Monks & Mountains

All photographs in this post copyright Yasir Khan 2007

Suf and I took a university trip out to the eastern desert this weekend. We hung out in Ain Sokhna, by the Red Sea, and checked out a couple of monasteries. Here's the evidence:

Saint Anthony: The monastery is at the foot of what I think is the world's tallest mountain - at least that's what it felt like while I was climbing it.

After visiting the monastery, a group of us dared the over-600-metre climb to Saint Anthony's cave. It's basically a slit in the rock face, that leads to a dark, damp womb. I was the last one out of all of us to make it up there. The reward - Tiffany's German chocolate. Benny, please make her a saint.

Saint Paul: He's the one on the left, raisin' the roof in the picture above. Paul is said to have been an absolute hermit, with a much more austere lifestyle than Anthony - he made his own clothes from palm leaves. If you ask me, he had the better cave. And when he died, he was buried by lions.
Now that's gangsta!