Sharm El Sheikh: An Honest Guide to Diving and South Sinai

Is the diving better here than in Hurghada?

Ras Mohammed National Park is about 20 km south of town, where the Gulf of Aqaba meets the Gulf of Suez. Shark and Yolanda Reef is the site most people come for: a wall that drops into open blue water, with the scattered cargo of a wrecked freighter, bathroom fittings, oddly, lying on the sand below. Day boats run year-round, weather permitting.

The Straits of Tiran hold four reefs, Gordon, Thomas, Woodhouse and Jackson, in a channel with real current. The drift diving there is very good and not the place for a first open-water dive. Against Hurghada, Sharm's best sites are closer to shore and the walls are steeper; Hurghada is cheaper and has more wrecks within easy reach. If you are snorkelling rather than diving, the difference between the two narrows a long way.

Do you need a full Egyptian visa, or just the Sinai stamp?

Arriving at Sharm El Sheikh airport, many nationalities can be given a free Sinai-only entry permit instead of a full visa. It runs for about two weeks and covers four towns: Sharm, Dahab, Nuweiba and Taba. For a Mount Sinai or St Catherine trip, ask your tour operator about a full visa first. It does not cover the rest of Egypt, and it is widely reported not to cover Ras Mohammed National Park or diving trips.

That last point matters. If you plan to dive, or to fly on to Cairo or Luxor, take the full tourist visa instead, and applying online in advance is simplest. The permit rules have changed more than once, so treat anything you read, including this, as a starting point and confirm before you fly.

Are Mount Sinai and St Catherine worth the excursion?

St Catherine's Monastery is roughly three hours inland by road, through empty desert. Most excursions leave around midnight so that you climb Mount Sinai in the dark and reach the top for sunrise. The climb takes two to three hours, and the final stretch is a long flight of rough stone steps. The summit is above 2,000 m and cold before dawn, even in August.

It is a hard night. You lose a night's sleep, the summit is crowded, and by the time the monastery opens you are usually too tired to take it in. If the walking is not the point for you, go in daylight for the monastery alone and skip the climb. It opens to visitors for only a few morning hours, is normally shut on Fridays and Sundays and around Orthodox feasts, so the date has to be checked first.

When should you go?

Summer is brutal on land, roughly 40C in July and August and sometimes more, though the sea sits around 28C and the diving is at its easiest. Winter days are mild, around 20C, but evenings need a jacket and wind can shut down the boats to Tiran for a day or two at a time.

March to May and October to November are the sensible months: warm, calmer water, and hotel rates below the Christmas and Easter peaks. Water temperature bottoms out around 21C in February, which means a 5 mm wetsuit and a hood for most people. Ramadan moves each year and changes opening hours in town, though the resorts run as normal.

What is Sharm el-Sheikh actually like?

Nothing here is old. The town was built for tourism from the 1980s onwards, and it shows: hotel compounds strung along the coast, Naama Bay for bars and shops, and an Old Market that is a market for visitors rather than a historic quarter. Sinai does hold pharaonic remains, chiefly the turquoise mines and the temple of Hathor at Serabit el-Khadim, but they sit hours inland towards the west coast and are almost never part of a resort holiday.

That is less a criticism than a warning. If you want temples and tombs on the doorstep, this coast cannot give them to you, and the day trip to the pyramids by air is a very long day for a rushed couple of hours at Giza. Come for the reefs, the desert and a week of doing very little, and it works.

How does it fit into a wider Egypt trip?

The usual shape is Cairo and the Nile first, Sharm last: history while you still have energy, then the sea. Flights between Cairo and Sharm take about an hour and run daily. The road is roughly 500 km and takes most of a day, so flying is nearly always the better call.

Add at least four nights if you want to dive properly. Two or three days of diving with a rest day before flying home is a workable minimum, because the standard advice after repeated dives is to leave about 18 hours before boarding a plane. Booking the transfers, dive centre and the Sinai leg as one plan rather than piecemeal is mainly a way to make sure that rest day survives the itinerary.

