Dahab, Egypt


I left Jerusalem at 7am on a bus bound for Eilat. Somehow I had imagined it would be a peaceful journey through the Negev. Maybe I could catch up on some reading, have a doze, listen to my iPod. What I didn't count on was the mass of teenage girls who were also heading south for sun, sea and whatever the Middle Eastern equivalent of sangria is. Even at that hour they were revved up to an incredible level of excitement - and Israeli teenagers probably beat all other teenagers hands-down when it comes to sheer volume. There were screams, shouts, laughter, songs, clapping, running up and down the bus borrowing make-up and sharing crisps and, a little scarily I thought, considering we were travelling at 70mph down a motorway, multiple attempts to ingratiate themselves with the driver by offering him sweets. I did need my iPod in the end but only to use the headphones as earplugs.

I lost them, at last, when we got to Eilat, Israel's premier resort in the sun, and realised the place was just perfect for them. There are probably nice parts of the city, but they aren't obvious from the route into the bus station. Instead it's more like a kind of sub-Benidorm with sweltering heat, kosher food and no Brits. After the mellowness of Jerusalem, the gangs of shirtless kids (no one seemed to be over 15), roaming the streets and peeling in the near-Saharan sun, looked like extras in some badly thought-out cross between 'High School Musical' and 'Mad Max'. It was a relief to catch the little local bus to the Egyptian border.


After the madness of Eilat, the tiny town of Taba, where Israel has a crossing into Egypt, was an oasis of calm. Almost literally in fact, as it is pretty much surrounded by desert. I had expected the chaos, hold-ups and total confusion of the Allenby Bridge border I had come through into Israel, but, apart from one or two people pootling around the duty-free (which you have no choice but to go through after passport control - who says Jews don't make good businessmen?), I was the only person there. After a cursory glance at my passport from the Israeli army immigration woman and the security guy at the gate asking me if I had my gun with me, I walked about 50 yards through what I guess is no man's land and into a large, shabby, marble-floored 'Arrivals Hall' that was the entry point into Egypt. And here was what I have come to realise is a very familiar sight in the Arab Middle East: 20 or so slightly sweaty men in various uniforms lolling around doing pretty much nothing and looking bored. I managed to get one of them to give me a visa, got my passport stamped and strolled out into the country that was once Israel's bitterest enemy.


I was determined to get a bus to Dahab, about 150km down the coast, rather than take a cab, which I had heard would be nonsensically expensive, but I wasn't totally convinced there would be one and the bus station was a fair walk down the road. So I was ready for the usual hoard of taxi drivers just outside the border crossing gates shouting for business, swearing on their lives that the bus had been cancelled or the bus station had burnt down or something and otherwise persuading you that there was no alternative to paying through the nose for a ride in their ancient Peugeot.

Instead, all was peace and quiet. Someone did look up from their mint tea and mumble "taxi" when I walked past but otherwise I was left to myself. Maybe nobody comes in this way any more. Or maybe it's the heat and they can't be bothered. And, after all that, there was a bus, so, after two and half diesel-fumed hours rumbling down the beautiful Red Sea coast - crystal clear blue water on one side, browny-goldy-grey desert on the other (plus at least five checkpoints where more bored, slightly sweaty men got on and pretended to check everybody's ID) - I arrived in Dahab.


As the Lonely Planet says, Dahab is indeed light years away from the little hippy village it was 10 years ago but the package tours haven't got here yet (they all go to Sharm El Sheikh further down the coast) and everything is low-rise little hotels, open-sided cafes right on the water's edge and some wonderfully hospitable and friendly people. Chatting to the various Mohammeds, Ahmeds and Abduls that punctuate your day - Egyptian women are hardly to be seen, apparently they are all back at home in Cairo or Alexandria - I couldn't help being reminded of a young Israeli man I met in Jerusalem who said something fantastically offensive about "all Arabs" (which, at the time, I was too timid/shocked/depressed to challenge) and wishing he could come here. But of course he can't and won't - I guess that's how conflict scars people - and certainly things go a little quiet here when I say I have just been living in Jerusalem.

I'm mostly here for the scuba diving, which I had heard was some of the best in the world, and now, two days and five dives in, I'm pretty blown away by it all. The water is almost travel-brochure transparent turquoise and the fish, none of whose names I can remember, swim around you in a wonderful kaleidoscope of colour. And - and anyone who has been diving will appreciate how important this is - the dive leaders are friendly, knowledgeable, skilled and calm (and handsome, too, which helps).


Today we went on a dive into what is known as the Blue Hole. [Skip to the next paragraph if you are already bored.] You swim down through a narrow channel between two rocks to emerge about 30m underwater into an enormous blue abyss. The sea goes down another 120m to the seabed and almost infinitely to your left - or at least until it gets to Saudi Arabia. And to your right is a huge wall of coral, stretching into the distance and swarming with fish. There was a little one that cleans your teeth if you let it. (I didn't - at that point I was finding the hugeness of it all a little unnerving and didn't want to take my air supply out of my mouth.). And another one that cleans your ears. (Ditto, though air supply less relevant.) But less weird and just as wonderful, you float weightlessly through great clouds of fish whose scales catch the sunlight coming down from the surface in flashes of red and green and gold. It's hard to describe diving and rereading this paragraph I realise my prose is heading in a dangerously ponsey direction, so I'll stop now and just say that the diving is great and I'm looking forward to more.


In the meantime, the rest of day ambles along from lazing in the sun to a juice by the sea's edge to a cheap meal (£3) in one of the little, formica-table restaurants in the main street (chicken, chicken or chicken, so far, but I might be a bit more adventurous tonight). I have a pile of rubbishy books (well, rubbishy-ish, I've just finished a PD James), some beach shorts and my suncream. I've met some nice people. The yeshiva seems far away. And there's wifi in the beach bars. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, I might stay a little longer.