After a very relaxing week at a comfortably remote beach we were ready to leave the Softbeach camp at the amazingly early hour of 12 noon! And we didn't have tents to take down and pack!

Beach-front living, and parking. Mountains of Saudi Arabia in the distance, looking east.

Looking west. Mountains of Sinai beyond the north-south main road.

Unfortunately, a half-hour earlier a fairly spectacular sand-storm blew up, bringing visibility down to as little as one hundred yards at times. The Sudanese owner (married to a German wife) of the camp proclaimed it was far too dangerous for us to depart for Mt Sinai, about 80 miles away through the desert and a 5,000 ft climb. The roads would be covered in sand to unknown depths.
This was a blow, as we had already spent too long at Softbeach, and now it looked difficult to plan to be at a nice place for Christmas Day. (It's universally agreed amongst us and everyone we met that Sharm el Sheikh and its immediate surrounds is not a nice place to spend Christmas).

In fact, the Softbeach resort was a perfect place to spend Christmas, but we had already been here a week, and there was a hell of a lot of Egypt to explore, and our visas and customs permits to extend at El Tur on the west coast of Sinai. Consequently some detailed planning had resulted in an itinerary that would enable us to visit Mt Sinai, El Tur for visa extensions, the nature reserve outside Sharm, the hippy 'paradise' of Dahab, and return here to Softbeach for Christmas - unless Dahab really was a paradise in which case we could stop there.
But not setting off today would mess all that up.

The latest we could leave Softbeach for a daylight arrival at Mt. Sinai was 2pm, although that left no margin for the unexpected. So we decided if the wind didn't ease by then we would have to stay and re-think all our plans for Christmas.
But a bit more thought led us to depart straightaway, in the wind.
Whatever we did, we needed to go to Nuweiba port (five miles away), that afternoon to get cash from the cash machines. So we said our farewells and set off into the teeth, or maybe the gums, of the sandstorm, adding that we'd be straight back after visiting the ATM if the roads were bad.

We reached the port fine, if not a bit blown about, got cash, and continued on the motorway south to the turn-off for the interior and Mt Sinai. But on the way we experienced the true force of this desert coastal wind and the chaos it can bring to the roads.
Over to our left beyond the sandy coastal strip was the Gulf of Aqaba, with the mountains of Saudi Arabia just a little way beyond. Immediately on our right rose a rocky terrain, steadily upwards into the interior, and it was down these slopes that the wind blasted, bringing chaos across our bit of road. Hardly any tarmac or rocky slope could be seen under the seething mass of multi-coloured plastic bags being strewn and tossed across the ground in the wake of this wind. We'd never seen a sight like it. From high up the slopes on the right came millions of plastic bags, inflated by the wind to the size of footballs, bouncing, rolling and tumbling down the hill like an avalanche of multi-coloured rocks and boulders, right across our path. They bounced, flew high up into the air, dropped to the ground, tore around with the wind in every direction, covering the road and everything around.
So this is what a sandstorm is like!
It continued until we reached a region where fences reappeared on both sides of the road, trapping all the bags in the barbed wire, just before our turn-off.

Heading inland and up into the mountains the wind continued unabated but the torrent of bags disappeared along with the blown sand.
But a different problem arose.
The wind, as strong as ever, was in our faces and we were climbing to previously unconquered heights. Approaching 4000 ft and beyond.
And Caroline's Serow complained ominously, the fuel mixture now being far too rich giving it great difficulty in making progress against this wind. At least, sufficiently fast progress to deliver us to Mt Sinai before nightfall.
We stopped twice for conferences: continue, return to Softbeach, divert to Dahab? (An alternative possibility). The second stop was at one of many army checkpoints where they reminded us of the distance remaining to Mt Sinai, almost the point of no return, the sun low in the sky.
Well, Caroline offered some inspirational words to her Serow and pronounced "We'll continue - Gee-up!"
And gee-up we did, climbing through some of the most stunning and spectacular and barren scenery, climbing ever upwards, to reach the site of the Ten Commandments just a few minutes after sunset.
Anyone with the view that those televised 1969 moon landings were somehow faked, well, if you're interested, they could well have been filmed right here. In this strange landscape it definitely felt as though we were a quarter of a million miles from planet Earth, especially after three months on our little two-wheeled crafts.

