Travel Far | THRIVE | EDUCATION ASIA | 153
The Red Sea Side While we followed the pharaohs, a family close to me took a very different trip. They went to Sharm El Sheikh, where the Sinai desert meets the Red Sea, and stayed at the DoubleTree by Hilton, a resort of palm-lined lawns and lit pools. Their highlight was Ras Mohammed National Park, at the southern tip of the Sinai and one of the world’s best-known marine reserves. They snorkelled and dived along coral walls teeming with orange anthias. On land, they rode quad bikes across the desert beneath the Sinai mountains, rode horses through the shallows and, to escape the afternoon heat, spent an hour in an ice bar wrapped in fleece-lined robes.
Their Egypt had no temples at all, just sea, sand and time together, and it was every bit as memorable as ours. Two Journeys, One Egypt Put our photographs side by side and you might think we had visited two different countries. Mine are full of carved stone, painted tombs and the beauty of the Nile River. Theirs are full of coral, horses and the open sea. Yet both trips share something essential: the feeling of being somewhere that has welcomed travellers for thousands of years and still has the power to surprise them. If you crave history, Egypt will hand you four millennia of it and let you walk through every chapter. If you crave water, sun and adventure, the Red Sea coast will give you some of the finest diving on earth and days that end by a glowing pool. And if, like most of us, you want a little of both, Egypt is generous enough to offer that too.
FROM SUNRISE ABOVE THE NILE TO SUNSET ON ITS WATERS, EGYPT STAYS WITH YOU
ANCIENT WONDERS OR CORAL REEFS - EGYPT HAS MORE THAN ONE WAY TO AMAZE
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