If you go to Sinai, as many European vacationers do (escaping the Northern Hemisphere winter) solely for the diving and snorkeling or to chill out on a Gulf of Suez/Red Sea or Gulf of Aqaba beach resort, you will be short-changing yourself on all that the peninsula has to offer. A trip to Mount Sinai (Jebel Musa) and Saint Catherine’s Monastery shows you another side of the Sinai tourism portfolio.
Mt Sinai is a place of contrasts. Obviously there is the spiritual dimension to Sinai, a sacred location for the three great and distinct Abrahamic religions. It is also a place that swings widely in climatic conditions, hot desert weather during the day but can be “cold as” at night, especially when your sleeping arrangements are exposed to the desert winds. We spent the night in a flimsy Bedouin camp shack, trying to sleep on what passed in the Bedouin world for ‘bedding’ – on the floor lying on a kind of stiff, itchy strip of carpet (no sheets), a pillow comprising a hard mat made of tent canvas rolled up like a newspaper that felt like it had an iron bar inside, and as a doona, a thin, coarse camel rug with more than a lingering whiff of the even-toed ungulate about it! Definitely a case of more ‘Bedouin’ than ‘bed’!!! Outside, conditions were bitterly cold, something akin to a gale-force wind was blowing and we could palpably feel it through the several gaps in the door! (clearly, the locals round here have never heard of the terms ‘doorstop’ or ‘windbreak’!)
ref=”http://www.7dayadventurer.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/image-17.jpg”> Sunrise over Sinai[/caIn the early morning, we dragged ourselves out of the icy bed(sic) and still half-asleep, clamoured up the mountain (approximately 3,700 rough-hewn steps worth of clamouring!✥) for the privilege of taking photos of the sunrise peaking over the imposing mountain range. On the way down again, in company with an assembled multitude of other climbers all treading carefully down the ancient, rock strewn staircase, we took shots of the harsh, sun-baked ochre-brown terrain and the ancient Mt Sinai Monastery (official name: “Sacred Monastery of the God-Trodden Mount Sinai”) which is enclosed within a fortress compound.
f=”http://www.7dayadventurer.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/image-18.jpg”> Saint Cath’s [/captLater that morning we visited the church itself, Saint Catherine’s was packed to its 6th century AD rafters with visitors and pilgrims. The Monastery’s governors, the Greek Orthodox custodians of Saint Catherine’s permit only a narrow window of opportunity for people to visit the Monastery (it was open only three hours in the morning and all tour groups need to be accommodated within that time period!)…so there were crowds all over the compound and massive queues for the toilets✱. The main church building was pretty basic, Spartan in parts, but in the section housing (according to tradition) the relic of the cherished Saint, everything was crammed full of icons and other Orthodox paraphernalia. The feeling of being cluttered and crowded was added to by the numbers of visitors and pilgrims from everywhere all trying to soak in the holy martyr’s saintly ambience at the same time.
“http://www.7dayadventurer.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/image-16.jpg”> “The Bush” in question[/captioSaint Catherine’s is the attributed site of at least one Old Testament✧ classic mainstay, the fabled ‘Burning Bush’ of Moses. Frankly though I couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary about it, a wilderness-variety bramble bush (botanically speaking a rubus sanctus apparently) but much like any other arboreal specimen in the vicinity. I’m not sure what I was expecting, I guess an instant, minor miracle was too much to hope for, but I found this glorified spectacle all a bit underwhelming. In any case we didn’t have time to dwell on its authenticity or plausibility, we were pretty much rushed through the rest of the Monastery’s curious sights and extravaganzas with the sound of our guide Biko hollering “yalla-yalla” and “yalla-beena’ constantly ringing in our ears!
Outer walls of the monastery
Later in the afternoon we visited other places of note on the coast of south-western Sinai which we were told were similarly imbued with great biblical significance, such as Ayun or Oyun Musa (Moses’ Spring⊡) where Moses is supposed to have tossed a barberry bush into bitter springs, instantly turning them into a drinkable, sweet nectar. Also near here is where, according to the Bible, he parted the Red Sea for the Israelites to cross and make good their escape from African Egypt (not quite sure about the year, although I did catch the filmed re-enactment in 1956 with Charlton Heston doing the parting!). Another well-touted highlight we visited near the village of El Tor was Hamam Musa (Moses’ Bath) or Hammam Pharaon (Pharaoh’s Bath), a series of natural hot sulfuric springs reputedly with great therapeutic benefits. Sitting in the springs, which emanate from a nearby hill and runs off into the sea, did feel vaguely invigorating, but I baulked at drinking the oily, malodorous if allegedly curative water…although I observed some more trusting souls there that certainly weren’t holding back! South Sinai done, we headed back up the coast to the Suez Canal and a more orthodox route across the Gulf of Suez via the M50!
