So there I was. All alone. At 2:15 am. Lost at the base of Mt. Sinai.

I scanned with my flashlight, desperate to find even the faintest indication of a footpath. Did three rocks in a seeming line constitute a proper boundary? I saw a slight incline with hardly any rocks. Was that the beginning of a heavily traveled trail? How I managed to lose 50 hikers on one of the most toured mountains in the world is a feat that would impress even Moses. Sure, I can’t turn a rod into a snake and back again, but if he had my skills of navigation and evasion, Moses and the Levites would’ve shaken off the pesky Egyptians and reached the Promised Land in no time. They probably wouldn’t have had to waste precious God favors in splitting the Red Sea.

Two hours earlier, I had been crammed in the back corner of a minibus in Dahab, a budget traveler’s paradise on the Gulf of Aqaba. I first heard about the town on a Luxor-bound bus from Cairo. I sat next to a Pennsylvanian–turned–English student with chronic fatigue syndrome. Just before dozing off, she said “Dahab isn’t like Cairo,” where she had to jog in the morning wearing sweat pants and a shirt. Cairo is a conservative place and women better cover up if they don’t want to arouse too much attention. “In Dahab, you can wear tank tops and shorts. It’s just like southern Europe,” she told me.

Dahab is laid back and cheap. Many travelers end up spending months in the town as diving courses are offered as abundantly as the fresh seafood. After snorkeling or windsurfing, visitors grab mango juice and listen to the Reggae music of Bob Marley. They eat kebabs and smoke a sheesha (Arabian smoking pipe) later that night. The name of a souvenir shop says it all: Cleopatra Rasta Shop.

Dahab, the base camp for most who hike Mt. Sinai, faces the Gulf of Aqaba.

One of the few landlubber excursions is a nocturnal three-hour hike up to Mt. Sinai (7,496 feet or 2,285 meters above sea level), timed perfectly to observe the sunrise from the pinnacle. The tour minibus included a couple of other Americans, four Slovenian guys, two Danes with convincing American accents and also a French contingent. We were assured that the clear paths would make it an easy hike. Carrying a map was optional ― there were going to be so many people there. Just follow the leader.

After a two-hour drive, we arrived at the base of the mountain, just below St. Catherine’s monastery, which was founded in 300 CE and houses what is believed to be a direct descendant of the Burning Bush. According to the Old Testament, God used the Burning Bush to speak to Moses. As soon as I left the bus, I headed for the bathroom to put on pants and a sweater. The temperature had dropped at least 50 degrees F (10 C) from the daytime high. It was only going to get colder and windier during the climb. By the time I double-checked my gear and clothing, and put on my earphones, there were only six people left at the base.

I was not going to be the last one to the top, so I began power walking. This was the mistake. I began racing, competing with a pack of world-class hikers who burst out of the vans and sped up the mountain, leaving a flurry of dust behind them that settled by the time I crossed the same area. They had scaled past so many turns up the mountain that I could no longer hear their stampeding or see the glow of their flashlights. Moses had a pillar of fire guiding him at night. A sympathetic firefly would have been enough for me.

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I made out the shapes of two camels and three Bedouins. They were presumably headed for the main camel camp, where the animals can be hired as an alternative to hiking. The camp had to fall on the main path, I thought, so I followed. As I approached them, one of the men seemed extremely tall and was walking with an unnatural gait that somehow felt threatening, like the lanky walk of a volatile alcoholic in a parking lot, or the deceptive swaying of a martial artist fighting in the drunken style. Naturally, I tried to get closer. I couldn’t shine my flashlight directly onto the figures, but the moonlight finally revealed that the dangerous man was actually just a malnourished camel. So I followed the three camels and two Bedouins.