‘Thanks, but I won’t be needing guides, or porters,’ I announced to the crowd of Bedu who were arguing over my bag.

‘But it’s dark,’ they cried, ‘you’ll fall!’ I looked above them to the bright moon that hovered over the sharpened peaks, then down to the sharp shadows that it cast. Smiling, I bade them farewell.   

The path to Mt Sinai, trampled flat by millions of pilgrim’s feet over hundreds of years, glowed lunar silver as it led me past the deathly silent monastery of St Catherine’s and on to the chapel that mark the summit in under four gentle hours. I lingered silently among a group of other tourists waiting for the dawn, glad of the enforced shoulder to freezing cold shoulder intimacy for the warmth that it generated, until first light when I was suddenly blinded by the light - of a hundred camera flashguns – and the serene, heavenly atmosphere turned to hell as those at the back of the crowd, eager to get a better view, surged forwards. They thumped, they crushed, they swore, they broke every religion’s most important commandment – ‘do unto others’ – without even blinking. ‘Idiots,’ I thought, ‘I really want to love my fellow man, but sometimes they make it so difficult…’

Thirty raucous minutes later the culture vultures had departed to pick some other ‘site’ clean of its experiences leaving the summit empty but for me and the Bedu tea shack owners.

‘Cairo over there,’ one said, pointing west before turning back to face the sun, ‘and Dahab over there.’

‘And there?’ I asked, nodding at a wide desolate wadi snaking south towards an inviting wall of peaks.

‘Sharm el Sheik, five days walk.’ I'd fancied seeing Sharm again so I checked my pack. I had three litres of water. I figured I might as well take a chance and go for it.

I fell into a routine of walking for around seven hours a day. Occasionally I passed black Bedu tents pitched in the shade of acacia trees, and wild donkeys, butterflies and birds grazing the open scrub, but mostly I was alone and hemmed in by hazy peaks and blood red cliffs. These rocky slopes, rising on either side of me for hundreds of metres, blocked out all traces of sound. At times I thought that I heard something as I moved - primeval howls, whispers - but when I stopped walking I found that there was only my breathing, the blood pounding in my ears and the echo of my footsteps. The temperatures were extreme. At midday, whilst the sun was at its burning hottest, just five minutes in the shade would set me off shivering, such was the chill. At night, despite my three-season sleeping bag and thermal clothes, it was a lot, lot colder.

At dawn on the second day I opened my eyes to see, standing over me, a wild eyed, longhaired lad with an ancient bolt action rifle slung across his back. We shook hands gently.

‘What’s the rifle for,’ I asked, ‘are there any dangerous animals around?’

‘Desert meat, gazelle, birds, fox,’ he replied, before smiling and adding, ‘bad people.’

He was honest and friendly, like every Bedu that I’ve ever met. I packed up my camp and we walked together along the wadi floor, talking about life in the Sinai.

‘How are Sharm El Sheikh and Dahab now?’ I asked. ‘I haven’t visited them for a few years.’

‘Those places are finished,’ he sneered, ‘they’re full of Egyptians.’

‘Is that so bad?’

‘Of course! All the Egyptians give us is poverty and orders not to go here, or there. They treat us like servants. They tell us we can’t talk to tourists without a permit. Imagine that…can’t talk, like we are doing, in our own land! It was so much better when the Israelis were here. They gave us schools, hospitals, and respect.’ He broke off the conversation to clap hands loudly as we approached a clump of palm trees where two other Bedu were working. ‘We are good people,’ he explained, ‘but if you surprise us you might well get shot.’

The next day I dug a shallow pit at the base of a palm tree. As the depression began to fill with fresh water I said a prayer of thanks. I’m not normally religious but I found it easy to have faith in this wilderness famed for its brutality towards human life. Later I was to stumble upon a wooden trapdoor that concealed a large well and yet more fresh water. ‘How can this be?’ I asked myself as I filled my bottles yet again, ‘I’m finding water every day, I’m sleeping safely every night, is this all one big miracle? What was it that has shown me this one small trapdoor hidden in such a vast landscape? I’ve always read that the southern Sinai is a dangerous, waterless place. Why am I finding water every day? Chance? God? Or is it possible that humans, like animals, can smell water without knowing it?’

I walked on for two more days. The way wasn’t always clear but I tended to meet one or two Bedu each day who could give me general directions. It wasn’t rocket science though. I knew that all I had to do to reach Sharm and the coast was to keep heading south and avoid the landmines and soldiers who might hassle me for a permit. Pretty simple really.