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✥ some ‘ascenders’ like our travelling companions from ‘Bris-Vegas’ chose to take the camelid transport route to the top, but in their case this resulted in a unexpected, nasty altercation with the camels’ Bedouin owner who was aggrieved that they didn’t pay (what he reckoned was) the full amount for the hire of the camels (he was still hounding them for more Egyptian pounds back at ground level in the morning!)
✱ some time after our Sinai excursion, all tours of Saint Catherine’s were suspended in owing to a heightening of security issues in Egypt – fortunately this proved to be only a short-term situation which was massacring the local business, tourism is back in full swing now in South Sinai, even more so for the sun, sand and dive resorts at Dahab, Nuweiba and Sharm El-Sheikh
✧ or to use the current PC term, “the Hebrew Bible”
⊡ not to be confused with the identically named ‘Moses’ Spring’, a locality in Jordan similarly revered for its “God-given” healing waters
Many years ago I did a side excursion from Egypt’s tourism central, departing from the bustling, over-peopled Cairo to cross the Suez Canal into Asian Egypt, to the under-peopled peninsula of Sinai. To many who haven’t been there, the Sinai probably sounds like a land of extremes of climate and dry harsh, unforgiving terrain, photos of the landscape certainly convey that impression…I remember the deprivations suffered by Peter O’Toole and his boy servant as they tried to cross Sinai’s blindingly windstorm-swept desert by camel in the classic film Lawrence of Arabia). The desert is one powerful element of the land for sure, but the coastal strip on the western edge of the peninsula on the Gulf of Aqaba reveals a very different picture. Dahab midway up the Gulf is one such oasis jewel in a rugged and unyielding desert landscape.
But first we had to get there! Our mini-bus drove from Cairo to Sinai (under the narrow channel of water!), from one continent, Africa, to another, Asia. The Egyptian tour guide Biko didn’t seem to know exactly where Dahab was, and so instead of going straight down the Red Sea coast, we went right across the top, west to east, ending up at Taba✱ on the Israeli border where we found ourselves tensely eyeballing the heavily armed Jewish soldiers on the other side of the border gate in Israel’s Eilat township.
Eventually we got to Dahab, but it was a long, hot trek through kilometres and kilometres of dusty sandstone hills and wadis (valleys) – the day drive from Cairo to Dahab, following Biko’s circuitous route, took all of eight hours. It is difficult driving around the Sinai because of the sensitive security situation (close proximity to Israel and recent terrorist activity), you don’t drive very far on the peninsula before you have to stop at a military checkpoint (we had to produce our Australian passports at a number of these points).
f=”http://www.7dayadventurer.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/A2303EF4-520C-40BB-A205-5879A3FF4A13.jpeg”> Dahab: rugged landscape & coastline[/captOnce we reached the township it wasn’t the end of our ordeal. Neither Biko or the driver had an address for our hotel (WTF!?!) so we kept driving around, looking for it (passing other resorts and hotels that wasn’t ours!), then we’d drive back to the main coastal road and ask the soldiers at the checkpoints where it was. Eventually Biko worked it out from the directions we were given, but I was at a loss to fathom why he didn’t just ask the first resort we came to where it was – it seemed a “no-brainer” to me that they would know where their competition in town was!
Our hotel, Miami Beach Resort, was right on the beach and boasted all the desired amenities, although annoyingly part of the hotel was still being constructed, so our auditory senses got to experience regular sessions of grinding and drilling from the machinery outside our block. The vast, ancient mountains just behind the resort did provide an exotic backdrop to the location. I didn’t care for the Dahab beach much though as it was full of gravelly stones, Peebles and small rocks right along the shoreline which was unpleasant to walk on and a bit cold, fortunately the resort had a pool. There was plenty to do including camel and horse riding up and down the beach and 4WD trips up to the mountains close by.
Dahab Dive Centre, Aqaba Gulf ▲
Dahab has a famous dive centre 10km north of the town (called the “Blue Hole”) where the clear waters and coral reefs attract lots of visitors from Europe and beyond. As our resort was a little way out of town we were able to get lifts from staff at the hotel when we needed to go somewhere. But, one thing learnt quickly is that, anywhere in Egypt, nothing is for free. If someone gives you a lift, loans you a torch, gives you a ‘gift’ of a broken-off chunk of alabaster, carries your bag 20 metres, lets you use their toilet, etc, baksheesh (an informal payment in Middle Eastern culture for some sort of service provided) is always expected!
