Off the Unbeaten TrackEdward Adrian-Vallance's travel site

May 27th Egypt

Every year in May, having spent the winter season freezing up in Arctic Siberia, the first thing I do is to have a “do nothing” holiday somewhere warm in a nice hotel on the beach. There are no roads in much of Siberia but about a million rivers, which you can drive on in winter and which make getting around much easier. Mid-November to early May, when ice is thick enough to drive on, is therefore our busiest season. In mid-May we suddenly have almost nothing to do, as the ice roads disappear, real roads turn to muddy sludge, and driving off-road becomes like driving through an extra-deep swamp of slushy melting snow and earth.

But this blog is supposed to be about Egypt, not Arctic Siberia.

I took my first “do-nothing” holiday six years ago, aged 29. Before that, oddly enough, it had never even occurred to me to spend money going to another country to do nothing. Beaches, the sea and anything associated with them held very little appeal. Bit by bit, however, working in Arctic Siberia corrupted me, making warmth and doing nothing seem more and more attractive.

In truth, I rarely do the purist “do-nothing” thing any more, as it gets intensely boring. What I actually want after the hectic exhaustion of the winter season is a nice hotel, a good beach, as little transport as possible and a few of my favorite leisure activities thrown into the laziness of the trip to make it more interesting and, actually, even more relaxing.

Egypt seemed like the perfect choice – not too far from Russia, great all-inclusive hotels for cheap rates, plus some of the best snorkeling and archeological sites in the world. After a week of that, I thought, I should be fully refreshed and ready for some more actual travel.

On 17th May my wife Katya and I checked into a room with its own balcony and attached private swimming pool just meters from the sea in the Sunrise Montemare Hotel, Sharm el Sheikh. We had picked out the hotel as it was supposed to be located in one of Sharm’s best snorkeling areas, and we were not disappointed.

I had read previously about three great snorkeling areas in and around Sharm el Sheikh. I checked them all out and will quickly review them here:

1. The stretch of coast where the Sunrise Montemare hotel is located. This exceeded all my expectations. It was the best snorkeling I saw in Sharm el Sheikh and some of the best I have seen in the world. I have been to some of Indonesia’s best snorkeling sites such as Raja Ampat and Nusalaut, plus Belize’s Northern Cayes and other great snorkeling areas. This was not comparable to the best sites in Raja Ampat or Belize, needless to say. However, the off-beach snorkeling here was almost as good as the off-beach snorkeling on Kri, one of Raja Ampat’s best snorkeling islands, minus the turtles and sharks you get on Kri but plus a manta ray, which I had still never seen before this! I swam around 1km to the left and 1km to the right of the hotel’s beach and was constantly surrounded by large numbers of multi-colored fish.

2. Tiran Island. A small island with some amazing offshore reefs. It actually belongs to Saudi Arabia but tourists from Sharm el Sheikh can visit without a visa and all hotels sell trips there. Lots of fish and a few rays, but the snorkeling off Sunrise Montemare’s beach was better!

3. El Fanar and Ras Um Sid. These are just around a small headland from Sunrise Montemare Hotel. I didn’t try swimming there from the hotel because nobody could tell me what the currents were like on the way, but it is only a 10-minute walk down the road anyway. They are reputed to be among the best places to snorkel in Sharm el Sheikh. In my experience swimming from El Fanar to Ras Um Sid they were good, but the stretch of beach mentioned above in point 1 was better.

After a week of snorkeling, beach bumming, lounging by the pool, drinking the hotel’s unlimited free cocktails and generally loafing around in heat that was usually between 40°C and 44°C I was fully revitalized and ready to move on. A flight to Cairo then an overnight train to Aswan and I was almost ready to cross into Sudan on my own, Katya having been unwilling to join me on a trip to an African country in open revolution.

But I had a day until the 18-hour Nile River ferry to Sudan departed and while here it would have been criminal not to visit one of Egypt’s most spectacular archaeological sites: Abu Simbel. All hotels in Aswan sell tickets on bus tours to Abu Simbel, during which you apparently get off the bus and barge your way through swarming crowds of likeminded cheapskates to get a look at the temples. The buses arrive at 8am and leave at 10am, so if you want the temples to yourself all you have to do is arrive after this time.

That is exactly what I did, hiring a car and driver for a very reasonable price and arriving after the crowds. I am not going to write a long beautiful description as the pictures say it all, and I cannot recount much of the history of the place as I do not know it. Suffice it to say that the gargantuan statues carved thousands of years ago were pretty awe-inspiring.

The next day I boarded the ferry to Wadi Haifa in Sudan. Here are a few points of advice for anyone else planning to do this:

1. Obviously get a Sudanese visa first.
2. Try to book ahead using an agency if you want a bed in a cabin. I did not do this and had to sleep down in the hold on a bench along with a hundred or so other passengers.
3. Bring a blanket. The air conditioning makes it absolutely freezing.
4. Bring a camera with a good zoom lens. You will sail past Abu Simbel and can get some good photos of it if you have not actually visited.
5. Be friendly. You will most likely be the only foreigner and absolutely everybody who speaks any English will want to come and talk to you.
6. You get free food on board but bring some cash to buy water, coffee or other drinks.

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