Some routes are a morning in a wadi bed — sand, acacia, the walls close enough on both sides to hold shade until ten. Others run three days over the high granite and down the far side to water.
The rock changes as you go. Sandstone in the west, where Pharaonic crews cut turquoise out of the hillside and left their names on it. Dark granite through the St Katherine massif. Palms wherever a root still reaches water.
Every mountain route is walked with a Bedouin guide from the tribe whose ground it is. You eat what comes off the fire, and you'll be asked where you're from before anyone explains where you are.
Every trip is private — your party and the guide, nobody else on the path. €120 per person per night covers the bed, the food, the transport and the guide. Most can run the next day.
What to carry, how cold the night gets, when each part of the peninsula is walkable, and the things people ask me on WhatsApp before they book.
Everything here applies to private guided hiking in South Sinai — the wadis and canyons behind Nuweiba, the coast up to Taba, and the high granite around Saint Katherine. Numbers come from two weather stations 60 km and 1,500 m apart, because Sinai does not have one climate. If something you need isn't here, message me and ask.
Optional, and people who bring them are glad: walking poles, and gaiters for the loose stone.
Check the season before you pack a summer bag. The January night average at St Katherine is 1.7 °C and the record is −6 °C, and our high camps sit above that weather station.
Sinai is not one climate. The same week gives you a warm afternoon on the coast and a night below freezing 60 km inland and 1,600 m up. Pack for the route, not the country.
sea level
Climate-Data.org monthly normals. Sea temperature 21 °C in February to 28 °C in July–September.
1,586 m
NOAA normals 1961–1990. Record lows −4 °C in January, −6 °C in February. Subtract roughly 1 °C for every 150 m you climb above the station.
Rain. St Katherine takes about 21 mm a year, Nuweiba about 13 mm. Nearly all of it falls between November and April, and it falls fast. Southern Sinai used to get one storm a year; through the last decade it has run at more than two, and the Wadi Feiran basin is studied as a repeat flood area. A wadi floor drains a mountain the size of a city. If rain is forecast we move the route or move the day, and I will tell you which before you leave the road.
July and August in a low wadi is walking inside a stone oven with no shade and no wind. The high mountain stays workable all summer because of the altitude. That is the whole trick of walking here in the hot months: go up.
There is no town light within an hour of most of our camps. What you see depends almost entirely on the moon, so the chart runs from today, twelve months forward. Dark bands are the weeks the moon is out of the way.
The Milky Way core clears the horizon before dawn from late March, sits up all night through June and July, and is an evening object by September. It is gone by mid-October and back again in spring.
For photography: a camp at altitude, a new moon, and no wind is the combination worth planning a trip around. Tell me you want it and I will build the dates around the moon instead of the other way round.
Carried in jerricans by camel or vehicle, and topped up from springs where there are springs. Spring water is boiled before it is used for tea or cooking. Bring purification tablets or a filter if you want the extra margin, and bring two bottles so you are never down to one.
Three to four litres a day in winter. More in the heat, and your guide will keep telling you to drink.
Cooked on the fire by the Bedouin crew. Bread made in the embers, lentils, beans, rice, vegetable stews, tea and coffee all day. On hiking days you get breakfast, a midday spread and dinner.
Vegetarian and vegan are easy here — most of it already is. Gluten-free is harder, because bread turns up at every meal. Tell me before you book, not on the first morning.
The wadi sheds have a charging cable. Out on the mountain routes we carry a power station — it runs the light at camp and charges what needs charging.
Phone and camera batteries get through the trip. A laptop is a different question, and the honest answer is bring a power bank and leave the laptop in Sharm.
Where you sleep decides this. On the wadi routes the night stop is usually a shed or a stone room with basic plumbing — a tap, a drop toilet, cold water. On the mountain routes there is none of that. You walk away from camp, dig, cover, and burn or pack out the paper. Your guide points you in the right direction on the first night.
Some routes can take a portable toilet tent, but only where a vehicle or camel can reach the camp. Ask while we are building your itinerary and I will tell you which one you are on.
Route permits and entry tickets are arranged before you arrive and included in the nightly price. You do not queue for anything. The part you handle yourself is the stamp in your passport.