The Masbat ▲
Dahab Town itself is a long line of ramshackle, dilapidated structures comprising restaurants, bars and souvenir shops. The town exuded a kind of dusty, laid-back hippie, off-the-beaten track, feel to it. It was impossible to walk down the seafront street (the Masbat) without being bombarded by numerous restaurant and bar touts and spruikers, each one vigorously and vociferously trying to entice you into their particular establishment (which according to every spruiker on the strip is naturally “the best in town!!!”).
There is an old Bedouin township in Dahab that predates the tourism hub that developed in the Nineties…before its tourism potential was tapped Dahab was a small, sleepy Bedouin fishing village with lots of camels, goats and sheep wandering randomly around the streets (they are still wandering the town!). I discovered that the local Bedouins, like the market workers in Cairo, are good hagglers when it comes to trading with the tourists…even the very young ones it seems are seasoned negotiators at it – such as the doggedly determined five or six-year-old Bedouin girl we encountered at a cafe on the Masbat who just wasn’t going to be bargained down by Biko for her modest offerings of beaded tribal bracelets and trinkets.
The old Crusader castle, south of Taba ▲
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✱ when we got here I tried to spot Pharaoh’s Island (Jezeirat Faurun) which is just off the coastline south of Taba. I couldn’t see it but it’s a place with an interesting history, in the 12th century it was initially a Crusader castle, then captured and rebuilt by the great Sal-ad-din as Muslim fortifications. The fortress was significantly restored several years ago and tours of the tiny island are now possible
Ft-note: experiencing the leisurely poolside lifestyle in the Dahab gulf resort, it’s hard to reconcile the evident peace and tranquility with a recent pattern of disturbing and deadly incidents. The Sinai gulf resort towns and tourists have been the target of a number of recent terrorist attacks (including Taba 2004, Sharm El-Sheikh 2005, Dahab 2006, Sharm El-Sheikh airport 2015)
Pneumatic tubes transit (PTT): a system that propels cylindrical containers through networks of tubes towards a chosen destination using compressed air or by partial vacuum [‘Pneumatic tubes’, Wikipedia, http://www.wikipedia.org]
PTT, “Whoosh✱ and Go!” technology, the 19th century’s version of “Tap and Go!” Jason Farman has described the application of pneumatic tubes to postal services in the 19th century as “the instant messaging systems of their day”. According to Farman, being able to use pneumatic post to communicate, gave people in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries an “instant connexion”…pneumatic post meant that they were able to “keep in touch all day long”⊡. Moreover people saw the pneumatic tubes’ facility to deliver articles rapidly as “a symbol of modernity” [‘Pneumatic tubes: the instant messaging technology that transformed the world’, James Farman, interview with ABC Australia, 13-Jun-2018].
Sketch of AE Beach’s pneumatic transit tunnel
America’s first pneumatic-powered subway
American entrepreneurs were following developments in pneumatic tube transport in Europe in the second half of the 19th century and were keen to move into the field. It fell to inventor and publisher of the magazine Scientific American Alfred Ely Beach to lead the way. Beach was less interested in the postal service than in moving people. In 1867 he trialled the first subway passenger service, later named the Beach Pneumatic Transit, in New York City. Initially the service was popular with the public, but Beach experienced opposition from Tammany Hall♉ and its notorious head ‘Boss’ Tweed, and from other vested business interests. Beach got round opposition by flagging that he would also construct a pneumatic tube to cart mail underground around NYC. Unfortunately Beach ran into both technical difficulties and funding issues (exacerbated by the financial crisis of 1873) and the project to extend the subway was stillborn.
PPT system despatch point (Washington DC, early 1940s)
Manhattan mail transfer – the eastern seaboard subway
It wasn’t until 1893 that an urban mail service in the US introduced the PTT system, and this was in Philadelphia (beating New York by four years). The New York City system linked the General Post Office with 22 other post offices covering an area of 27 miles. At its optimal level of output, five capsules each containing around 500 letters could be despatched in a minute (one every 12 seconds travelling at 30-35 mph). A government estimate in the day put the total transmitted by tube at 20,000 letters per day![‘The Pneumatic Mail Tubes: New York’s Hidden Highway And Its Development’ (Robert A Cohen, Aug 1999), www.about.usps.com]. Several other American cities followed Philadelphia and New York in establishing underground mail networks – Boston, Brooklyn (a separate entity to New York before the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge), Chicago and St. Louis.
