Overnight climb, with the monastery in the morningMount Sinai Climbing Experience from Saint Catherine
You set off at two in the morning with a Bedouin guide, walk up the camel path by torchlight for three hours, climb the last seven hundred and fifty stone steps, and sit down in the cold to wait for the sun to come up over the Sinai range. Afterwards, St Catherine's Monastery — the oldest continuously inhabited Christian monastery on earth.
A 2:00am start and two and a half to three and a half hours up in the dark, descending the roughly 3,750 Steps of Repentance. A camel covers most of the path up, but everyone walks the final 750 steps.
Where You’ll Go
What You’ll Do
- 1
Around 2:00am — set off
From the monastery car park with your Bedouin mountain guide, by head torch.
- 2
The camel path
Two and a half to three and a half hours of steady switchbacks up the gentler of the two routes, with Bedouin tea huts along the way to stop at.
- 3
The Steps of Repentance
The last stretch to the summit is seven hundred and fifty stone steps, cut by monks. Everyone walks these — no camel goes up them.
- 4
Sunrise from the summit
The wait in the cold, and then the light coming up across the Sinai peaks. This is the part people describe years later.
- 5
Down the full staircase
The descent takes the Steps of Repentance the whole way — around three thousand seven hundred and fifty of them, down through the Elijah Basin. Different scenery, and much harder on the knees.
- 6
St Catherine's Monastery
Breakfast, then the monastery: the site of the Burning Bush, the basilica, and one of the oldest continuously used libraries in the world.
Included
- ✓Transfers to and from St Catherine
- ✓A licensed Bedouin mountain guide
- ✓Mount Sinai climbing permit
- ✓St Catherine's Monastery visit
- ✓Blankets for the summit wait
- ✓Tea stops on the mountain
Good to Know
The practical truth about this one — timings, conditions, and what we can’t promise.
- The climb starts around 2:00am so you're on the summit before first light. There is no daytime version of this that ends in a sunrise.
- Two and a half to three and a half hours up. Most people go up the camel path and come down the roughly 3,750 Steps of Repentance.
- A camel can carry you most of the way up the path, but not the final 750 steps. Everyone walks those.
- It is genuinely cold on the summit before dawn, in every season, and you'll be sitting still while you wait.
- Proper closed walking shoes, a head torch, water and warm layers. Trainers and a phone light are how people get hurt on the descent.
- The monastery keeps its own opening hours and is closed to visitors on certain days. We build the trip around a day it's open.
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