Arriving in the little village of St. Katherines, with darkness just falling, we found a very nice hostal and prepared ourselves for the climb the next day.

Well, there are indeed tablets of stone at the top, and a cleft in the rock, and views that can certainly inspire and awaken, in whatever way you allow.

Believed to be the offspring of The Burning Bush, in the monastery at the base of Mt Sinai.

Visitors pose, listening.

On the climb to the summit. Below on the path, two pilgrims looking for their Prophet.

Or Holmes and Watson searching for the Tablets.

For maybe half an hour on the climb up Mount Sinai, these birds fluttered and pranced in front of me, showing me the way.

When I stopped, they stopped. If I turned the other way, they patiently waited until I resumed climbing in the right direction.

Close to the summit, the Cleft in the Rock.

Just below the summit, The Tablets of Stone. At least, that's what I think.

The view from the top.

So, bearing in mind our experiences so far on this journey, here are the words that fitted on those tablets of stone when we arrived at the summit, numbers eleven to twenty:

11. Check your oil every morning.
12. Give everyone else right-of-way.
13. Especially anyone behind.
14. Never say "no" to a cup of tea.
15. Don't interrupt The Koran.
16. Don't ride in the dark, ever. Even the three-mile road from our hostal to the foot of The Holy Mountain (which we rode in the dark - we hereby confesseth and repent) has many big potholes.
17. Fill up with petrol whenever you can - it's only ninety pence a gallon. - Yes, gallon.
18. Don't, unfortunately, expect any sort of spiritual experience or awakening when visiting Moses' Burning Bush in the monastery at the foot of the mountain. Yea, there be a crowd of tourists of huge numbers, pushing and shoving to get their photographs and videos taken at exactly the right viewpoint and angle for the consumption of the folks back home (see above - I confess and repent).
19. Don't, as we did, mistake the guides at the foot of the mountain for hustlers. They will tell you it's obligatory to climb the mountain with one of them. We disbelieved them and strode out on our own. Only to learn later that it is indeed against the rules for tourists to be unaccompanied on the climb - the Bedouin have a legally established rota such that all the local Bedouin families share the work of guiding visitors ensuring them an equal wage from the work. No wonder we were asked by many of them on our way down, "Hey! Where your guide?" - Sorry! We confess and repent.
20. Take all your plastic bags, bottles, bottle-tops, crisps packets, cans and dead batteries home with you.

A note of explanation on No. 15.
You have to mingle with the local people quite a bit to begin to realise the central role The Koran, and their religion, plays in their lives. Any computer, switched on but idle, will usually be connected to one of hundreds of Arabic Youtube pages showing the Koran being sung. And the music and singing, at least on the ones I saw, is indeed very tuneful and relaxing.
So when I asked if I could use the computer in our last camp in Jordan, the answer was, "Of course, but please don't interrupt The Koran."
Which played out from substantial PC speakers into the restaurant of the camp in the mornings, requiring an additional Internet Explorer window to be launched, hoping it wouldn't interfere with the one already playing and filling the restaurant with peaceful music.

It's common to hear The Koran being sung from car radios and, having just arrived in Dahab and stocking up at a large-ish supermarket, there it was being played to us shoppers. Very soothing in the aisles. Not really expected in the so-called 'hippy paradise'.

Onwards and downwards.
We left it a little late to descend the mountain, it was pitch black by the time we reached the bottom, and no one waiting to listen to what we had learned up there. It was far too cold to hang around. After tea in the monastery cafeteria we rode the thee miles back to the village in the dark.

We were on the road again next day, westwards to the coast, the regional capital El Tur, and its passport office, to have a month added to our visas. It was all desert again, except, out of nowhere round a bend in the road, the oasis village of Feiran appeared. A mini forest of palms, very pretty. And also out of nowhere two locals came out to say hello, one a young teenager in extremely white and smart robes who shook our hands and tried a little English on us.

Feiran Oasis village.

Back in the desert beyond Feiran.

At El Tur our mission to extend our visas was quickly accomplished, but to extend the customs clearance for our bikes, from one month to two, was not. At the Traffic Office two separate groups of officials were very clear, we had to have that done at Nuweiba Port, in complete contradiction to what we had been told at the port on arrival.
So, a visit to the port has to be inserted in our itinerary, and we dash off south to the Nature Reserve of Ras Mohammed on the very tip of the Sinai.