Sinai is a peninsula on the Asian continent with around 1.4 million inhabitants. The peninsula represents the transition between the continents of Africa and Asia, while the remaining land area of the state of Egypt lies in Africa.
Sinai borders the Mediterranean to the north, Israel to the east, the Red Sea to the southeast, south and southwest and the African part of Egypt to the west through the Suez Canal.
The predominant part of the Sinai Peninsula consists of a desert landscape with the highest elevation, the 2,637 meter high Catherine Mountain.
The largest cities in Sinai include Sharm el Sheikh, Nuwaíba, Dahab, Taba, El Tor, al-Arish and Milga. The inhabitants of the peninsula are still 45% Bedouins, who live mainly from fishing, livestock breeding and partly from tourism.
The main economic sectors of the Sinai Peninsula are tourism, agriculture and mining, with the mining of uranium, manganese, quartz and coal.
The Sinai has a rich flora, such as juniper, acacia and date palms. Scorpions, jackals, hyenas, dromedaries, donkeys, goats, desert foxes, lizards and geckos are often found in the animal world. The Red Sea is known for its abundance of fish; in addition to tuna, barracuda, rays, moray eels, parrot and clown fish, there are also increasing numbers of sharks and dolphins.
Most of Sinai's tourism takes place in the cities of Sharm el Sheikh and in the diving paradise of Dahab, with its countless coral reefs.
The city of Sharm el Sheikh, with around 50,000 inhabitants, is the tourist center of the Sinai Peninsula. With its numerous hotel complexes, important diving areas, kilometers of white sandy beaches, the surrounding Ras Mohammed National Park, several casinos and a wealth of restaurants, bars, cafes, discos and shopping centers, the city is completely designed for foreign visitors.
The most important sights in Sharm el Sheikh include the Al Mustafa Mosque, the “Ghibli Raceway” car racing track, the Orthodox church, the Coptic church with its impressive glass and ceiling paintings, the monument to the victims of the plane disaster in October 2015, the ancient Bedouin camp, the “Hollywood amusement park”, the musical fountain and the long white beaches.
In April 2016 I traveled to the tourist city of Sharm el Sheikh on the Sinai Peninsula for four days. I stayed there relatively cheaply in a large 5-star resort.
However, due to the frequent terrorist attacks in recent years, the city is empty. All scheduled flights to Europe, primarily to Germany and Great Britain, were then suspended.
It's actually a shame how the well-developed tourist infrastructure is left with almost no visitors.
Of course there was nothing going on in my hotel due to a lack of guest counts, so I used the days off to completely relax.
One can only hope that one day the situation on the Sinai Peninsula will recover and that many foreign visitors will once again populate the beautiful city of Sharm el Sheikh.
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