“The Sinai Trail, Egypt’s first long-distance hiking path, will help preserve long-overlooked natural wonders and a vanishing way of life. The trail is one of the country’s most extraordinary tourism projects. Ben Hoffler, an Englishman, wrote a trekking guide to South Sinai in 2013 and traversed some 7,000 miles of this high desert wilderness with its Bedouin inhabitants. The path was founded by Hoffler and three Bedouin tribes, whose members serve as guides, cameleers and cooks. The first parts of the Sinai Trail opened in 2015. In 2018, with five more tribes joining the group, it was extended into a 350-mile loop across the bottom half of the triangular Sinai Peninsula. Along with the Red Sea Mountain Trail, another long-distance path on Egypt’s mainland that Hoffler helped the Maaza tribe open in 2019, the Sinai trail has put Egypt firmly in the ranks of a booming hiking movement in North Africa and the Middle East. Photos by @sima_diab “