On the sixth day I met a Bedu who said that Sharm was just a few hours walk away. But the walk was such fun that I didn’t want it to end.

‘Can I get to Dahab from here?’ I asked.

‘Of course,’ he replied, ‘go up that wadi there and you’ll reach it in three days.’

The next morning a litany of dry waterfalls that demanded careful and strenuous rock climbing left my trousers and shirt encrusted white with the salt I’d sweated. As always the exhaustion created by the physical exertion was added to by the intense concentration necessary when climbing free of any ropes or safety equipment. Further on down the wadi two pillars of rock standing like sentinels guarded my path; beyond I saw the glint of a stationary car. As I shouted my greetings a Bedu came into view, greeted me in Hebrew, then English, and bade me join him for tea. He introduced himself as Salem Ahmed Salem, the owner of the Pigeon House Hotel in Na’ama Bay, and said that he’d come to the desert for a few days to recharge his soul. The Bedu are one of the few groups of humans left who realize that if they don’t regularly return to the silent wilderness, be it the desert, the high mountains, or the depths of the coral reef, then they will wither inside.

‘Too many problems in Na’ama,’ he said, ‘noise, T.V., radio, tourists. Here, nothing. Just quiet and sun.’ He turned his face to the sky, smiled, and then offered me a chunk of black charred mutton. ‘Breakfast?’

‘Thanks,’ I touched my heart in gratitude, ‘but I’ve eaten already. Tell me, is Dahab near here?’

‘You have no map?’ He asked. ‘And you are alone? But why?’

‘I had problems in England. There were many things I didn’t understand. I needed some silence.’ He nodded understandingly. We were on the same wavelength.

Salem pointed at a herd of black wild donkeys.

‘If you follow them down this wadi for a few hours you’ll come to Wadi Kid. That’s leads to the Dahab road.’ The donkeys blended into the haze until I could not be sure if those dancing shapes on the horizon were animals, men or trees. The valley was huge, endless and glaringly backlit and offered a choice of walking on sharp stones or very soft sand. That afternoon I saw silhouettes in the far distance which after half an hour had transformed into camels, their footsteps deadened by the heat. Another twenty minutes and two girls emerged from the camels’ humps, trilling a greeting across the emptiness with their shrill voices before urging their mounts on, surging away into the heat as laboriously as if it were treacle.

A day later the gap between the wadis’ narrow two hundred metre high cliffs became clogged with house sized boulders. I clambered around them and found an area cultivated with more palms and greenery that I had imagined possible in a Sinai setting. It was like walking into a forgotten world. A black tent, hovering in the heat like a vulture’s spread wings, housed two women and three children. I thought it would have been impolite to approach them directly so I searched for the man of the encampment. I found him behind a herd of camel loading kilogram size clear plastic bags of marijuana, the local cash crop, into industrial size bin liners. I asked for water and he directed me to the tent whilst he filled my bottles up at his well. The older woman, in her late 60’s, hid behind a veil of coins, silver trinkets and coloured beads as she served me tea whilst her companion continued breast feeding her baby. A young girl blew raspberries in my face and was in turn slapped repeatedly on the cheek by her elder sister. Another man, totally stoned, stumbled out of the palm gardens towards us, dribbling like Homer Simpson in a donut shop. It took him a while until his glassy eyes could focus on me. He retrieved a bag of grass from inside his shirt and skinned up. The old lady followed suit, as did the first man. During the time it took to serve three cups of tea they’d consumed three huge spliffs each. I felt lightheaded and wondered why until I saw the old lady sweetening the tea with grass. I’d found a lost world alright - it was 1969 all over again.

I could only walk twenty minutes away from the Bedu tent before my heavy legs said no more and collapsed under a shady rock outcrop high above the wadi. I took off my shirt and reeled from the stench that was released.

‘I’ll have to hit Dahab soon,’ I said to myself sleepily, ‘I can hardly stand my own smell.’

I stayed put for two nights, reading and relaxing in the silence. As the hours passed the wind blew cold, then furnace hot, and then cold again. The only sounds were the buzz of flies and the occasional falcon’s wings beating on the thermals below me. I walked into Dahab at dusk the following day. The place was crawling with the ‘Rainbow Tribe’ (backpackers who have exchanged the pinstripe uniform of their fathers for a floral batik one of their own and hang around communal kitchens whining ‘We must share everything’ whilst what they really mean is ‘We must share everything as long as it is your stuff we are sharing’). The wilderness was still too strong in me to put up with western bullshit of any type, and I wanted to keep it that way for as long as possible. The next day I slipped into a wet-suit and escaped underwater.

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