Sharm El Sheikh, an Egyptian town on the Red Sea at the southern tip of the Sinai Peninsula, is tourism personified in the desert. Strategically important because of its location at the mouth of the Gulf of Aqaba overlooking the Gulf of Tiran, today it is better known for its incredible underwater beauty and divers from all over the world.
If you are starting your trip from Sharm El Sheikh Airport, it is about 5km from the airport to the city center. When we arrived in the city center, we realized that we were in a different place from the city centers we were used to. This is a town of hotels, resorts and restaurants built by man completely focused on tourism. After settling in the hotel owned by the diving center where we will stay for a week, we went out to eat something.
Sharm El Sheikh, meaning Sheikh’s Bay in Arabic and formerly the resting place of the Bedouins, is administratively located within the towns of Dahab and Nuweiba, well known to freedivers. The city is known as the City of Peace because it has hosted the International Peace Conference on many occasions.
The city was occupied by Israel in 1956, and a year later, in 1957, it came back under Egyptian rule, but full independence was achieved in 1967, when the International Peace Keeping Force left the region.The city was administratively established in 1968.The city, which now has a population of 75,000, relies heavily on tourism and natural beauty for its economy.
I would like to start with an observation about Sharm that will affect your vacation plan. If you are coming here with a travel plan about Egyptian culture and history, you will probably not find what you are looking for. But if you want to spend your days at the hotel pool or at the sea and spend your vacation sunbathing away from the activity, this place will be suitable. The third option and the most logical Sharm plan that we have done, I think, is to discover the underwater beauties of the Red Sea by diving during the day and to complete the day with a calm evening plan after diving. After this short briefing, we can start walking in Sharm.
While walking through the streets of Sharm, which we can call relatively cheap, be ready to be constantly disturbed by restaurant workers, vendors or tourists who don’t even know what they are selling. But with a little research, it is easy to find both affordable and good restaurants. There are many local coffee shops. Especially after a busy day, a strong coffee brings you back to yourself. There are plenty of options for hookah lovers, but my recommendation is to go at sunset in Farsha.I can guarantee you a pleasant atmosphere with hookah or hot and cold drinks.
If you don’t like places that are only tourism oriented like us, you can take a short taxi or minibus ride from Sharm El Sheikh to Sharm El-Maya, the old center of the city. The old city is more authentic than Sharm and has a more traditional texture, narrow streets, a quieter and slower life. The reason why it is quieter here is that there is a settled life here. People generally live on this side and only go to Sharm center to work.
When we arrived in the old town center, we started to feel a bit like we were in Egypt, with traditional coffee shops, handmade souvenir shops and restaurants. If you want to shop and buy souvenirs, the old town is definitely more convenient and offers more variety.
Our main purpose of coming here was the diving tour we organized and after the diving we spent most of our time taking quiet walks and having fun with friends and diving conversations. The day before we left Sharm, we joined an ATV tour, saying that we couldn’t do without a tour in the desert. The tour agency that picked us up from the hotel where we were staying took us to their headquarters just outside the city and after a short briefing, we went on a tour to the middle of the sand stretching as far as you can see, where there was nothing towards sunset. We stopped at some points and got information from our guide and took photos.
Even if I want to write a full article about Sharm El Sheikh, the real beauty of this place is underwater. For this reason, I will talk about Sharm’s reefs, wrecks and colorful underwater life in another article.
Goodbye for now
