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By Patrick Scott
Ben Hoffler has heard one sound more than any other in the past twelve years: that of footsteps, creaking, creaking, creaking, pressed into the sandy gravel that borders the desert valleys of South Sinai, a likely landscape of granite mountains, colorful canyons and green oases.
During an ascent to the summit of Mount Sinai in 2008, Mr. Hoffler, an Englishman trained in Oxford, moved so much through the force of the Egyptian mountains, believed to be the position where Moses won the Ten Commandments, that he crossed some 7,000 miles. of this desert upper desert with its Bedouin inhabitants.
He wrote a hiking consultant in South Sinai in 2013 and, soon after, began collaborating with the region’s Bedouin tribes to create one of Egypt’s most common tourism projects: the Sinai Trail, the country’s first long-distance hiking trail.
“There’s something very special about the desert: very hard, austere and charming in a way that I don’t find in lush, easy-to-survive landscapes,” M said. Hoffler, who is 39 years old and looks like a young man. Elton John, told me about a walk along the trail just a few months before the Covid-19 pandemic disrupted global tourism.
The first parts of the Sinai Trail opened in 2015. In 2018, it stretched in a 350-mile loop through the bottom of the triangular Sinai Peninsula. With the Red Sea Mountain Trail, another long-distance trail on the Egyptian mainland that Mr. Hoffler helped the Maaza tribe open up in 2019, the trail firmly placed Egypt in the ranks of a burgeoning hiking movement in North Africa and the Middle East.
In the last 15 years, new long-distance trails have been developed, in addition to some promoted through the American Appalachian Trail, in Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt and the occupied West Bank, lasting from 300 to 400 miles. These routes joined long trails already established in Israel and Turkey in the 1990s. Other long-distance trails are recently being developed in Saudi Arabia, as part of futuristic megaprojects created by the kingdom in its western deserts and autonomous region of Iraqi Kurdistan.
And now, some of the key players in the movement in the region are imagining transnational groups or paths that, for the first time, would physically or symbolically link those ancient rediscovered nomadic routes and the newly forged routes, crossing fashionable national borders.
For the past three years, Mr. Hoffler has painted in southern Jordan with Bedouin tribes and Tony Howard, a pioneer of hiking and climbing in the region, to create a sister trail to Bedouin-ruled directions in Sinai and the Red Sea Mountains. It has long been communicated, but nothing conclusive, of an address linking the Nabataean archaeological sites of Petra, Jordan, and the Al Ula sites in Saudi Arabia, some 300 miles to the southwest. And a new long-distance netpaintings trail is emerging to combine Jordan Trail, Palestine Heritage Trail and Lebanon Mountain Trail, in partnership with European funders and a trail system from France. All of this echoes the efforts of the Abraham Path Initiative, an American nonprofit. Having been selling trail structures and trail network paintings in the region since 2007, its main goal now is to fund and help paint on the Kurdistan Trail.
Moreover, what is not unusual on many trails is the determination of their creators to attract tourists and jobs to struggling villages in deserts and mountains. wonders and trails to dispel negative perceptions of the traditionally turbulent region.
As a group, the embryonic network that includes roads in Jordan, Palestine and Lebanon may only represent the most productive practices for marking trails, setting emergencies and promoting walking, according to organizers. The exchanges of walks, however, oppose the truth of geographical and political obstacles. Physically connecting trails in Jordan, Palestine and Lebanon, for example, is impossible, as Lebanon has no borders with the West Bank or Jordan. And the political obstacles seem equally insurmountable, as Israeli and Palestinian passport holders are barred from entering Lebanon.
For Howard, who spearheaded the popularization of climbing in Jordan’s Wadi Rum Valley in the mid-1980s, orchestrating what he calls super trails in the region makes too much sense not to materialize.
