About the place
About Saint Catherine
The monastery keeps its own visiting hours and is closed to visitors on Sundays and on major feast days, so a trip here has to be planned around it rather than the other way round. The Mount Sinai ascent is normally started around midnight, either by the camel path or by the steeper Steps of Repentance, and takes two to three hours up.
Pack for a mountain, not for Sinai’s coast: the summit is cold and windy before sunrise in every season. Beyond the two famous peaks there is a whole network of Bedouin trekking routes through the surrounding wadis, walked with Jebeleya guides. Dahab is roughly two and a half hours away by road, which is how most people arrive.
