The Ghoul’s Cave: Merry Xmas

Kahf el Ghoula – The Ghoul’s Cave – is a dark, foreboding cavern in the side of Jebel Rabba. It looks like a black eye on the mountain, peering down on the wadi below. Legend has it a ghoula – an evil witch type creature – used to live here. She’d spy out travellers in the wadi. Then she’d capture them; and eat them, leaving a pile of bones. Bedouin mothers still tell young children stories about the  ghoula to stop them wandering into the mountains alone. Anyway, it’s a beautiful, atmospheric cave, and we went to celebrate Christmas there this year; it feels sheltered, faraway and mysterious, deep in the mountainside. Definitely a hideout fit for a ghoul, if ever I saw one…

Getting there is easy – its about half an hour’s walk from St Katherine.

You just need to walk out of town through Wadi el Arbain. About 10 minutes along a ravine runs up into the mountains on the right hand side: this is Wadi Abu Heiman and Kahf el Ghoula is on the right side of this ravine, about a 15-20 minute climb.

There’s a spring in the cave, where water seeps out of the mountainside; green maidenhair ferns grow around it. They call it Ein el Ghoula – Spring of the Ghoul – and you can still drink its cold, fresh water today.

Look out for the small, cubby-hole type cave near the main one. It’s a person-sized cave where people say the ghoula would keep her victims before she ate them; a sort of larder to keep them fresh. You can climb up to to have a look, but it’s a little bit tricky.

Anyway, there aren’t many caves in the Sinai so whenever you find one – especially one this big – it’s worth a look. Merry Christmas from the Sinai!