The Thistlegorm and wreck diving from Sharm

Sharm is a wall-and-reef destination first, but it does have one wreck worth the fuss. Day boats run west across the Strait of Gubal to the Thistlegorm, a Second World War cargo ship lying at Sha'ab Ali. It is a long crossing, an early start and a deeper dive than the reefs closer to town, and current over the wreck is common. This is not a novice's day out, and reputable operators will ask what you have logged before they take you.

Because the Thistlegorm sits out in the Strait of Gubal rather than off the Sinai shore, the trip eats a full day and the sea state decides whether it runs at all. If wrecks are the main reason you are coming to the Red Sea, Hurghada reaches the Gubal wreck fields more cheaply and with a shorter crossing, and that is the honest split between the two coasts.

The other way divers reach these sites is a liveaboard. Northern itineraries out of the region link the Strait of Gubal wrecks with the Sinai reefs and suit divers of moderate experience, diving several times a day and moving between sites overnight. It removes the daily boat commute but puts you in a small cabin with strangers for a week, so it is a particular taste rather than a default.

Snorkelling and the house reefs, if you do not dive

You do not need a certification to get the best of this coast. Much of the reef sits within a few metres of the surface, and in Sharm many hotels have a house reef reached by a jetty. The jetty is not laziness on the hotel's part: the coral shelf starts in very shallow water, walking out across it damages the reef and cuts your feet, and the walkway carries you over the shelf to where you can drop in. Reef shoes and a rash vest earn their place in the case.

Snorkellers see a good share of what divers see at the shallow sites, coral heads, reef fish and turtles feeding over the seagrass, without any of the training. Boat trips to Ras Mohammed take snorkellers as well as divers, and most dive centres run a supervised first-time scuba session for anyone who wants to try breathing underwater once before committing to a course.

One thing to check before you book a snorkelling boat: whether it actually stops at shallow reef. Some trips are built around deep dive sites where a snorkeller floats above blue nothing. Sheltered bays with coral close to the surface beat a dramatic wall you cannot reach, so ask what the stops are rather than trusting the brochure photograph.

Learning to dive, and how to judge a dive centre

Sharm is a reasonable place to learn. Warm, clear, usually calm water strips out most of what makes a first course hard elsewhere, and an entry-level certification normally runs over three to four days: theory, skills in shallow water, then a handful of open-water dives. That is a real chunk of a week's holiday, so decide before you fly whether you want the qualification or just a taster. Lapsed divers should book a short refresher after a year or more out of the water.

The centre matters more than the agency logo on the door. Ask how many divers each guide takes underwater, whether they run a check dive before anything demanding, and whether they want to see your logbook, because the ones that never ask are the ones to avoid. Look at the state of the rental kit and whether the boat carries oxygen. None of this is rude to ask; a good operator expects it.

Insurance is on you, not the dive centre. Standard travel policies often exclude diving outright, or cover it only to a shallow depth limit, and treatment for a serious decompression injury is expensive. Buy specific dive cover and read the depth clause. Sharm, as one of the longer-established hubs on the coast, is better served for emergency care than the remote far south, but you should still ask your operator where the nearest recompression chamber is and dive conservatively rather than assume one is close.

Naama Bay, the Old Market and evenings ashore

Off the water, the town splits into a few distinct zones. Naama Bay is the old centre of gravity, a promenade of bars, restaurants and shops built for visitors, busiest after dark. The Old Market, inland, is a market for tourists rather than a historic souk, good for an hour of browsing lamps, spices and knock-off perfume. Expect to be called into shops and restaurants along both; it is persistent rather than aggressive, and a clear no works.

Alcohol is available in hotels, licensed bars and restaurants in the tourist areas, but not in ordinary shops. Imported brands are expensive and the cheap local spirit brands are best left alone. During Ramadan, service outside the hotels is reduced and daytime drinking in public is not on, though the resorts themselves carry on much as normal.

The honest summary is that the evenings are pleasant and easy rather than memorable. This is a coast you come to for the reef and the desert, and the town exists to feed and water you between dives. If a lively nightlife scene or a walkable old quarter is high on your list, Sharm will feel thin, and you should weigh that before booking a week here rather than a few nights.

