I ♥ Sinai

Sinai is not a place you visit. It's a place that visits you — quietly, in your sleep, years after you've left. The mountains remember your footsteps. The desert holds your silence. The sea keeps your secrets.

I lived in the Sinai Peninsula from 2002 to 2012. Ten years on Al Fanar Street in Dahab, where the Gulf of Aqaba meets the Sinai mountains. I came for a two-week holiday. I stayed for a decade. This is my story — and the stories of the people who made Sinai home.

I've had this domain — ilovesinai.com — since around 2006. Back then, the tools and the time were both missing to do it justice. Now, with AI and my OpenClaw agent 🕵️‍♂️, I can finally tell these stories the way they deserve to be told.

Sheikh Salem was the former Sheikh of South Sinai — a man whose name still carries weight in every Bedouin camp from Dahab to Sharm. The stories told about him speak of a leader who governed not with force but with wisdom, who resolved disputes under the stars and kept the peace of the peninsula through respect, not fear.

They say he could read a person's character from their handshake. That he never turned away a guest, whether Bedouin, Egyptian, or foreigner. That his word was law — not because it had to be, but because people trusted it.

I had the honour of getting to know all of his sons, who now serve as sheikhs of South Sinai. Carrying a legacy like that is no small thing. Each of them brings their own flavour to leadership, but the thread of their father's grace runs through all of them.

I did my best to never touch a single coral. Every diver who understood the sea knew this rule: look, don't touch. What took hundreds of years to grow could be destroyed by one careless flipper kick.

But as more visitors came — visitors who didn't know or didn't care — I watched it happen. People walking with their fins straight over the shallow reef. Breaking corals. Destroying in a few years what took centuries to build.

The colours I remember — the electric blues, the neon greens, the impossible purples — they're dimmer now. Not gone, but dimmer. Like a painting left in the sun too long.

I'm grateful I saw it in its bloom. Not everyone gets that chance.

I hear Dahab got cleaner. That's a good thing — at my time the rubbish was getting too much, and initiatives like Keep Dahab Clean were a real necessity. Good to know that effort wasn't wasted.

But I also hear it's louder now. More of a party place. Not just foreigners anymore — Egyptians too are expressing more freedom, less oppression. The energy shifted. Life doesn't stop, and Dahab was always going to grow.

At my time, from 2002 to 2012, it was smaller. Still a cute little town. Growing, yes, but you could still hear the sea from anywhere. Now it's a mix of loud from everywhere.

But here's the thing: there are still places in Sinai where you can hear your own heartbeat. Where the only sound is wind through rock and your own breathing.

It starts around 2 AM. You drive there — organised, usually in a group. Then you climb. For hours. In the dark. With strangers who become friends somewhere between the third rest stop and the summit.

You see many people up there. Even handicapped people who push themselves up that mountain step by step. It's a grace to witness such determination. And you can be one of them.

Then sunrise. All the mountains of Sinai become visible in their full beauty, lit by the first sun. The landscape stretches in every direction — raw, ancient, untouched. You understand, in that moment, why this place is called holy.

That's not tourism. That's transformation.

I've been to North Sinai — with locals, and I had a beautiful time. But I'll be honest: it's more wild up there. More tension. If you go with a mindset of proving anything, avoid that. There are places in Sinai that are more welcoming to that energy.

Maybe soon North Sinai will have its renaissance. Maybe it becomes a world-famous, beloved place — with Sinai and Egypt peacefully connecting and trading. With Palestine and Israel and all the other countries around Egypt and Sudan. All of them.

That's the dream. And in Sinai, dreams have a funny way of becoming real — just slower than you'd like.

This is how I experienced my Bedouin friends:

Loving. Not interested in stress at all. Instead: peace, and a deep, grounded connection to the earth and simplicity.

Also: a sensitivity when they feel not honoured or looked down upon. A pride of its own kind. Nothing bad — every culture and every human has it. Sinai just has its own taste.

That's to say: don't judge, nor compare.

Sound familiar? These are very much the Burning Man principles. The Bedouins have been living them for centuries — they just didn't need a festival to figure it out.

Among the Bedouins — as among everyone — there is the boring one and the annoying one. The very funny one and the very trusting one. The handicapped and the rich. The poor and the sick. The healthy one and the young one. The old one. The pretty one and the ugly one.

I met some very intelligent people in Sinai. Kind. Open. Humorous. Funny. A few I was not so happy with — but that happens in the best families.

The point is: they're people. Not a category. Not a stereotype. Not a postcard. People, with all the beautiful mess that entails.