from $3,175* per person	5 Days	September-June
Boutique accommodations		Exertion level: 4
Operator: Geographic Expeditions		18 people max

A stirring visit to the Sinai, following in the tracks of countless pilgrims, tribes, and armies (Burton Bernstein wrote in Sinai: The Great and Terrible Wilderness that this strategic, holy, mysterious piece of "gritty real estate...has been occupied by some alien force-50 at last count-since the early Bronze Age, about 5,000 years ago"). We climb Mount Sinai, inspect the Monastery of St. Catherine's treasury of fourth-century icons and illuminated manuscripts (the largest collection outside of the Vatican), and have tea with the Bedouin tribespeople who safeguard St. Catherine's Natural Protectorate, a land "like the Alps stripped bare." We end in the resort of Sharm el Sheikh with some well-earned R&R.