Mount Sinai: the night climb, St Catherine's, and who should skip it

Where Mount Sinai actually is

Mount Sinai sits in the interior of South Sinai, in mountains and desert rather than anywhere near a beach. St Catherine's Monastery stands at its foot, and the usual trips run inland from the coast. From Sharm el-Sheikh that is roughly three hours by road, from Dahab two to three, and from Taba a serious day out with an early start. The drive is through empty country, and most of it happens in the dark.

Jewish, Christian and Islamic tradition all identify this mountain with the one where Moses received the law. Its Arabic name, Jebel Musa, means the mountain of Moses. That identification is traditional rather than settled: other mountains have been proposed, and we are not going to adjudicate it on a travel page. What is not in question is that people have been walking up this one for centuries. The monastery below is among the oldest continuously inhabited in the world.

That matters for what you should expect at the top. You are not arriving somewhere quiet and undiscovered. You are joining a very long queue of people who have done the same walk. Most of them did it in the last few hours.

What the night climb is actually like

Excursions leave the coast around midnight, so that you climb in the dark and reach the summit for sunrise. The walk up the camel path takes two to three hours. It is a wide, steadily rising track rather than anything technical. A reasonably fit person in decent shoes can do it by torchlight, in a slow stream of other people doing the same thing. Camels are usually offered on the lower stretch.

The last part is different. It finishes on a long flight of rough stone steps. That is the section that hurts, and the reason 'it is only a walk' is the wrong description. The steps are uneven, they come at the end of the ascent, and you meet them again on the way down.

The summit is above 2,000 m and cold before dawn, even in August. Then the sun comes up, and the crowd at the top is large and noisy. The descent is harder on the knees than the climb and happens in daylight, when you have been awake all night. By the time you are back at the monastery gate you are usually too tired to take it in. Worth knowing, before you plan a day around both.

Who should not attempt it

Mount Sinai turns people back for three reasons, and general fitness is only one of them. Anyone with bad knees, bad hips or poor balance on uneven ground. The climb is manageable; the descent on rough steps, tired, in daylight, is where people come unstuck. If stairs are already a problem at home, they will be a much larger problem here with nothing to hold on to.

Anyone who cannot lose a full night's sleep and still function. This is not a late night, it is a night gone entirely, and it costs you most of the following day as well. On a short trip with a flight to catch, that is a real price.

Anyone hoping for a quiet spiritual moment on the summit. It is crowded and it is loud. Go for the landscape, the history and the walk itself. If those are not the reason, skip the climb: come in daylight and see the monastery on its own. It is a much less punishing half-day and you will actually be awake for it.

St Catherine's Monastery at the foot of it

The monastery is a working Orthodox community, among the oldest continuously inhabited anywhere, and it holds an important library and icon collection. It is not a museum built for visitors, and it does not run on visitor hours.

It opens to visitors for only a few morning hours, is normally closed on Fridays and Sundays, and closes around Orthodox feasts. Check the date before you commit a day to it. A trip that reaches the gate on the wrong morning has bought a long drive and a car park.

Which brings the awkward part of the standard excursion into focus. The climb ends roughly when the monastery opens, and you are in no state to look at anything by then. Decide which of the two you actually came for. Doing both in one night is possible and is the usual sale; doing both well is not.

How it fits an Egypt trip, and mostly it does not

Sinai is a separate leg of a trip, not a detour within one. It is administratively and practically apart from the Nile valley, with checkpoints on the roads, and Cairo, Luxor and Aswan are all on the mainland. Getting between Sinai and the Nile normally means flying, usually through Cairo, which costs the better part of a day each way.

So if your trip is Cairo plus a Nile cruise, Mount Sinai does not fit, and we are not going to pretend otherwise. Adding it means two flights and two travel days for one night's walking, at the cost of a temple day you would probably rather keep.

Where it does work is on a Red Sea leg. Sharm el-Sheikh and Dahab are the practical bases, and the Nile-then-Red-Sea trip that finishes in Sinai has the climb in reach without rearranging everything else. Taba can do it too, as a long day with an early start. Keep your passport with you either way: checkpoints on Sinai roads are routine and they add time you cannot predict.

The Sinai-only entry stamp, and what it covers

Arriving at Sharm el-Sheikh or Taba, many nationalities can be given a free Sinai-only entry permit instead of a full Egyptian visa. It is short-term, and it covers the eastern Sinai coast — Sharm, Dahab, Nuweiba, Taba — plus the road to St Catherine. The monastery and the mountain sit inside it.

What it does not cover is everything else: Cairo, Luxor, Aswan, the Nile valley and the mainland Red Sea coast. If your trip touches any of those at any point, take the full tourist visa instead, and applying online in advance is simplest. The permit rules have changed more than once. Treat this, and anything else you read, as a starting point rather than the current position.

When to go, and what to take

Mount Sinai's summit is cold at dawn in every month of the year, and winter up there is properly cold. That is the single thing people underdress for, having packed for a beach holiday two hours away on the coast. Take a real warm layer, not a light one, and something windproof over it.

Spring and autumn are when trips into the Sinai mountains are pleasant rather than punishing. Summer is hard. Inland Sinai temperatures are extreme by day, and although the walk is at night, you spend the day either side of it in that heat.

Otherwise: a head torch rather than a phone, shoes with grip and closed toes, more water than feels necessary. Take something to sit on at the top while you wait. Nothing about this climb is technical. Everything about it is cold, darkness, and the state of your knees.

What this page does not tell you

No prices, no opening hours, no current permitted routes. Those change, and a travel page repeating last year's figures is worse than useless. The Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities publishes what is currently open, and the monastery's own visiting hours have to be confirmed locally close to the date.

Security guidance is a separate question again, and not ours to answer. Government travel advice for Egypt is written region by region, and it treats North Sinai very differently from the South Sinai coast and the St Catherine road. Read your own foreign ministry's current page for the specific places on your itinerary, close to departure, and check what your insurer will and will not cover in Sinai.