If you want to go to Saint Catherine from Dahab, you should take a road that starts about 38 km (24 miles) away from Dahab, split into an uphill half that leads you to an interesting plateau where you can halt and admire the beautiful bird’s eye view of Wadi Ghazala.
The second part of the road goes downhill, leading to a Bedouin café and a trail that’ll take you to the Oasis of Ain Khudra.
Going ahead in this direction, you’ll come across a gigantic rock called Haggar Maktub, which means “Written Stone” in Arabic. The reason this rock acquired such an interesting name is because of all the inscriptions covering most of the surface of the rock.
Haggar Maktub is like a history book, with multi-lingual writings dating back to periods like the Nabataean, Greek, Roman, Byzantine and the Crusades.
A few hundred meters away from the Written Stone, you’ll find yourself at the top of a raised ground overlooking Wadi Khudra and the plush greenery of the Oasis of Ain Khudra. To get down there you’ll have to walk for about two and a half hours.
Another monument similar to Haggar Maktub in the area is a rock located at about half a kilometer away from the main road.
This one is covered in prehistoric drawings of creatures and beings that used to live in the region millennia ago.
Further along, another interesting primeval landmark is the formation of Nawamis, a Bedouin term for “flies”, but that’s actually designating prehistoric tombs found right in the middle of Sinai.
These tombs are all built with drywall stones, in a curious round shape, with their entrances facing west. Once you’re back on the main road, you can drive on to Saint Catherine