I educated myself ( a bit ) on holiday but there is no need for you to do the same and, of course, indeed you may not need educating as much as I did.

There is not much I can promise in terms of levity, it turns out this part of the world doesn’t have much of that.

So, we went on an excursion from our luxury bubble of a hotel resort, to see ‘the mosques, churches and old town of Sharm.’

Well….

Sharm el Sheik dates from the 1980s and its history and politics explain why.

Suffice it to say that the excursion meant we saw a large but I have to say ugly, church finished in 2010, and a mosque finished in 2017 with an ‘outdoor’ market which was a series of tacky tourist shops overlooked by a fake waterfall.

Enough said on that.

We also saw kilometres of low level apartment blocks which are there to house the some 70,000 workers from all over Egypt who make life so easy for the tourist.

Now, according to Wikipedia the population of the city is about 73,000 and we were told this immigrant workforce numbered 70,000 – yes, that leaves 3,000 locals.

And the tourist numbers?

‘In 1976, tourism was a focal point of the Five Year Plan of the Egyptian government, and 12% of the national budget was allocated to upgrading state-owned hotels, establishing a loan fund for private hotels, and upgrading infrastructure (including road, rail, and air connectivity) for major tourist centres along with the coastal areas.’ Wikipedia

Things moved on apace and the number of hotel/resorts increased from three in 1982 to ninety-one in 2000 and, we were told, just over 300 in 2023.

Between 1982 and 2000 ‘guest nights’ went from 16,000 to 5.1m.

In 2010, the then peak tourist number, there were 14.7 million tourists in Egypt as a whole.

But revolution, a few terrorist attacks and of course Covid did huge damage to the tourist industry with numbers in 2020 down to just 3.5 million.

In 2023, 14.9m tourists visited the country.

Enough statistics.

So, I was wondering how Sharm El Sheik came into existence as such and overwhelmingly tourist place.

Nothing here dates back before the 1980s and precious little is even that old. It is all geared around us visitors.

The six lane highways, the airport, the immaculate compounds/resorts with desert rubble everywhere else.

Sitting in the minibus I wondered how this unprepossessing bit of land ( the sea mind you, is blue and turquoise and very lovely) came to be such a massive tourist town.

See sentence above, I can hear you say.

But this wasn’t a lovely little fishing village around which tourism grew, this was boom development.

And boom development on traditional Bedouin land. Now, I may not see it as very attractive but I am pretty sure the Bedouin may beg to differ.

So, Sharm ( as we get to call it) is at the bottom of Sinai – which is turn is the non-African bit of Egypt, bordered, not least, by Israel, also Syria and Saudi Arabia.

Its strategic importance meant a small fishing outpost was transformed into an Egyptian naval base.

In 1956 during the Suez Crisis, it was conquered by Israel and then returned to the Egyptians in 1957 with an added UN peacekeeping force in place.

Ten years later President Nasser ordered them to leave and that triggered the Six Day War with Israel who again occupied the peninsular.

In 1982 there was a peace treaty and Israel withdrew, dismantling all their settlements except the one in Sharm El Sheik.

So, the Egyptian government who already had its eye on tourist dollars, pounds, roubles, and more ,started making life easy for developers.

In 2017, the first group of Israelis visited the more popular tourist attractions with the aid of strong security. It had been 18 months since any group of Israeli tourists had visited Egypt. Wikipedia ( I am not sure when that was written but you can bet your bottom shekel, there aren’t Israeli tourists here now.

You can and many millions do, spend a very pleasant time on holiday in Sharm El Sheik without knowing any of this, without thinking about any of it. 

And I wouldn’t blame you but there is a bit of me thinking there should be just a smattering of knowledge about the historical and human hinterland which makes it all possible.

Lesson over.