made such a trip? "I was
afraid to go, but now I wonder why".
Stay tuned. I will be visiting the Nile Valley once again in the next several months on our Survey of Egypt, but returning north through some of he most desolate regions of the Western Desert. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger. Should be fun!
My last shot of the Survey was a very pink sunset
at an isolated resort along the Sinai West Coast
See Also:
- Survey to Egypt: Part I: Safety in Egypt
- Survey of Egypt, Part II: Ramadan Kareem
- Survey of Egypt, Part III: Wadi el-Natrun to Tanta
- Survey of Egypt, Part IV: Tanta to Alexandria
- Survey of Egypt, Part V: Alexandria
- Survey of Egypt, Part VI: Alexandria Continued
- Survey of Egypt, Part VII: Alexandria to Port Said
- Survey of Egypt, Part VIII: Port Said to Cairo
- Survey of Egypt, Part XI: Cairo to El-Arish
- Survey of Egypt, Part X: El-Arish to Dahab
- Survey of Egypt, Part XI: The Southern Sinai Interior
- Survey of Egypt, Part XII: Mount Sinai and Sharm el-Sheikh
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Last Updated: 11/10/2006