“In itself, it’s an exciting thing: it sounds good and it’s easy to promote, and other people will follow,” M. But trails also gain advantages in the spaces they pass through through the expansion of tourism and helping to maintain nature and culture. Before the trails were designed, “there was very little awareness in Jordan that other people wanted to stop at villages and walk through the hills,” he said. “The need to protect some of those spaces began. “
Among all the long-distance routes in the region, the Egyptian routes are unique because they are owned and controlled by Bedouins, whose nomadic ancestors, centuries ago, forged many routes on foot and by camel. Unlike the self-guided tours of Lebanon, Israel, and Jordan, the Sinai and Red Sea trails require Bedouin guides. And unlike the planned Neom megaproject in northwestern Saudi Arabia, whose promises are 750 miles of trails in the coming years, it features depictions of luxury cabins and boasts of “immersive virtual experiences. “, “Egyptian trails attempt to reflect how nomadic ancestors moved through the desert. Hikers drink from the wells, sleep by the fire, under the stars (or in the tent) and enjoy a cake cooked in acacia charcoal and seasoned with mountain salt. Bedouins rely more on camels to carry cooking and camping materials and colorful woven carpets.
The Sinai Trail was founded by Mr. Hoffler and 3 Bedouin tribes, whose members serve as guides, camel drivers and cooks. And when it dragged on in 2018, five more tribes joined the group. The tribes saw the path as a way to create sustainable tourism. while retaining old tactics and traditions that were fading in the age of smartphones and vans.
Bedouin guides along the way say they have discovered peace in the desert of the desert, feeling a strong connection to their tribes and lands. They know the way through extensive passages and labyrinthine gorges, what plants can be used to make soaps and poultices, what animals leave what kind of droppings and footprints. They also keep legends similar to the vital maxims that are put in the way, such as the story of the sisters who tied their long locks of hair and jumped to their deaths from Jebel El Banat, a mountain peak along the way, to escape arranged marriages.
When I first met Mr. Hoffler in the fall of 2019, I joined a handful of hikers on the first end-to-end hike on the west side of Sinai, a 125-mile stretch from St. Hoffler. Catherine, the city and tourism. center in the middle of the trail, to Serabit el Khadem, near the Gulf of Suez. We make our way along a winding granite trail the size of a pea dotted with jagged rocks. On the left, a mountainous appearance of wrinkled dark granite; On the right was a beige granite curtain flying. At about 5000 feet above sea level, at the most sensitive pass, called Naqb el Hawa, or Wind Passage, I almost expected to hear the swell of an orchestra like a remote view of sandy plains and fluted peaks appeared.
We were walking on a rock that dated back about six hundred million years, on a path traveled by nomads thousands of years ago and, to be precise, around the sixth century, by Christian settlers traveling from Cairo to Mount Sinai.
“The desert has been a place of insight, a place of transformation for people,” Mr. Hoffler said as we walked down the pass. “All the prophets came out with very profound ideas that repositioned the course of human history. “
The landscape changes continuously: from steep olive groves to bulbous beige outcrops, from charcoal-gray peaks to pink cliffs. The constants are the black streaks of granite that run through the mountains like arrows on a fever map. Where two lines intersect near the base, the Bedouins tell us, there is water and a group of flat acacias.
Of course, many settle for a day hike or two on shorter sections of the trails, which feature dozens of desert valleys (called wadis), ancient sites of interest, and named mountains.
The most sensible on my list of recommendations are the hikes around Um Bogma, a ghost of the city between steeper plateaus more sensibly in the northwest corner of the trail, near the Suez Canal. of Egypt, with startling perspectives of mountain levels unfolding on the horizon, Um Bogma’s multi-level agreement is frozen in time. Rusty metal cables stretch like chairlifts for miles to the sea. it has a space for the director with a wraparound porch that overlooks a large cliff that divides Sinai.
Members of the Hamada tribe, who oversee this segment of the road, mined manganese when the British occupied Egypt until the 1950s. Egypt took over the mines of Um Bogma for several years, but they were closed and the site abandoned Israel’s profession of Sinai since 1967. to 1982.
For some hikers, the battered landscape is a legacy of colonial exploitation. For the Hamada, however, it is a source of employment. And for M. Hoffler it is a great opportunity for tourism. “I think it’s just a gem for Hamada,” he told me.
Other notable segments can be discovered in the Red Sea Mountains, a two-hour drive from the coastal town of Hurghada. Unlike Sinai, where you’re surrounded by mountains a little after landing in Sharm el-Sheikh, those of mainland Egypt look more jagged and imposing, clustered in massifs with tusk-like peaks. Here, the government has not yet allowed overnight camping on the 100-mile Red Sea mountain trail, so Bedouins can only take one-day hikes.
