Egypten

The ‘Red Sea Riviera’ is a place of many different attractions. On the one hand, it is famous (or infamous, depending on your view) for cheap package holidays – overdevelopment has pockmarked the coastline deeply, leaving a trail of megaresorts and half-finished hotels in its wake. Alongside these are some exceptional exclusive resorts secluded from the hustle of the packages. Dig deeper and you will find other, more surprising sides to the region.

Cairo is magnificent, where you’ll hear an array of sounds from donkey carts rattling down lanes to the muezzins' call to prayer from duelling minarets.

If you’re in a hurry to reach the treasures and pleasures of the south, it is easy to dismiss the places between Cairo and Luxor. But these less touristed parts of the country almost always repay what can be the considerable effort of a visit.

Anyone interested in seeing the colossal rock-cut temples without the crowds, visiting Lake Nasser, or listening to Nubian music should hang around in this small Nubian town.

Low-key, laid-back and low-rise, Dahab is the Middle East’s prime beach resort for independent travellers.

Bahariya is one of the more fetching of the desert circuit oases, and at just 365km from Cairo it's also the most accessible. Much of the oasis floor here is covered by sprawling shady date palms and speckled with dozens of natural springs, which beg to be plunged into. The surrounding landscape of rocky, sandy mesas is a grand introduction to the Western Desert's barren beauty.

The Nile south of Luxor is increasingly hemmed in by the Eastern Desert, its banks lined with grand, well-preserved Graeco-Roman temples at Esna, Edfu and Kom Ombo, and its lush fields punctuated by palm-backed villages – it’s the ideal place to sail through on a Nile boat. The once-great city of Al Kab provides the perfect contrast to the grandeur of the temples, while at Gebel Silsila the river passes through a gorge sacred to the ancients, who used stone from the quarry to built the temples in Luxor. Aswan, the ancient ivory-trading post, has a laid-back atmosphere and plenty of things to see.

For a brief period following the Egypt–Israel peace treaty of 1979, a thriving Israeli tourism trade meant Tarabin (Nuweiba's waterfront beach-camp area) could claim rivalry to Dahab as Sinai’s hippy beach paradise. However, the vagaries of the regional politics over recent decades have meant Israeli travellers, for the most part, shun Sinai. So while Sharm boomed and Dahab grew steadily into a low-key resort, Nuweiba which stretches over 15km, was left to function primarily as a port for the Aqaba-bound ferry to Jordan. It's a shame because it could easily be the mellow beach-camp paradise that Dahab was a decade ago.

Technically all of Cairo on the west bank of the Nile is Giza, though the name is inextricably linked with the Pyramids, 9km from the river, on the edge of the desert. Truly time-strapped sightseers could conceivably stay out here and bypass Cairo entirely, but that’s missing a lot of the fun. More realistically, you’ll probably come out here on a day outing. Sharia Al Haram (Pyramids Rd) leads straight to the site and the village of Nazlet As Samaan at its base and south of Pyramids Rd.

Egyptens nya tåglinje kommer göra det möjligt att ta snabbtåget mellan Medelhavet och Röda havet. Det blir även Egyptens första linje för snabbtåg – ett välkommet inslag för den som enklare vill kunna ta sig fram genom landet utan flyg.