The approach to Egypt's Church of the Blessed Virgin atop Jabal al-Tayr (the Mountain of Birds), roughly 250km south of Cairo, once involved a perilous, vertical climb up a cliff rising straight from the Nile followed by a series of steep, rock-hewn steps. The handful of explorers to scale the mountain were intrigued by its mystical history. For centuries, the location – its current custodians explained to me – has produced untold miracles, even down to this day.

My recent approach to the church was much smoother – in an air-conditioned car along a well-surfaced road. Heading south along the Nile's east bank past a chiselled, white landscape of quarries dating back to the pharaohs, Coptic Christian graves began to appear as I came closer to Jabal al-Tayr's sacred core: a cave underneath the church. It's here that the Holy Family – Jesus, Mary and Joseph – is thought to have rested after fleeing Bethlehem to escape King Herod's wrath. 

According to Coptic Christian tradition, based on alleged holy visions and local lore, the family would spend the next three-and-a-half years on the move, from Bethlehem to Egypt's Nile Delta then tracing the river as far south as Upper Egypt. Marked with many dozens of miracles, their momentous, round-trip journey racked up more than 3,000km.