Manhattan pneumatic mail route
Despite the clear advantage PPT had in speed of delivery over conventional mail despatch, it did not make the hand-delivered mail system redundant. At its zenith in New York PPT never accounted for more than about one-third of the Post Office’s total mail delivery. Other cities in the US were similar although Boston reached about 50 per cent at its maximum output!) [Cohen].
PPT systems, limitations and drawbacks
By the early 20th century the cost for US service providers using the pneumatic tube system had become prohibitive. By 1918 the Post Office was forking out $US17,000 per mile per year [‘Underground Mail Road: Modern Plan for All-but-forgotten Delivery System’, (Robin Pogrebin), New York Times, 07-May-2001]. In addition to cost there were other flaws in tubal delivery that made it impractical. Many mail items were too large and bulky to fit into the tube carriers, and when they did fit, the system was far from seamless. It took critical time to unload heavy items at the receiving end and sometimes the system would clog up during periods of high traffic (requiring delays in the delivery process while workers located the obstructing parcel and dug up the street to get to it) [‘Pneumatic Tubes’, Dead Media Archive, (NYU – Dept of Media, Culture and Communication), www.cultureandcommunication.org].
A maze of tubing
In addition to cost, other early 20th century factors that prompted the decline of the pneumatic post in America include the growing volume of mail, limited system capacities, and the belief that the advent of the automobile made the tubes “practically obsolete” [Annual Report of the Postmaster General, (Washington DC: Government Printing Office, 1918. pp. 19–22. Retrieved 8 June 2015, cited in ‘Pneumatic tube mail in New York City’, Wikipedia, http://www.en.m.wikipedia.org].
Pneumatic tube systems tend to work better on a smaller, more localised, scale – as evident in the type of enterprises and institutions that productively employ the pneumatic tube technology today (as outlined in the PostScript following)…they are also more effective (and more economical) over shorter distances, such as encompassing a single city only.
PostScript: Pneumatic tubes in the contemporary world
In the age of fiberoptics and the internet, it might be thought that there is no place for old technologies like PTT. But pneumatic tube systems today still play a vital function in the everyday workings of organisations and institutions including banks, hospitals, supermarkets, department stores, libraries and other public utilities♮.
Technology watchers have hinted at the possibility of a Renaissance of pneumatic technology. Jacob Aron has made the perceptive point that even in an age where online communication is paramount, there is still the physical necessity of transporting goods by road. This is where pneumatic tube networks have a competitive edge…Aron poses the question: “can tubes be (a) more efficient and greener” way of delivery❂ [‘Newmatics: antique tubular messaging returns’, (J Aron) New Scientist, 13-Aug-2013, www.newscientist.com]
Roosevelt Is: narrow stretch of land 3.2km long in NY’s East River
Many areas of society unrelated to postal systems currently use PTT…on Roosevelt Island (NYC) the locals have used pneumatic tubes to dispose of its garbage since 1975 (something similar has been proposed for Manhattan to tackle its mountains of trash) [‘Proposal maps out pneumatic tubes system to take out New York’s trash’, (Dante D’Orazio), The Verge, 24-Sep-2013, www.theverge.com].
Many hospitals rely on networks of tubes for their internal communications – the prestigious Stanford Hospital in California uses the technology to move blood, lab samples and medicine around the facility. Pneumatic tubes systems today are of course computer-driven and much more complex, Stanford Hospital’s network contains 124 stations. Future applications for PTT continue to be visualised…entrepreneur/inventor Elon Musk has proposed that his pneumatic-powered ‘Hyperloop’ will be capable of transporting passengers in a pod between cities at 800 mph [‘Underground Mail’, (2017), www.computerimages.com/musings].
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✱ the sound the pneumatically propelled mail capsules made when they went down the shute
⊡ a characterisation very familiar to today’s social media dominated world
♉ the Democratic Party political machine which had a stranglehold on NYC politics at the time
♮ such as the Library of Congress (US) and the Russian State Library in Moscow. The ongoing utility of pneumatic networks contrasts with the bad wrap pneumatic tube systems have received from writers of fiction over the years, eg, works such as 1984 and the movie Brazil have tended to equate them with “creaking, bureaucratic dystopias” [Jacob Aron]
❂ although the other x-factor player here is 3D-printing – if it realises its full commercial potential it would tick those same boxes with perhaps greater utility
In this modern world of 24/7 online global communications and instant messaging systems, it is interesting to take a look at an earlier age’s emerging technology which had the objective of fast-tracking communications between people in different parts of rapidly modernising cities. This novel way of moving mail around drew on the subterranean reaches of urban centres to create channels for transporting them.
