The mountain

Meribel, France

Human infrastructure installed to conquer nature. The huge silence broken only by the whir of chairlifts. The endless jagged peaks. The smooth snow coating the mountains like icing finished with a spatula. The long views, the fresh crisp air. The wheeling, tweeting birds. An inhospitable location tamed by pylons and steel cables. Thousands of tons of metal to facilitate the pursuit of pleasure. I call on Mum to help me focus on my technique to tackle the slopes. Fast and smooth, my head is empty and my body flows. Remembering to overcome the natural inclination and lean forward. Embrace gravity. Learners block the way with wide slow turns. Experts cause turbulence with high-speed close shaves. Concentrate.

The mountain and I.

I am nothing and the mountain lasts. Reassuring me that I am insignificant and my problems matter little. In the cold, wide space where the air is clear I bid farewell to mental clutter. Embrace speed and freedom. I am thankful for the ancient churning of the Earth that threw up these rocky spires. A fearful place made playground by the hand of man.

If the lifts stop running and the people stop coming. The snow will still fall on the towers of these castles in the sky. Battlements still battered by fierce winds and bathed by the light of a strong sun. We are nothing compared to changes that take place over millennia. Meditate on that and may it lend your life some calm. Easier said than done. I am still annoyed about the broken washing machine.

The pylons, unused and neglected, rust and crack. Steel cables sag and snap like twigs to lie useless on the rocks. The dead hair of a metal monster. Nature reclaims her space with an irresistible will. Our grand designs are flicked aside like a giant playing Subbuteo.

When Spring comes, to see Winter’s icy blanket gone, the mountain bursts to life. Green shoots and animals with new song, spreading from the valley to the tips of the awesome crown. The mountain still stands; a silent witness to the passing of ages. 

Between the desert and the deep blue sea

Dawn over the Red Sea at Baron Resort, Sharm El Sheikh

Outside the hotel the low morning sun cast long shadows as it rose over the Gulf of Aqaba. A fresh tarmac road lay before me. I began to run. The road was bordered on the side nearest the sea with well-tended flowerbeds and luxurious resorts. On the west side a rubble-strewn wasteland spread out towards the main highway and the edge of the Sinai Desert. Beyond the polished and manicured confines of my lodgings this was a stark reminder that the holidaymakers’ haven of Sharm El Sheikh is improbably located and has been conjured out of the dust by the hand of man. Once the hostilities between Egypt and Israel ceased in the 1980s, the agreeable year-round climate and clear waters encouraged developers to build at an astonishing rate. Now a sprawl of touristic compounds act as a sort of human shield between the ancient land of the Pharaohs and the Middle East. 

Half-built resorts are all around

I was living the life of a cartel kingpin on an all-inclusive Egyptian Christmas and taking full advantage of the many indulgences this afforded (Beef Wellington with cheese, anyone? We nicknamed it Chief Wellington) but I can never resist to run in a new place. While my family slept, dreaming of another day on the sun loungers dangling club sandwiches mouthwards, my road curved past the half finished shell of a supermarket. A pack of weather-beaten but bright-eyed strays watched me with curiosity, ears pricked. I scooped up a stone and hefted its reassuring weight in my palm in case of attack. I imagined mounting a hopeless defence, clobbering one with a well-aimed shot only to be savaged mercilessly by the other five. No point in aggravating the beasts, keep calm and they will most likely leave you be, even if they do come unnervingly close. I learnt my lesson at the wrong end of canine incisors in Ecuador.

Safer to walk

The road turned inland towards the desert and soon joined the main highway. The gleaming black strip ran away in the distance on both sides while in front, the empty spaces of Sharm El Sheikh airport were all that stood between the mountains and me. It was to this very highway that I had wandered on my first morning in Sharm in an attempt to find a taxi to take me to the kite surfing centre further down the coast. The receptionist at the hotel had advised me that booking a ride through the hotel would cost me 150 Egyptian Pounds (£15) while a taxi picked up on the street would cost 50.

“Loads of taxis. Just down the road” He told me.

“Excellent!” I exclaimed happily, glad of the opportunity to explore under my own steam and save money.

“But,” I paused on my way across the marble floor, as the man behind the counter continued, “Be careful that the driver is okay. You know, that is he is not smoking some drugs.”

It was 7am and there were no taxis. In the end I found the local minibus and travelled for just 3 EGP. My experience with stoned taxi drivers came later in the form of a journey at over 100mph with the cretinous pilot chatting merrily on his mobile phone. After that, I stuck to the minibus.

