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Welcome!

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This is a screenshot of what the Sinai Photo Archive used to look like. It was part of the Sinai Trekking and Safari website and, like the rest of the site, was available in five languages.  As you can see, 27,396 photos were available at the time, all tagged by location and other important keywords. For example, if you searched the tags for “Mt. Sinai + camel + snow”, you would find all the photos taken there after a snowfall that also included a camel. Perhaps more importantly, the archive was created as a supplement to the trekking and safari guidebook . Every location mentioned in the book, however small or little known, was tagged, so readers could get a visual impression of each place.  Unfortunately, it is all gone. The website crashed in 2016, and all this work was lost. I still have the photos on my hard drives, but I will never attempt to rebuild the archive to the same extent. It was a huge amount of work, uploading more than 27,000 photos to the server and then tag...
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Wadi Itlah

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  Wadi Itlah is very close to St. Katherine, running more or less in a straight line from the Wadi Quweiz-Wadi Tala junction, marked by a towering rock face, to another junction further down. The steep Wadi Shaq Tinya joins Wadi Itlah at that point, descending from the high mountains, and the two merge and continue as Wadi Jinab towards the lowlands at Sheikh Awad. At this junction, a little canyon known as Ubugiya leads to the Bedouin settlement of Abu Seila, from where you can take a car back to town. If water levels are too high in the canyon, there is an alternative route over the hill, known as Naqb Abu Seila. 
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Feast of Saint Catherine 2012

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  On the night of 7 December and the morning of 8 December 2012, St Catherine's Monastery celebrated the Feast of Saint Catherine, its most important annual religious festival. The celebration began with Evening Vespers on 7 December and continued through the night with an all-night vigil and extended services. On the morning of 8 December, the Divine Liturgy was celebrated, followed by a procession with the relics of Saint Catherine, which are sometimes displayed for veneration by pilgrims. The feast attracts Orthodox clergy, monks, and pilgrims from Greece and many other countries, as well as members of the Bedouin community, creating a unique atmosphere of devotion and tradition within the world's oldest continuously inhabited monastery. Photos were taken on 7 and 8 December 2012.
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Bustan el Birka

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  You can find a large number of Byzantine ruins in the Bustan al-Birka (al-Freah) area. They are often not easy to recognize, because the Bedouin built similar structures. One giveaway is the rocks: Byzantine builders did not break them, as the Bedouin do, and instead used very large stones placed together skillfully with only earth as mortar. Another clue is the door: if it is very small and has a channel-like entrance, it is most probably a Byzantine building. 
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Chapel of St John Klimakos

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  Saint John Klimakos (Climacus), author of The Ladder of Divine Ascent, lived as a hermit near Mount Sinai in the 6th century before becoming abbot of Saint Catherine’s. His cave and adjacent chapel remain a revered site, situated in today’s Wadi Itlah (called Thola at the time). 
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Monastery of Saints Kosmas and Damianos

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  The Monastery of Saints Kosmas and Damianos, or Deir al-Rahab, lies a short distance from Saint Catherine City in a secluded valley. Dedicated to the twin physician-saints, it served as a retreat for monks seeking solitude and prayer. This small monastery also stands within an expansive orchard of olives, almonds, and apricots, complemented by a vegetable garden. 
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Monastery of the Holy Apostles

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  Located within St. Katherine town, the Monastery of the Holy Apostles is known by the Bedouin as Deir al Raba. It is one of the lesser-known religious sites connected with Sinai’s monastic heritage. Tradition holds that it was founded in honor of the Apostles, and though much smaller than Saint Catherine’s Monastery, it served as a spiritual retreat and local place of worship for monks and villagers. Standing at the foot of towering Jabal Raba, this little monastery dominates the view in the old part of Saint Catherine City. 
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Rock of Moses (Hajar Musa) and Chapel of the Birth of the Holy Virgin

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  A chapel dedicated to the Nativity of the Virgin Mary, built beside what tradition identifies as the Rock of Moses. According to local lore, this rock is where Moses struck water for the Israelites. The twelve clefts represent the twelve springs mentioned in the Quran, according to locals, and the rock is also revered by Muslims.
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