Wm Murdoch
It started with the London Stock Exchange in the 1850s…traders trying to buy and sell at the most propitious times of the trading day relied on telegraphs to communicate quickly with their people. The problem at the time was that telegraphs were regularly subjected to delays and hold-ups. A swifter way to communicate was needed for business success, and the technology to do so already existed in Scottish engineer William Murdoch‘s invention of the pneumatic tube in the 1830s.
Enter J Latimer Clark, an electrical engineer, with a patent “for conveying letters or parcels between places by the pressure of air and vacuum”. Clark’s delivery system powered by compressed and depressed air was implemented to connect the London Stock Exchange with the HQs of the Electrical Telegraph Company through a 660-foot long pneumatic tube. By the 1860s the stock exchanges in Berlin and Paris had followed London’s lead. Postal services for both commercial and personal transmittances were a natural fit for the pneumatic tube. Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham and Dublin got their own networks, whilst on the Continent, Berlin’s Rohrpost was introduced in 1865 and Paris went public with Poste Pneumatique in 1879. Other cities got in on pneumatic post and the practice spread to places as far away as Melbourne and Buenos Aires, and most anywhere in between.
The London pneumatic tube mail train at its formative stage!
London Pneumatic Despatch Company
In 1859 Latimer Clark with Thomas Webster Rammell put forward a proposal for an underground tube network in Central London. The city’s General Post Office was chosen as the nucleus of the network because it was “the routing hub of the whole country’s” transport system [Julian Stray]. The two engineers with cashed-up and influential backers formed the London Pneumatic Despatch Company to build a large-scale, underground pneumatic railway✱ with the purpose of transporting mail bags and small parcels on railcars through tunnels. At first LPDC’s prospects of success looked promising, but several developments and reversals (a financial crisis in 1866, logistics problems, technical drawbacks, and the Post Office getting cold feet over the project) saw the Company fold and its operations close in the 1870s [‘London’s Lost Pneumatic Railway: The World’s 2nd Oldest Underground’, (Long Branch Mike, 12-Apr-2015), Reconnections London Transport and Beyond, www.londonreconnections.com].
(Photo: Science Photo Library)
Despite its failures LPDC’s underground railway did capture the public’s imagination and inspired other imitators. There were experiments elsewhere in the 1860s to try to establish a viable pneumatic train network – at Croydon, Devon and Dublin. Ultimately though, for a variety of reasons, these came to nothing [‘London’s Victorian Hyperloop: the forgotten pneumatic railway beneath the capital’s streets’, New Statesman, 18-Dec-2013,www.newstatesman.com].
Capsule [National Postal Museum (Smithsonian)
The principles of “blow and suck”
The pneumatic post services of the day used pressure and air vacuums to transmit mail through a network of tubes. The process went like this: people wanting to expedite the delivery of an important document would take it to the post office where it would be rolled up and placed inside a metal or aluminium capsule. A postal clerk (in New York these employees were known as ‘rocketeers’) would drop the capsule into a hatch which corresponded to the marked lane for its intended destination…by pressing a button the capsule was transported by compressed air through a network of tubes beneath the pavement. Air from the transmitting end blew the capsule in a forward direction along the tubes. At the receiving end of the line a machine would suck the propelled capsule towards it (in the same way the suction of a vacuum cleaner functions!).
A cutting edge over conventional 19th century delivery modes
Using pneumatic power to transport letters (subterranean mail) and other items had readily apparent advantages in its unfettered immediacy…the reliance on horse-drawn vehicles and messengers on bicycles meant that delivery was impeded by the ever-increasingly congested streets of burgeoning cities, pneumatic post transported underground had no such obstacles and delivery was infinitely faster!
