Dahab

The Blue Hole sits about 8 km north of Assalah — a twenty-minute pickup ride, 60 to 100 EGP each way if you share it. It is a 100 m sinkhole ringed by reef, and honestly the shallow rim at 6 m is the prettiest part: you can snorkel it straight off the rocks with a mask and fins, no boat, no ticket. The Arch at 55 m is the part with the memorial plaques, and it is a technical dive, not a dare. Every centre in town runs a guided Blue Hole day for roughly 1,200 to 1,700 EGP with two tanks, transport and lunch at the Bedouin cafes on the rocks. Take the guided day, then sit with a tea and watch the light move across the water.

At the north end of Assalah, past the last of the camps, the shoreline opens into a sandy slope full of garden eels that sway like grass and vanish the moment your shadow crosses them. You enter straight off the beach — no boat, no guide needed if you are a confident snorkeller — and the coral wall on your right runs for a good 300 m. Go between 7 and 9 in the morning: the water is glassy, the light comes in low, and you will have it almost to yourself. Reef shoes matter here, the entry is sharp. Mask and fins rent for about 100 EGP a day from any centre on the boardwalk.

Ras Abu Galum is a protected Bedouin settlement 15 km north, reachable only by camel or boat — there is no road past the Blue Hole. The standard day runs a Canyon dive or snorkel in the morning, then a 45-minute camel ride along the coast to a handful of palm-frond huts where lunch is grilled fish, rice and salad. Expect 900 to 1,400 EGP per person all in. If you can, stay the night: mattresses on the sand, no electricity past 10 pm, and the clearest sky in Sinai. Bring a jumper — even in June the wind off the water at 2 am is genuinely cold.

Sharm el-Sheikh airport is 90 minutes from Dahab and the arrivals hall will quote you 1,500 to 2,000 EGP for a private car. A pre-booked local driver does the same trip for 800 to 1,100 EGP, and a shared transfer drops to around 350 EGP a seat if your flight lands with other people on it. There is also the East Delta bus from Sharm bus station, about 100 EGP with three departures a day, but that means a taxi to the station first, so it only makes sense if you are travelling very light. Whatever you book, agree the price before you get in, and expect one checkpoint stop where you show your passport.

Dahab runs on cash. Most camps, dive centres and every Bedouin cafe want EGP notes, and the card terminal that does exist has a habit of being offline exactly when you need it. There are working ATMs on the main road in Mashraba near the Ghazala supermarket and a cluster by the bus station; they cap withdrawals around 5,000 EGP per transaction and charge a fee on top of whatever your own bank takes. Bring small notes — handing over a 200 for a 40 EGP tea starts a hunt for change that can take ten minutes. Exchange offices on the boardwalk usually beat the ATM rate for euros and pounds.

Assalah to the far end of Mashraba is a forty-minute walk along the water, and that is basically the whole town. You do not need a car. A pushbike rents for 100 to 150 EGP a day, a scooter for 350 to 500, and both are useful mainly for the run north to the Blue Hole or south to the lagoon. Police do check licences on the coast road, so carry an international permit if you take a scooter. Pickup trucks also run informally along the main road — flag one down, say where you are going, and it is 10 to 20 EGP a seat, which is how most of the town moves.

Fibre reached Dahab and it changed the town, but coverage is uneven camp to camp. Ask any host for a speed test screenshot before you commit to a month — 20 Mbps down is realistic, 5 is common, and some of the older camps in Assalah still run everything off one shared 4G router. Vodafone and Orange both have decent 4G along the coast; a 40 GB monthly SIM is around 300 EGP with your passport at any branded shop. For a desk, the coworking spots in Mashraba charge roughly 150 EGP a day or 1,800 a month, and most boardwalk cafes will not blink if you sit for three hours on one coffee.

Ralph's has been the town's default morning meeting point for two decades, and the reason is simple: real bread. Rye, seeded rolls, proper croissants, and a breakfast plate with eggs, cheese and jam for around 150 to 220 EGP. It sits just off the main road in Mashraba, set back from the water, so it is shaded and quiet in a way the boardwalk never is. Turn up before 10 and you will overhear half the town making plans — dive buddies matching schedules, someone selling a scooter, a yoga class filling up. Cash only, and the good bread is gone by early afternoon.

Along Masbat the restaurants put the day's catch on ice at the front and you pick your fish by hand. This is not decoration — the price is per kilo and it is negotiable. Reasonable is 300 to 450 EGP a kilo for bream or red snapper, more for calamari and prawns. A whole fish for two, grilled with rice, salad and tahina, should land around 500 to 700 EGP in total. Ask for it to be weighed in front of you and confirm the number before it goes on the grill. Say mashwi if you want it grilled rather than fried, and squeeze the lime yourself at the table.

Walk one block back from the water in Mashraba and the prices halve. The small places along the main road serve fuul and taameya for breakfast at 15 to 30 EGP a plate, koshary for around 40, and grilled chicken with rice for 80 to 120. This is where the dive instructors and the shop staff eat, and it is still open when the boardwalk kitchens have shut. Look for the ones with plastic chairs and no English menu, and point at whatever the next table is having. If you are here for a month, learning this one street is the difference between a comfortable budget and a stressful one.

