Travel: Mountainbike trip to Sinai, Egypt
Hassan and his friends from Egypt had an idea: A roadtrip to the Sinai peninsula. Read here to see what they experienced.This trip was put together in a week at the most. Neal called me up asking:”Want to go to Sinai?” to which I answer with a casual “Mmm…yes. let’s call up the others.” We do two conference calls and go through a packing list that Neal shared with us, and we agreed to meet at Sherif Taymour’s house at 8:00AM on April 9th. Sure enough the last of us (who will remain nameless) showed up at 09:15. We had 3 cars in which we had to fit 8 bikes, 7 riders and their gear.
We had an uneventful drive (save for the usual checkpoints) to the Sahara beach camp where we would be spending the night and meeting Mussallam who would be our guide for the trip. We did a quick bike check then laid back and relaxed on our first night in preparation for what’s to come.
No amount of mosquito repellant could thwart the attacks those winged creatures launched on us. I could have sworn the mosquitoes were trying to buzz in harmony and at that point I figured that there is no point in sleeping in the hut. I slept much better on the beach.
The sun finally comes up, and we take our bikes apart so that they would be put in the cars arranged by our guide along with the rest of our gear, food, etc. The happy bunch get in the car and spend approximately two hours to the drop off point where we would start our ride.
We finally start riding and 800 meters into the ride we get our first flat! Luckily we only had a total of 3 flats on this trip. Legend has it that on a previous trip, the guys had a total of 23 flats (editor’s note: true story). Did we feel lucky? we sure did.
The scenery we have seen on this trip is breathtaking. The riding we have done on the first day was very nice except for the occasional flat section that was covered with soft gravel sheets. We covered about 32km in about 5 hours on the first day. We climbed 319 meters and descended 809 meters. But apart from the numbers there were endless sections of pick-a-line-through-the-rocks, very long switchback descents, and climbs to hilltops where you could feast your eyes on some crazy scenery that is no where else to be seen in the world.
We sit by the fire and our guides prepare a fantastic meal for us after which this was the inevitable result.
Day 2 was a completely different story. It was an odyssey to say the least. It started with a 4×4 drive as well but not as long nor as painful as the one we had on the first day. But on day 2 there was more of everything: more climbs, more descents, more walking, more ass-crawling, more breathtaking scenery, bigger mountains, more colors, more valleys, way more heat, more hours on the bike. Need I say more? We rode 7.5 hours, climbed 460 meters and descended 1200 meters over a distance of 30km. A good portion of the descending we did was on foot or worse; ass-crawled.
None of what we’ve seen in Wadi Degla (our home trails right outside Cairo) could have prepared us well for what we have seen on that second day. the terrain is much gnarlier than anything in the trails outside Cairo, plus the “You’re in the middle of nowhere” factor, which makes you much more reserved in how you ride. There were falls and some minor injuries. There were moments where i would ask myself: ”What the fuck am I doing here?” or “Why didn’t I bring more water?”
It was a difficult day. it was the kind of ride that makes you discover parts of yourself that you didn’t know existed. But once you are done with all the misery and hardship and get to the beach where you kick off your shoes, clean your injuries, drink water, and have that much-needed coffee spiked with a bit of whisky, you say to your buddies: ”So when do we do this again?”
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Words: Hassan Choucri | Pictures: Moe Rabie, Omar Sharkawy, Neal Afifi, Eissa Allam, and Sherif Taymour