Parisian Poste Pneumatique network (Musée de La Poste)
Paris: Poste Pneumatique
Paris, as much as any modern metropolis, wholeheartedly embraced pneumatic tube transportation from the get-go! By the 1930s, when the service was at its peak, Paris had some 466 kilometres of pneumatic tubes. Cost was and remained an issue though…in 1975 the cost of sending one pneu☯ in Paris was eight-times that of having a posted letter delivered. As the 20th century rolled on patronage of the pneumatic post system dwindled, in 1984 Poste Pneumatique closed down for good! It’s inevitable demise was a combination of the service’s high cost and the superiority of newer communications technology (fax, telex) which made it obsolete [‘Pneumatic tubes and how mail was moved in Paris for more than a century’, Larry Rosenblum, (World Stamps), 02-Oct-2016, www.linns.com]
Prague PTT engine room
Bohemian Express Post: Prague’s pneumatic post system
Prague’s pneumatic post is the only surviving post system of this kind still intact in the world. It entered service in the Czech capital in 1889, the fifth in the world to be connected, after London, Vienna, Berlin and Paris. The Prague system operated from a central point, the main post office in Wenceslas Námêstí, and conveyed letters, documents and information to other post offices in the city, to government offices, to banks and to other important institutions. It started with the despatch of mainly telegrams, later telexes were sent through this medium. The city network of tubes covered a radius of 60km. Around 1970 a test was done of its speed of service vis-vís an on-road messenger delivery service. The pneumatic tubes won, delivering a capsule of 50 telegrams to Prague Castle in eight minutes✾ [‘Pneumatic Post System in Prague’ (Jakob Serÿch, June 2004), http://www.capsu.org/features/pneumatic_tube_system_in_prague.html]. In the 1990s Prague pneumatic post was despatching up to 10,000 documents a day! Unfortunately the European floods of 2002 put paid to the Czech pneumatic postal service, Telefonica decided the repairs needed to the tubes was too costly and in 2012 sold the system to Czech software entrepreneur Zsenêk Dražil, an enthusiast of old technologies. Dražil’s ultimate plans for the service are still unclear, but he has hinted at the tourism possibility of it being opened up to the public as a “national technical monument” [‘Radio Praha ❘ in English’, (Daniela Lazarová, Czech Radio, 11-Oct-2003 and Jan Richer, ‘New Owner Promises Bright Future for World’s Largest Pneumatic Post System’ Czech Radio, 08-Aug-2012)].
PostScript: A sample of anecdotal stories associated with pneumatic tube systems
Stories abound about the unauthorised and unorthodox uses of the pneumatic tube networks in different countries by postal workers. Its a trait of human nature that employees in the familiarity of their work environs are known to “push the envelope” and try to get away with things wherever they possibly can, and this sphere of work was no different. Staff of the Prague pneumatic tube system for instance (according to some of the stories told) were known to use it to send sausages and bread rolls to each other! Similarly in New York it was an open secret that post office workers on Manhattan used the system to receive their daily lunch orders from a well-known Bronx sandwich shop…the shop would dispatch the lunches via the tubes from the Bronx PO to the Manhattan PO! The pneumatic tubes were also sometimes utilised to play jokes on staff at another PO, eg, live mice sent through the tubes to get a predictable reaction from the startled female employees receiving the canisters at the other end; a live tortoise-shell cat returned in the same mail bag in which it had been sent, and so on.
Receiving point with collection trays
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✱ the world’s second underground railway after the limited line from Paddington to Farringdon opened in 1863
☯ an item sent by pneumatic post in France was known as a pneu
✾ a similar test was conducted earlier on the New York PTT system where the underground tube delivery easily eclipsed a motor vehicle delivery which had to contend with heavy Manhattan traffic
Mt Sinai is a place of contrasts. Obviously there is the spiritual dimension to Sinai, a sacred location for the three great and distinct Abrahamic religions. It is also a place that swings widely in climatic conditions, hot desert weather during the day but can be “cold as” at night, especially when your sleeping arrangements are exposed to the desert winds. We spent the night in a flimsy Bedouin camp shack, trying to sleep on what passed in the Bedouin world for ‘bedding’ – on the floor lying on a kind of stiff, itchy strip of carpet (no sheets), a pillow comprising a hard mat made of tent canvas rolled up like a newspaper that felt like it had an iron bar inside, and as a doona, a thin, coarse camel rug with more than a lingering whiff of the even-toed ungulate about it! Definitely a case of more ‘Bedouin’ than ‘bed’!!! Outside, conditions were bitterly cold, something akin to a gale-force wind was blowing and we could palpably feel it through the several gaps in the door! (clearly, the locals round here have never heard of the terms ‘doorstop’ or ‘windbreak’!)
Outer walls of the monastery
The Masbat ▲
PTT, “Whoosh✱ and Go!” technology, the 19th century’s version of “Tap and Go!”
(Photo: Science Photo Library)