Most nationalities landing at Sharm el-Sheikh get a free 15-day Sinai-only stamp. It covers everywhere we go — Nuweiba, Taba, Dahab, St Katherine, the whole peninsula.
It stops at the Sinai border. You cannot use it to reach Cairo or Luxor, by air or by road, and it does not run past 15 days.
If your plans change, upgrade before you leave South Sinai. A single-entry Egyptian tourist visa is $30, cash. Bring exact US dollars — euros and pounds are usually taken at a worse rate, and the card machines at the visa counters are often out of service.
Two places to do it: the bank kiosks inside Sharm el-Sheikh airport, before passport control, or the Passport and Immigration offices in Sharm at Nabq Bay and El Nour.
Do not try to leave Sinai, or the country, on an expired stamp. Overstay the 15 days and you pay a fine on top of the visa before they let you out.
We walk in South Sinai, between Nuweiba, Taba and St Katherine. Your guide is Bedouin, from the tribe whose ground you are on. Permits for every route are arranged before you arrive and included in the price.
St Katherine, Nuweiba and Dahab each have a medical centre that can stabilise an emergency, 30 minutes to an hour from most of where we walk. The hospitals in Sharm el-Sheikh are under two hours from any point on any route we run.
I am the single point of contact from your first message to your last day. Someone always knows where you are and when you are due out.
Not down in the wadis, no. Your guide knows a spot on each day's route where he can climb a little and pick up a bar or two, and that is where the day's messages go out.
Tell the people at home they will hear from you once a day at best, and some days not at all. It is worth saying before you fly, not after.
At St Katherine the January night average is 1.7 °C and the record is −6 °C. Our high camps sit above the weather station, so take the lower end seriously. On the coast the same night is around 10 °C.
From late November to February you want thermals, a beanie to sleep in, and a four-season bag. A three-season bag covers March, April, October and early November.
You need to be able to walk five or six hours with breaks, on uneven ground, carrying only a daypack. Camels or a vehicle take the rest. There is no technical climbing on any route unless you ask for one that has it.
The thing that catches people out is not the climbing. It is the sand, and the dry air on your throat if you are not sipping water constantly.
On the wadi routes, yes. There is usually a shed or stone room, a tap, and a fire, and the crew sets everything up.
On the mountain routes you are sleeping on a mat in the open with no toilet and no washing. That is a bigger jump. Say it is your first time and I will start you in a wadi.
Every trip is one party. You are never put together with strangers, and there is no minimum number. One person is a trip.
Accommodation, your Bedouin guide on trekking routes, all transport, permits and entry tickets, breakfast and dinner, and on hiking days a midday meal as well.
Not covered: lunch on non-hiking days, alcohol, anything outside the itinerary we agreed, and tips.
Not in the price. Bring your own, or rent one from me at €15 a night. Rentals are washed and sanitised before they reach you. Tents, mats and camp seating are included on the routes that need them.
The water we carry is fine, and spring water is boiled before it is used. Skip ice and cold drinks made with untreated water, in town as well as out here. Purification tablets are cheap insurance and weigh nothing.
Next day is real, and people do it. More notice helps on the remote routes, where camels and a crew have to come from somewhere.
The whole thing is built over WhatsApp. Message me with your dates and what you feel like walking, and we put it together from there.
The wadi sheds have a charging cable. On the mountain routes we carry a power station, which runs the camp light and charges what needs charging.
Bring a power bank anyway. Cold nights flatten batteries faster than you expect, so sleep with the spares inside your bag.
The week either side of a new moon, anywhere away from the coast road. The chart above runs twelve months forward from today and marks every new moon and every meteor shower peak.
For the Milky Way core, come between May and August. For the heaviest shower of the year, the Geminids in mid-December — and pack for a night below freezing while you watch it.
More on the ground: every route we run · hiking around Saint Katherine · wadis and canyons behind Nuweiba · stargazing and astrophotography trips
Temperatures: NOAA 1961–1990 normals for St Katherine, Climate-Data.org monthly normals for Nuweiba. Moon phases calculated for your device's date. Meteor shower peaks are accurate to about a day.
Skip to content