Masbat is the strip of restaurants, dive centres and cushion-covered terraces that runs along the water through the middle of town. It is where you will eat dinner, book your first dive and lose two hours to a backgammon board. It is also the loudest and most expensive part of Dahab, and the touts are persistent without ever being aggressive — a firm la shukran works every time. Come at sunset, when the light goes pink over the Saudi mountains across the gulf, eat somewhere with the fish on ice out front, then walk five minutes south and the noise stops completely.

Mashraba is the southern half of town and it is where most long stays end up. Quieter than Masbat, it mixes small camps, apartment blocks and family houses, with the bakeries, the supermarkets and the cheap Egyptian kitchens all a few minutes walk apart. A furnished one-bedroom here runs roughly 6,000 to 12,000 EGP a month depending on how close to the water you are and whether the wifi is real. The lagoon at the southern end is where the kite school operates and where the whole town drifts to watch the sun drop behind the mountains.

North of the bridge the town changes. Assalah is the original Bedouin village, and the camps here are simpler, cheaper and closer to the good snorkelling at Eel Garden. A room in a beach camp starts around 400 to 700 EGP a night with a shared bathroom and breakfast. The pace is different too — dogs asleep in the road, tea served in glasses on a low table, and a much stronger sense that you are a guest in someone's neighbourhood rather than a customer in a resort. Dress a little more covered here than you would on the boardwalk and you will be treated accordingly.

The reef in Dahab drops off fast, and the current running north to south along the wall is stronger than it looks from the shore. Plan to swim against it on the way out so you drift back. Never stand on coral — it cuts, it takes months to heal in salt water, and it kills the reef. Boat traffic is the real hazard at Lighthouse and Islands, so stay inside the buoy line and tow a float if you are snorkelling alone. If you are new to open water, the first couple of days are worth doing with a guide, which costs about 400 to 600 EGP and is the cheapest insurance in town.

Dahab has a hyperbaric chamber and it is a large part of why serious divers are comfortable here. It answers on +20 69 3640 536, and Dahab Specialized Hospital is on +20 69 3640 208. Ambulance is 123, police 122. If you or a buddy surface with joint pain, tingling, unusual fatigue or confusion within 24 hours of a dive, treat it as decompression sickness and call the chamber — do not sleep on it. Get on oxygen and stay lying flat. Any reputable dive centre will drive you there. Check your travel insurance covers diving to the depth you actually plan to dive, not the depth on the brochure.

March to May and October to November are the sweet spot — air in the high twenties, water around 24 to 26 C, and light wind. Summer runs 38 to 42 C in the afternoon and the sea reaches 29 C, which sounds lovely and mostly means you will be doing nothing between noon and four. December to February is the surprise: sunny and 20 to 24 C by day, genuinely cold at night, and the north wind can shut down boat dives for days at a time. Bring a 5 mm wetsuit in winter and a 3 mm in spring. Christmas, New Year and Sham el-Nessim are the only weeks rooms actually run out.

During Ramadan most Egyptian-run kitchens close through the day and reopen in a rush at iftar, right on sunset. Tourist restaurants on the boardwalk stay open so you will not go hungry, but the town changes rhythm entirely: quiet mornings, an electric hour before sunset, then everything alive until three in the morning. It is a lovely time to visit if you adjust to it. Eating or smoking openly in the street during daylight reads as rude even though nobody will say anything. Get yourself invited to an iftar if you can — it happens more often than you would expect, and refusing is the only wrong answer.

South past the lagoon the coast road runs out and the shoreline turns into a chain of shallow tidal pools separated by reef fingers. Three Pools is the best of them: waist-deep turquoise water, no boats, no music, and a couple of Bedouin cafes selling tea and instant coffee for 20 to 40 EGP. It is about 8 km from Mashraba, so take a pickup or a scooter, and go in the morning before the wind gets up. Bring water and your own shade, because there is almost none. By the afternoon the same stretch becomes one of the better beginner kitesurfing spots on the gulf.

Bargaining here is a conversation, not a fight, and it applies to crafts, taxis and scooter rental — not to restaurants, dive centres or supermarkets, where the price is simply the price. A useful set of anchors: Bedouin tea 15 to 30 EGP, a large bottle of water 15, a boardwalk breakfast 120 to 200, a fun dive 700 to 900 including gear, a night in a beach camp 400 to 900, a decent apartment 1,000 to 1,600. Start around 60 percent of an opening quote on crafts and settle near 75. Smile, accept the tea, and be willing to walk — half the time the price follows you out.

The climb up Mount Sinai starts around 11 pm or 2 am so you reach the 2,285 m summit for sunrise, and it is roughly three hours up the camel path plus 750 stone steps at the end. Organised trips from Dahab run 900 to 1,400 EGP per person including transport, the Bedouin guide the monastery requires, and the visit to St Catherine's Monastery afterwards. It is genuinely cold at the top — below freezing in winter and chilly even in August — so borrow a blanket at the summit huts or bring a proper jacket. The bus leaves Dahab about eight hours before sunrise, so sleep in the afternoon.