The only way to reach Mt. Sinai from Suez is through Feran, possibly the world's skinniest town, and certainly one of the meanest. Four miles long and 100-feet wide, Feran is an oasis squeezed between canyon walls.
Palms curve up from a rocky stream bed, and little houses are backed up against the granite.
Much of the road is in the stream bed, only a stone's throw, literally, from the den of maniac children who burst out to heave rocks at me. I'm hoping that mother will come out and say, it's not nice to stone visitors. But she's busy prodding with a long stick the high branches of an acacia tree, to knock down what the goats can't reach. They've already chewed the tree into the shape of a parasol, and now the black mob waits for more, bleating in anticipation. It's a hungry place, Feran.