Mt. Sinai (Jebel Musa) and the Safsafa basins - Discover Sinai

PrefaceLooking at post-revolution Egypt, and these latest incidents on thesecond aniversay of the revolution, it doesn’t seem to be a good timingto work on a guide book aimed at foreign visitors. The news about Sinaiand the Bedouin are also unsettling, putting most would-be visitors off. Imight not convince many, but the situation is not as bad as it seems.Protests, it looks, became part of daily life, but they only affect certainareas of certain cities. Apart from Downtown Cairo none is a touristdestination anyway. The tourist destinations around Egypt are safe andexperience nothing from these events. With regards of lawlessness inthe Sinai, the media likes to exaggerate and usually fails to point outthat all the troubles are concentrated in a small pocket in the north nearthe border with Gaza, hundreds of miles from South Sinai. Otherwiselawlessness is a nonsense: the Sinai has been governed by Bedouinlaw, the orfi, for more than a thousand years. At its core is respect, andthe Bedouin are in fact a genuenily friendly and welcoming people.The Sinai is an undiscovered – or more precisely a forgotten – trekkers’paradise. Israeli trekkers used to come in big numbers in the past, butEuropeans know very little about it apart from the Red Sea resorts. Ibelieve, however, that in the long run the mountain and desert trails willbe trodden again, as it is truly a world class destination. Trekkers areindependent minded people who are not that easily scared off – SouthAfrica or Kenya, for example, are popular with trekkers, despite thesafety issues and high crime rates. The Sinai, especially the mountainsand the desert, is a truly peaceful land and it has great potentials fornature and culture based tourism. Traditional guiding and camelhandling skills are not yet lost, and local communities depend a greatdeal on work as guides and cameleers. It is one of those rare caseswhere tourism can actually help sustain a traditional way of life, at leastto a certain extent. The problem is the people who would be interesteddon’t know about the Sinai, the wonders it offers. But no secret remainsa secret forever, and one day the trekkers will return. For those who dowant to visit the region a little guide titled “Trekking in South Sinai: thehighlights” was published in 2011. It is the first and still the only trekkingguide to South Sinai, with 8 of the best treks from 6 different regions.The 2 nd edition of the guide is planned to be released in 2013, with theeight treks described in more detail and supplemented with more maps,drawings, relevant notes. Two of those treks, in the updated form, arepresented in this free version.28. January, 2013. South Sinai, Egypt4