The Long Road to Dahab - by Lara Gibson
I hate the overnight bus to Dahab. The lack of sleep, the monotonous crackling music, the cramped legroom, my dry contact lenses, the frequent stops and intrusive flooding of LED light. Yet it’s worth all of the discomfort when I see the sun rise above the dark, craggy Sinai mountains and I dive into the Red Sea before breakfast.
In such happy sleepy moments, the idea of ‘six impossible things before breakfast’ manifests into reality. I see eels shooting their heads above the sand, octopi tiptoeing around rocks, million-year old fossils sitting silently, the moon lingering by the morning sun, miniature hermit crabs standing up to giant crashing waves, and most miraculously of all, my worries entirely fade away.
On this trip, we experienced another impossibility. My puppy Duffy slept peacefully throughout the entire 10 hour bus journey. The passenger behind even told me, “he’s the most polite dog I’ve ever seen”- not a compliment he’s ever been given before. Duffy has since taken to Dahab like a duck to water. Swimming between us, rolling around the sand with the local hounds and mingling with both dogs and humans at the beach bars by night.
When I return from Dahab I’m going to start teaching art once a week at a school for refugees. Most of my lesson plans focus on harnessing nature to express how we feel. When I’ve been stuck for inspiration, I’ve always headed outside to absorb the solace and surprises of the natural world. Here in Dahab we spend almost all of our time outside and are engulfed by mountains, turquoise sea and mid-blue skies.
I haven’t brushed my salt-strewn hair in a week, I’ve been wearing almost entirely the same outfit every day, and I’m wearing odd earrings after one fell off in the sea and I made a new one from a seashell. I couldn’t be happier and until I take the night bus back to Cairo, I have almost no worries running through my mind.
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