The stars over the Sinai desert

We use one of the last windless days before our departure for a jeep and hiking tour in the Sinai desert. You can easily pay 40 euros or more for a trip like this in a hotel. We booked through Masha in the Facebook group Dahab Digital Nomads. For five people, the full-day trip including dinner by the fire under the stars in the Sinai desert costs a good 20 euros. You can decide for yourself what you want to see.

We set off in the midday heat. At the rubbish dump outside Dahab, the plastic rubbish burns in the best Mad Max end-time style. There is plastic waste everywhere out here, for which we travellers are largely responsible. You can’t buy water in a glass anywhere. In the meantime, activists are calling for a beach clean-up in Dahab. What is that supposed to achieve? Some people see less rubbish at hotspots? And care even less everywhere…

At the hotel, everything is neatly separated and then burnt together in the open air at the rubbish tip. Practically every better hotel has a pool with fresh water on fossil-fuelled desalination plants. In the desert! What could be better? Not travelling at all would be like only shopping in unpackaged shops. Neither is a solution. The solution can only be to achieve a radically better standard for the masses. Plastic must be banned worldwide. I don’t need a pool and I like showering with salt water. Until then, helplessness reigns.

The jeep with its two cross benches takes us through several military checkpoints about 80 kilometres into the interior of the country to the north. We were asked to take our passports with us. The first part of the journey is on tarmac roads. Then the Bedouin driver turns off into the desert. The soft desert sand quickly becomes deep. We need several attempts on some of the climbs.

The first stop is the Coloured Canyon. An oil drum full of plastic bottles is the local waste incineration plant. There are cigarette butts on the way to and all over the canyon. How indifferent do you have to be to beauty to litter the entire planet so mindlessly? The Coloured Canyon is relatively easy and short to hike through. Red sandstone was moulded into unique shapes by water ages ago. A few places are a little narrower, sometimes you have to climb.

We spend the most intense midday heat in the almost cool shade of the canyon. At the exit of the canyon, an old Bedouin woman sells small pieces of jewellery for little money in the shade of a thorn bush. Our driver picks us up and takes us to our next destination.

The White Canyon is much bigger, deeper and longer. Even the entrance is quite steep. A rope and a ladder take us a good ten metres vertically down into the snow-white canyon. Narrow sections, wider areas and scattered bushes alternate. There are animal tracks everywhere. Nobody is here but us. Some areas are a little harder to climb through. After a good three quarters of an hour under walls up to 50 metres high, we arrive at an old, dry and impassably high waterfall.

Now we climb out of the side of the canyon again and follow the lower course of the old river to the Nomad Oasis. The echo of my yodelling from the rock faces is gigantic. Ten people still live in the oasis today. A mobile phone mast announces civilisation. Two Bedouin women are once again selling local art for little money. We pick fresh dates from a palm tree and drink good tea. A cat purrs itself to sleep on my lap. The half moon rises behind glowing red mountains in the sunset.

We hike for another half hour over an old camel pass. On the last few metres before the hill, I almost run out of water at kilometre eight. I had water with me in the first canyon – and didn’t need it. Now it’s missing. The sun sets behind the mountains.

Our Bedouins light a fire and barbecue for us. Carpets are spread out and tea is served. The crickets in the neighbouring bush start their concert. Then the stars rise over the Sinai desert. Despite the bright crescent moon, hundreds of them twinkle. A wonderful journey with good friends comes to a quiet end.