The trail lies within the territory of the extended Khushmaan family of the Maaza tribe and features Roman ruins and the peak on the mainland, Jebel Shayib el Banat, which rises to about 7,200 feet. The 1,500 families of the extended family hint at their origins in Arabia. A few centuries ago, and the maximum still lived in the desert mountains, according to its leader, Sheikh Merayi Abu Musallem.
In Abul Hassan, the hike begins with a steep slope covered in rocks and turns into a closed and secret desert: a narrow canyon covered in pink granite on one side and charcoal-colored granite on the other. Few foreigners have entered wadi since the American educator Joseph J. Hobbs went there while researching his e-book “Bedouin Life in the Egyptian Desert” in the early 1980s. The intensity of the canyon is astounding, especially when the fluffy white clouds in a sapphire sky and the pyramid-shaped peaks in the distance load an extra size to the image.
Elsewhere, the trek through Jebel Gattar and Wadi Nagaata is an arduous climb to a series of huge granite platforms that reveal the ancient origins of Christian monasticism. As in the 300s, ascetics lived in extreme deprivation. Hikers may enter the silence of one of the small semicircular chambers and believe that a contemplative emerges from the same front, towards a beige honeycomb granite wall with shovel-shaped craters. On a nearby plateau is a three-room roofless stone construction that was probably once a cult position and a precursor to early monasteries, such as St. Catherine’s Monastery, built in the sixth century at the foot of Mount Sinai.
Developing those trails was less about clearing new paths and more about reclaiming existing routes that showcased the myriad landscapes and legends. It was also about challenging the concept that Sinai is a hostile and harmful place. Egypt has been battling Islamist militants in North Sinai for much of the past decade. The U. S. government The U. S. Department advises citizens to “reconsider going to Egypt because of terrorism. “
According to the Sinai Trail website, “there has never been an attack on tourists in the Bedouin interior parts of South Sinai, where Sinai Trail is located. “Hoffler argues that in addition to Egyptian security forces across the peninsula, hikers have a protection in a vast Bedouin job that monitors camels, vans and crossings and stores guest information.
One of our fellow hikers on the western Sinai Trail, Leena El Samra, a 33-year-old Cairean who works on a progression bank, told me that some of her friends were worried about her doing the hike.
“This is a component of Egypt that is ignored and we know nothing, to some extent,” El Samra said, rolling across the stony sand. “It’s a component of Egypt where you feel very good about people. It is very beautiful, it is virgin, it is unknown. This is very different from what we do in all of Egypt. And I like to build muscle.
The Samra is a component of a small but developing circle of Egyptian adventure travelers and long-staying athletes who turned to the hiking, running, and triathlon festival after the failed revolution and the army’s upcoming takeover early in the following decade. Many saw the activities as a way to vent their frustrations. and exercise their independence, or simply to look at their country.
Hiking remains a niche activity in Egypt. The Sinai Trail welcomed a few hundred hikers before the pandemic, forcing trails to close for up to 2020. The number dropped to dozens in 2021 due to restrictions. But more hikers returned this year, adding another 70 people from around the world who arrived for a weekend walk in October related to the annual United Nations climate conference, known as COP27, which was held the following month in Sharm el-Sheikh. If all goes according to plan, the Sinai Trail will make its first end-to-end walk of the 350-mile direction this October.
For Bedouins, the trails are a path to their roots and they make a living in the mountains.
During a drought in the 1990s, many Sinai Bedouins moved to coastal villages or farms in the Nile Valley to paint, said Youssuf Barakat of the Alegat tribe, who spent two years with M. Hoffler mapped the routes of southern Sinai and served as a consultant. the COP27 walk in October. Modernity and the decline in tourism at the beginning of the last decade have also driven Bedouins away from Sinai. Barakat, 36, returned to the mountains to paint on the track after running as a cook at his family’s eating place in Abu Zenima on the west coast, he said.
Bedouins have been forced to change, Mr. Barakat after a dinner of grilled mutton and vegetable soup followed M. Barakat doing a classic love song while playing a tabla drum.
“We have internet, we have phones,” he said. Soon, he and his other friends “became like the Egyptians,” he says.
However, with the Sinai Trail, Mr. Barakat and his tribesmen have the opportunity to return to their centuries-old way of life.
“We are step by step,” he said. We hope that in five or ten years Bedouin life will return. “
Patrick Scott is a foundation in Thailand. You can stick to his paintings on Instagram.
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