Getting there and getting around

Sharm has its own international airport, and it is close to the resort zone, so transfers are short by Red Sea standards. Direct charter and scheduled flights from the UK take about five and a half hours, and from Cairo the hop is roughly an hour on a daily schedule. Direct service from some markets has been suspended and later restored over the years, and capacity still moves with the season, so check what is actually flying for your dates rather than assuming a nonstop exists.

The alternative to flying is the road, and it is a poor second. Cairo to Sharm is around 500 km and takes most of a day, with checkpoints on the way, because Sinai is administratively and practically separate from the Nile Valley. For anyone combining Sharm with Cairo or the Nile, the internal flight is nearly always the better use of a holiday day.

Within Sharm you will mostly rely on hotel transfers and taxis, since the resort areas are strung out along the coast rather than clustered in one walkable centre. Agree a taxi fare before you get in, and remember that the all-inclusive model is designed so that you rarely need to leave the compound. Dahab, the quieter town up the coast, is about ninety minutes away by road and is the usual choice for a day out of the resort.

Day trips beyond the water

The headline excursion is St Catherine's Monastery and the overnight climb of Mount Sinai, covered above. It is the one trip that shows you the interior of the peninsula, three hours of empty desert each way, and it is worth doing for the landscape even if the sunrise summit is crowded. Check the monastery's opening days before you commit, as it shuts on some days and around Orthodox feasts.

Closer to hand, glass-bottom and semi-submersible boats give non-divers a look at the coral without getting wet, and desert excursions into the flats behind town, typically a convoy out to a staged Bedouin camp with dinner, are heavily sold. The desert trips are dusty and brief and tell you little about the real Sinai, which lies much further in; the pharaonic turquoise mines and the temple of Hathor at Serabit el-Khadim are the genuine article, but they are hours inland towards the west coast and almost never part of a resort week.

The pyramids are also sold as a day trip, by air from Sharm. It can be done, but it is a very long day for a rushed couple of hours at Giza, and the flights and airport time swallow most of it. If Cairo and the ancient sites genuinely matter to you, build them into the itinerary as their own leg rather than trying to bolt Giza onto a beach holiday.

Would Dahab or Marsa Alam suit you better?

Sharm is not the only base on this coast, and it is not always the right one. Dahab, about ninety minutes north on the Gulf of Aqaba, grew out of a Bedouin village and still feels like one: small hotels, a walkable seafront, shore diving you reach on foot, and the Blue Hole and the Canyon on its doorstep. It is cheaper, quieter and better suited to independent travellers and long-stay divers, though the transfer eats into a short holiday and there is little in the way of large family resorts.

Marsa Alam, on the mainland far to the south, is the other alternative. Its reefs are in better shape than the sites worked hard around the big resorts, turtles are common and the coast is quiet, but it is spread thin along a desert road with almost nothing to walk to, and the transfer south is longer. It suits divers who put reef quality above everything else.

The verdict is simple enough. Choose Sharm if you want a hotel that runs your day for you, boat trips to Ras Mohammed and Tiran, and a short airport transfer. Choose Dahab if diving, freediving or a slower pace is the reason you are going. Choose Marsa Alam if the reef matters more than the resort and you do not mind the extra travel. And if the temples are part of the same trip, Hurghada, four hours by road from Luxor, is the easier coast to combine with the Nile.

Families, resorts and the all-inclusive model

Sharm works well for families, and the calmer, more contained layout around Naama Bay makes it slightly easier with small children than the sprawl of Hurghada. Large all-inclusive hotels with pools and kids' clubs are the norm, and the shallow house reefs mean children can snorkel safely close to shore. What the town does not offer is much for older teenagers beyond watersports, so a bored fifteen-year-old is your problem to solve, not the resort's.

Because most guests eat and drink where they sleep, the individual hotel decides the quality of the week far more than the resort's reputation does. Two hotels on the same nominal star rating can be a long way apart, and star ratings on the Red Sea are local ratings, not comparable to European ones. Before booking, ask two concrete questions: what the house reef is actually like, and how the beach entry works, because those shape your days more than the buffet does.

One practical note on the coral shelf that makes this coast special also makes it awkward for toddlers: the reef starts in very shallow water and the shore is often coral and stone rather than sand. That is why the jetties exist. If you need a wide sandy swimming beach for small children, check that a specific hotel has one rather than assuming, as it varies enormously along the coast.