- Very different than mainland Egypt.
- Considered the Mecca of divers. This was supposed to be a diving trip, it wasn’t. But I can affirm, the corals here are amazing.
- The desert is also amazing – the charm of Sharm el sheikh.
- The Red sea is blue and cold (22-24 dgC), the air is hot, the wind is cold.
- The resorts are very very eco-unfriendly.
- Charm el Sheikh or Sham el Sheikh? (Aka should you go?) You have to decide after “reading” this post.
- That was a summary for those of you with a limited attention span like me. But read the full deal.
We had really liked our last Egyptian experience but it had felt a bit incomplete because I could not dive in the Red Sea. So this time we planned a diving/ family trip to Sharm el Sheikh. But things didn’t go to plan. Oh well. We still had a great time (generally speaking).
I don’t know if it’s all children, but ours are particularly great at driving us mad. The 6 hour plane journey felt like 60 hours of squirming, shouting, and screaming. When we reached, we were zombies. I definitely did not love our children anymore (may be it will come back one day…).
We were staying at Jaz Belvedere, which like most other places in Egypt has an extremely good Google rating, mostly fake, not ideal, but it was actually ok. We had an all inclusive package but already after lunch on our very first day, I was bored. So we decided to visit the desert with Swiss bunny’s brother. It was awesome.
There were 1000s of quads, no kidding, some even with children, breaking the stark quietness of the desert with the sound of their motors, and the amount of sand they threw in the air. That was not so cool.
But when darkness fell, and the quad bikers went somewhere else to party, it became very nice and quiet. The stars shone bright on the desert side (too much light pollution on Sharm el sheikh side) and we even saw Jupiter’s 4 moons through a telescope. We had our best meal of our trip (cooked inside the earth like in Rajasthan).
The next day, I couldn’t eat much because of stomach spasms. Not saying the good meal in the desert and this were related but it didn’t help with the holiday mood.
I was so blown away by the desert landscape, that as soon as I felt ok, I went on an organised trip to the fabled canyons of the Sinai desert.
work in Bollywood
The white canyon (there are 25 of them, we visited the touristic one) was beautiful but the massive number of tourists and people trying to sell stuff to tourists, patches of litter, took away all the wonder of the amazing natural formations for me.
This canyon trip also included snorkeling next to the blue hole, also dubbed as a divers graveyard given the number of divers it swallowed. It was just unbelievably beautiful coral gardens, layer after layer, and also some tourists standing on them with their fins…
For snorkeling, at first we had to hold on to a ring with an “instructor” but just after 2 min in the water the instructor realised I could be left alone. So I wandered off and snorkelled for almost an hour more than the rest of the group. I could have easily spent another hour in the water (thanks to a very thick full body wetsuit)… I really felt like diving to turn the 2D experience of snorkeling into 3D.
But the trip into the desert was like a slap in the face. Nothing grows in the desert here, not even shrubs or thorny bushes. In contrast, every inch along the coast is claimed by resorts, some in business, some built and abandoned, and some new ones being built, each boasting to be grander than its neighbour, with lush green grass all the way to the sea, fountains and flowers, and air conditioning blasting out of open doors, and all inclusive cornucopia of food and drinks. A Westworld kind of place.
And yet there was a certain charm in Sharm el sheikh. The sea was like a lake sometimes, and changed its colours throughout the day (never turning red like its name though).
We spent most of our time on the beach, occasionally dipping in the pool, and arguing with big baby bunny which brown pants he could wear. The water in the sea was 22-24 dg C, the pool similar. So we stayed mostly out.
We left Sharm el Sheikh with mixed feelings. Despite the turquoise sea, coral gardens, and the beautiful desert, and completely missing a top highlight, we would still not visit Sharm el Sheikh again. Why? Take a guess. Leave us a comment below. We will reply with the right answer.
bunnygoespoppoppop 