Number 4/10

1992, Nuweiba on the Sinai peninsula, Egypt. As part of a roundtrip through Israel, my first guided tour that was also going to be my last, we went to the Sinai, too. Israelis had started coming here since after the Six-day war in 1967, when they occupied parts of the peninsula. Dahab and Nuweiba were a mix of hippie communities and very basic holiday resorts, especially Nuweiba. When I went back there for longer two years later, I learnt how to get cash: take a pick-up into Dahab, be at the bank before 1 p.m., for until then they’d have a radio connection to Cairo through which they could check your bank details. That was the only way to get money between the Israeli-held Taba Hilton hotel at the border, and Sharm esh-Sheikh at the southern tip of the peninsula. It was wonderfully underdeveloped considering the beauty of the Red Sea and the mountains. Now, it’s been turned into holiday resorts like everywhere else, with ATMs, tarmac roads, etc.