Whatever Enters My Head

After our glorious time at the top of Mt. Sinai, it was time to make the descent. Seeing in daylight what we had walked at night was an odd experience. We kept pointing out how very far we had traveled, and how easily we apparently did it. Very soon, it was incredibly hot. We understood why we had made the climb so early. Not only for the sunrise, but we probably would have passed out to do that hike twice in one day. I didn’t take many pictures on the way down, I focused on helping my mom get to the bottom, but once we were safely in the valley I did stop to take this one.

I will admit that camels are pretty neat. They are huge, silent and as we all know can survive long periods without water. What many people don’t know, is that camels are jerks. They do not try to dodge you. They will simply run you over. You can’t hear them coming out of the night, you just have to jump when you hear them coming. They also spit and bite. If you ride them, (especially with another passenger, as I did at the pyramids,) you *will* regret it. They are smelly, rude and just plain don’t care.

Did I mention they bite?

I do appreciate the culture surrounding them though. Each one has it’s own beautifully designed blanket, each rider knows the sounds his camel likes to hear. This camel posed quite nicely for me, so I can’t complain that much.

This Greek Orthodox monk led his flock up the mountain with us to have a sunrise service at the chapel at the top. I was taking a family picture, and when I turned around this is what I saw. I scrambled over the rocks to get as close I as I dared with my 50mm without disturbing him, and took the photograph.

There was an even more picturesque monk that I really wish I had gotten a good shot of: He was around 20-30, with a huge full beard. A massive man dressed in all black, he bore a candle and a huge staff with a large golden cross at the top. I kept laughing whenever he was nearby because if a bedouin came near to beg or offer help he would sternly hold his crucifix in front of him like he was warding off vampires, and hold his staff at the ready.

The best part was, he actually scared them off.

This is my favorite landscape I have ever taken, in maybe the most starkly beautiful place I have ever been. This view made the five hours of clambering over rocks and dodging errant camels worthwhile. When the sun rose over the peaks on the horizon, everyone started taking pictures of the sun. I of course, being the contrary person that I am turned around and saw this. I’m glad I did. As the sun came up, the colors just intensified, contrasting with the cool blue shadows on the bare rock that covers the Sinai peninsula, and enhancing the natural reds. It was gorgeous.

This is of course a panorama of about 6-7 photos.

One interesting note (to give a little scale,) on the bottom right of the photo, there’s a tiny green speck. That’s not an error on the camera, that is a tent. In fact, there are about five or six tents in this picture, belonging to some very intrepid hikers. I never saw thm until I started going through the image for editing.

The night after the bedouin camp, we began the ascent to Mt. Sinai at 1AM. It was virtually moonless night, but the stars were so amazingly bright you could faintly see the rocks and path around you. We had to dodge camels, and climb, climb climb for five long miles. I reached this weird, zen-like mode where my feet moved and found the path while I stared up at the sky, at stars I believe I have never seen. We were so far from civilization, the heavens were just blazing. I’ve never seen anything like it.

After the hike, you had to climb 800 steps to the top, a long slow climb, with quite a drop. When we finally reached the summit, I immediately went into photographer mode. This is off the very peak of Sinai, where a Greek Orthodox worshiper had lit a candle to celebrate the soon to arrive sunrise. (And you will want to stick around for that experience too!)

The first really good meal we had in the middle east we ate at the foot of Mt. Sinai at a small resort called St. Katherines, named after the nearby monastery. There were some actual bedouins camped nearby, and we went to eat hummus and lamb and freshly cooked flat bread (which was *amazing*.) A couple of us got bedbugs sitting on the pillows in the tent, but I escaped luckily. We retired to bed, to sleep for only 2 hours for one of the highlights of the trip: The midnight climb up Mt. Sinai to watch the sunrise!

Because of Cairo’s situation in the Nile delta, there used to be large agricultural communities. Now that the city has grown, the farmers responded by starting to build homemade highrises on their property. They would build a floor, and live in it/rent it out while they continued to build upward. Because of the construction, the lack of proper facilities and utilities, large portions of the city look almost like a forest of treehouses. But there always are these dishes *everywhere.* Hundreds on some of the buildings.

No vehicle was stock. Every single one had stickers, tassels, custom seats, ricketys tructures put on the back. A couple looked more like NASCARs than taxicabs or fruit trucks.

On a side note: Isn’t the flickr redesign amazing?!?!?

Hookahs were everywhere in Egypt and Jordan. At first, I thought they were in the shops just for tourists. But then I began to see people using them all the time. For those who don’t know, the hookah, or water pipe, purifies whatever you are smoking above water, in the same way people used to treat/store gasses for medicinal purposes. It’s still an odd sight, but one we grew quickly accustomed to.

As irrelevant as this is, I think the Sphinx looks like Michael Jackson from this angle.

The Sphinx is surrounded by beggars and shopowners, most of which are very willing to ask you for your watch or anything else valuable you own. We stayed close to one another, and kept a close grip on anything shiny. It was quite interesting though, there were a family of wild dogs living between the Sphinx’s paws.

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Space shuttle lunch as seen by sky divers. 

One can not see the pyramids without seeing the sphynx as well. Although huge, it wasn’t as big as I anticipated. Still an amazing structure, or sculpture, or whatever you would like to call it.

This shot was taken from quite a long way away using a 300mm telephoto, so there is quite a bit of compression.

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“Free camel rides!”

Yes, the camel rides were free. He wasn’t lying. Dismounting the beast was $20 though. At least one traveler in our party fell to the clever rascal’s ruse. We had a good laugh over it.

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Because of our whirlwhind tour, we really didn’t get the time to stand there and comprehend the scale of the pyramids. It wasn’t until afterward my brain started to wrap around the scale, and remember small things like the tiny guards standing next to the blocks.

The giant stones at the bottom where about 12 feet tall, but from this photograph they could be thumb sized. Your brain plays weird tricks on you.

For this photograph, (which is as you may have guessed, an HDR), I stood in the ruins of one of the outlying temples in order to try and give some context. Unfortunately, it shrinks the pyramid, but hopefully it gives a little sense of scale. There’ll be a few more HDRs on this trip, and I promise they get better. It’s something I’ve played around with, but I think it really came into its own for me on this trip. The high suns and deep shadows forced to me to try it in some situations, and it worked out pretty well as you will see.

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