People

The word ‘makhad’ in Arabic means: a meeting place or a place to sit. At the heart of the Sinai Journeys is a guest-host relationship, where we meet and sit together with the Bedouin people. It is a meeting between East and West. We organise journeys during which ideas are exchanged between guests and hosts and friendship is created.

Our aim is to support nomadic people to keep their ancient connection to their land and their traditions by walking their paths and listening to their stories, passed down over the many generations.

Spirit

Arising from the exchanges between guest and host a mutual respect is developed and we, as guests receive a greater knowledge and appreciation of the wisdom of the indigenous community. We become bound together by appreciation of the essentials of life.

Environment

The nomadic traditions have a view of the environment based on ancient wisdom and inherited knowledge. It embodies a profound understanding of the nature of sustainability. However, changing economic, social and climatic conditions make it difficult to sustain their traditional way of life. This has caused many families to move away from the land into towns and villages.

Our sister organisation, the Makhad Trust, provides practical assistance in promoting a sustainable economy whilst at the same time protecting the environment. Many of the Trust’s projects relate to the preservation of water and better use of the land and its natural resources.

Travelling and working as guests of the nomadic people teaches us to respect the environment and provides us with a better understanding of the growing global ecological crisis.

What we do

We work to support and sustain the environment and natural heritage of the Bedouin tribes of the Sinai Mountains and Desert in Egypt through water conservation projects and paying for their guiding services. Sinai Journeys offers working journeys and other responsible and sustainable tourism trips to Sinai.

We want to provide a meeting place, in nomadic regions of the world, where there is a powerful relationship between the environment and the human spirit. The Sinai Desert is one of those places.

The work of the organisations is informed by the following aims:

• To support the preservation the traditions, culture and wisdoms of the Bedouin people
• The need of every person to have access to water, as a basic human right
• The need to assist the very poor and of those at the margins of society;
• The need to support the general well-being of individuals and communities so that they can support themselves in the future.

We take a humanitarian approach to its work which have the following characteristics:

• The project or activity has been initiated by the Bedouin people who wish to be empowered and find solutions to their own problems;
• The project has a relatively simple clear set of objectives and actions that further the vision of the Trust;
• The project assists in developing the capacity of individuals, and their communities, helping them to help themselves;
• Some projects may enhance the learning of individuals, or their communities;
• The projects ‘beneficiaries’ participate in the management and running of the project or activity; and
• The project’s ‘beneficiaries’ have suffered, or are suffering, a level of poverty or personal circumstances that are difficult for the individual to overcome without assistance.