Breakfast at the top!
After a last minute decision to head out to the Sinai desert, the first real challenge began… Collecting sponsor money! Something I‘ve never really done before except for getting my mum and dad to sponsor me to play football at primary school when I was little. However I felt I was doing pretty good getting all these sponsors, and I found that everyone was more generous than I thought they would be when I first set out.
The week before we set off I was starting to wonder what I was letting myself in for. However with the support of all my friends and family, I was definitely looking forward to embarking on this once in a life time trip!
For more images and a video by josh have a look at our Sinai Challenge page.
As it was the first time I had been to Africa and the closest I had been to crossing the equator, the vastness and the heat of the Sinai Peninsula were the first two things that hit me. Then we set off on our “three” hour journey into the heart of the Sinai mountains where we would find our first bed. However the Egyptians seem to work with a different time scale to us British, in a rough translation 1 Egyptian hour = 2 British hours. So our journey took a bit longer than planned…
After a cosy nights sleep we set off on our first day of walking which apparently was an ‘easy walk’ to help us get in the swing of things. Which in fairness was only about 7 miles in length but when you are trying to get to grips with a new climate, the sun can make it seem a bit longer. The walk involved a canyon climb which required a bit of teamwork helping each other leap from rock to rock, being careful not to lose our footing, which was something you wouldn’t want to do whilst climbing up this ravine! This was definitely the big challenge of the first day.
Days 2&4 saw us walking another 35 miles, including sights such as:
- The Unfinished Palace of Mt Abbas Pasha, 2383m above sea level, built for a prince in 1853, , who died and ever since his palace has been left unfinished.
- Mt Katarina, 2642m, the tallest mountain in Egypt. This was the longest day by far, and the views from the top were phenomenal. This day was definitely the toughest challenge we had to face all week.
The Last Day We climbed Mt Sinai (also know as Mt Moses). A Day everyone had been looking forward to, Climbing the mountain that Moses climbed up, when he was camped in the Sinai with the Israelites. We set off at 1.30am to get to the top for the sunrise at 5:30am.
There must have been about 2000 other people on the mountain with us that day, and after a whole week of not seeing a single other person, I was definitely losing patience the further I walked.
However, after a long wait we did get to the top and got to watch a fantastic sunrise, which cheered me right up! That and the fact that it was breakfast time!
Josh Oldham
Rochdale