What lies beneath

As the sun climbed slowly in the sky I ran on. Northwards the road passed checkpoints where policemen slept. The Foreign Office website advises against all but essential travel to South Sinai with the exception of the resort towns, which are heavily protected. You can imagine what fun it was for my family and I to gather around a monitor and view the alarming colours indicating the dangerous areas. Armoured vehicles and submachine guns are regularly visible but the slumbering bobbies did little to reassure me that I was safe from the “high risk of indiscriminate attacks”. It felt strange to be spending Christmas in the sheltered enclave of a country experiencing so much unrest. Tourism is vital for the Egyptian economy but look beyond the inflatable snowmen and plastic Santas and there is a country on the edge of another major crisis. Behind every cheery “Good morning!” there is an uncertain future. On a star gazing trip into the Sinai Desert our guide launched into a desperate rant about the state of his homeland, ending ominously,

“In three months Egypt will go down.”

That remains to be seen but what is a certainty is that Sharm El Sheikh comes complete with all the trappings of your average British high street so you need never feel like you have really left. Starbucks, Burger King, KFC and the Hard Rock Café, are all there and on an enormous scale. Bare-chested Russian men swagger about, boiling prodigious bellies in the heat while their glamorous girlfriends totter alongside. When it’s –20 at home you can see why Russians flock to Sharm at Christmas. Further south in Naama Bay holidaymakers can enjoy the Ibiza experience at Space and Pasha. Or, how about Urban Fresh, Egypt’s premier weekly RnB and hip hop night?

The flyer reads:

feel the groove and busting a move in the water

in a stylish pool for the Sexy ‘n’ Stylish ladies

Look closely for the dolphin surfing Pharaoh

Come on lads, let’s go. But on the other side of the flyer there is a picture of a huge room filled only with men. After the plastic monument to the Pharaoh who surfs dolphins I turned back and altered my route by running along the beach. I struggled past acres of sun beds and umbrellas in the soft sand. Out in the Red Sea the rusty protuberances of shipwrecks were clearly visible; the shallow and coral-littered waters are notoriously treacherous. Later on in the day boats of tourists would wend their between them on salty sightseeing visits.

Back at my hotel I enjoyed a massage in the spa. Ahmed my masseuse promised me he loved English people and would give me a “special massage” with “special oil”. I was somewhat alarmed as he began to roll down the top of my shorts and I debated with myself where my boundaries were and at what point I might have to call time on this unusual experience. Thankfully, there were no extras and the massage was excellent, even if the constant discourse Ahmed insisted on maintaining did make it slightly less relaxing.

Not your average Christmas

That evening was Christmas Eve and having made our way through Santa’s grotto, past the nativity scene complete with real human babies, and the manger where children were chasing the rabbits and chickens, we enjoyed a sumptuous banquet. Being a family of 6 we were joined at table by 4 complete strangers. The Silent family had little in the way of chat but we soon discovered that if you drink enough wine it is possible to pretend that someone sat right next to you is not even there.

Wind-powered

The Auditorium of Embarrassment

The rest of the week disappeared all too quickly in a whirlwind of kite surfing, beach volleyball, snorkelling and being roped into humiliating Club 18-30 style games with a Russian girl in an auditorium full of families with children. My mastery of the waves is somewhere in the future but I have certainly caught the kite surfing bug and I have learnt a great respect for the power of the wind. There were moments of frustration as I repeatedly face planted the water in my attempts to get upright on the board under the force of a 12 meter squared kite. All about me on the lagoon the curves of multicoloured spaceships filled the skies against the dramatic backdrop of Tiran Island. Beneath their polyester steeds the experienced riders took to the air with a simple tug of the power bar, looping and twirling gracefully, hanging in space like ballerinas on the moon, before landing to carve a high-speed wake across the swell. That sight was my motivation. I began to consistently water start and get up on the board heading both left and right at a good clip. But, turning comes later in the learning process and so it was on the last day that I narrowly avoided mangling myself on the beach on a particularly fast run. I did manage to put a rip in a brand new kite and almost got hit with a 1,200 Euro bill. It was at that point that I decided to quit while I was ahead but have no doubt I will be squeezing into a wetsuit and taking to the water once more at some point this year. It is a remarkable sport.

Christmas in Egypt was excellent. It was a real opportunity to get away from it all and spend quality time with my family. Despite the obvious peculiarities of Sharm El Sheikh, the all-inclusive holiday can certainly be fun. If you ever go then I can highly recommend the Baron Resort for an excellent hotel and Kite Junkies for good kitesurfing tuition.

Happy new year.

My sister and I in the Sinai Desert

Tiran Island in the distance over the Red Sea