Dahab

Dahab — the name means gold in Arabic — was for centuries a Bedouin settlement of the Muzeina tribe, whose families fished the gulf, kept goats and grew date palms in the oasis behind the shore. The reef offshore made for good fishing and terrible harbours, and the town remained tiny and almost unreachable except by boat or desert track, with the mountains of Saudi Arabia visible across the water.

Its modern history begins with the 1967 war, after which Israel held Sinai until the withdrawal completed in 1982 under the peace treaty of 1979. During those years the bay became known to travellers as a cheap and beautiful stop on the overland route, and a reputation for palm-frond huts, hashish and long stays attached itself to the place and lasted for decades. After Egypt's return, the government developed the coast, laid a road from Sharm El Sheikh, and built the lagoon-side hotels and the administrative quarter of Dahab City.

Diving turned the village into a town. Shore-entry sites — the reef along the promenade, the Canyon, the Blue Hole up the coast — made it a place where people came to train cheaply and stay, and freediving later added to that. Growth brought hotels, apartment blocks and a population many times the original. The bombings of April 2006 and the later collapses in tourism hurt the town badly, but its long-stay visitors, divers and climbers have kept returning, and Dahab has stayed low-rise and small where the rest of the coast built upward.

The town has an unusual mix for Egypt. The Muzeina Bedouin are the original inhabitants and still own much of the land and many of the camps; Egyptians from the Nile Valley and the Delta run most of the restaurants, hotels and shops; and a resident foreign community of dive and freedive instructors, yoga teachers and long-stayers gives the promenade its distinctly unhurried, international character. Arabic, English and Russian are all heard daily.

Bedouin customs remain visible. Hospitality is a duty — tea brewed strong and sweet with wild sage or mint, offered to any guest — and tribal law still settles many local disputes. Camel handling, goat herding and desert knowledge underpin the trekking and camp business, and women's craftwork, beadwork and embroidery are sold along the seafront. The tribes' complaint that they take too small a share of the tourist economy is long-standing here as elsewhere in Sinai.

Daily manners are more relaxed than in most of Egypt, with beachwear on the promenade and mixed evening crowds in the cafés, yet Dahab is still a religiously observant small town: the mosque's call to prayer sets the day, Ramadan changes the hours of everything, and modest dress inland is simply good manners. The diving culture adds its own rules — nothing on the reef is touched, fed or taken — and the pace of life, built around morning dives, an afternoon pause and long evenings at low tables by the water, is what most visitors remember.

Dahab remains a small town, its permanent population swelled by seasonal workers and long-staying visitors. Most people live in Assalah and in the inland streets of Dahab City rather than on the seafront, and almost every household depends on tourism: dive centres, camps and hotels, restaurants, pick-up taxis, desert guiding and the building trade. Fishing, once the whole economy, now supplies mainly the local restaurants.

The town is supplied from outside. Water comes from desalination and tankers, food and materials by road from Sharm El Sheikh and the Nile Valley, and electricity through a single line down the coast, so shortages and cuts are part of ordinary life. Building has spread up the wadis behind the town, and the flash floods that occasionally pour down them are a real hazard. Reef damage from snorkellers, boats and construction is a constant argument in a place whose entire livelihood sits a few metres offshore.

The day starts early, with dive boats and jeeps leaving at first light, pauses through the heat of the afternoon, and comes alive again after sunset, when the promenade fills and the tables by the water stay busy late. The town empties whenever the region's tourism falters — after the 2006 bombings, after the loss of a Russian airliner over Sinai in 2015, and again with the disruption to regional aviation following the war that began in February 2026.

Eating in Dahab happens mostly at low tables on the seafront, and the food reflects who lives here. Red Sea fish — grouper, snapper, sea bream — comes grilled whole with tahina, baba ghanoush, rocket, pickles and baladi bread, with calamari and shrimp alongside; sayadeya, fish baked with spiced rice, onions and tomato, is the local one-dish version.

Bedouin cooking is the town's other tradition, met on desert trips and in the camps: bread baked on a domed metal sheet or buried in embers, goat or chicken cooked slowly over coals with rice, lentils, and strong sweet tea flavoured with sage, mint or other herbs gathered in the mountains. Dates from the oasis palms are a staple.

Plain Egyptian food fills the rest of the table and the cheaper streets inland: koshari, the bowl of rice, macaroni, lentils, chickpeas, fried onions and spiced tomato sauce; ful medames, slow-cooked fava beans at breakfast; ta'meya, the Egyptian falafel made from fava rather than chickpea; shawarma and grilled kofta. Decades of long-staying travellers have also left their mark, and the promenade's menus carry pizza, pasta, curries and fruit-and-yoghurt breakfasts alongside karkadeh, the tart hibiscus infusion, and fresh mango and guava juice.