Milly

We left on this rattling minibus at 11pm, and we had only had four hours sleep, so i felt shattered, but i thought i'd sleep on the minibus but there was no head rest on my seat and my head kept hitting the window, so i put my bag in my lap and put my head on the bag, which wasn't comfortable, but it was the best position, and i looked out on to the sky which had so many stars shining brightly. The journey from Dahab was two hours long.

There were too many rocks on the road which made the journey really bumpy. Anyway, so the minibus was full of French, and one English couple and us three. We were supposed to stick together, but the french ran off to make their own way to Sinai. Everyone was in a rush to start, but i told them to stop...basically the mountain was amongst many mountains, and there was no landmarks to say "this mountain in Mount Sinai"..it was pitch black and if we went alone, and somebody fell, who would go to help...we blatantly needed a guide, so i was really firm and made them stop, mainly because i was a bit scared of what could happen, and we didn't even know where we were heading...so i found this hut and there were loads of Arab men sitting inside and i asked for a guide and the price etc..so this 18year old Bedouin boy called, Hameed was assigned to accompany us...anyway, so we all left and the English couple stuck with us and we made our way up, i asked the Bedouin bloke which mountain it is, and he said, it behind these mountains,...now how on earth would we have known that without a guide. So it was good that we got one...so we left along this dark road leading up to the mountains, and there was camel poo everywhere...and camels would often come up from behind us to pass. We started climbing the mountain in front of the REAL mountain, so i wasn't like we only climbed one mountain, the path up was really steep, and it was a windy path...one edge of the path looked down into a pit of rocks and the other edge was the side of the mountain, so we were right on the edge. My bag was heavy with a big water bottle, and i was sweating buckets going up..Hameed took my bag and carried it for me, even though i hadn't asked him to, but it was good because i don't think i could have made it with the bag. So i practised my Arabic, because the Bedouins speaks the purest Arabic.