BEDOUIN TRAIL

After nearly a decade of operating the Sinai Trail took the difficult decision to close to hikers in late 2024. Its sister project the Red Sea Mountain Trail made the same decision two weeks later, also closing to hikers. Opening in 2015, the Sinai Trail was Egypt's first long-distance hiking route and it grew through the most challenging time for tourism in the nation's modern history. The Red Sea Mountain Trail launched five years later, with its inauguration in 2019. Working together, the two projects pioneered a new type of adventure tourism based around long-distance hiking routes managed fully by the Bedouin tribes who had lived around them for centuries and sometimes even millennia. Over their years of operation the Sinai Trail and Red Sea Mountain Trail put some of the most little-known parts of Egypt's beautiful wilderness on the global tourism map and helped create legitimate jobs and opportunities for remote, often severely marginalised communities; especially those of a kind that could help preserve the traditional knowledge, skills and heritage that remain so critically endangered today. The trails were hiked by thousands of people from all over the world and grew together into initiatives that diversified Egypt's tourism industry, underlined the value of its age old Bedouin culture and showed the most positive and inspiring side of the nation to the world. With the support of a community of hikers in Egypt and beyond, the Sinai Trail and Red Sea Mountain Trail had become the most successful and highly-decorated tourism projects of any kind in Egypt at the time of their closing. 

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The Sinai Trail and Red Sea Mountain Trail did not close due to a lack of demand. They did not close as a result of conflicts in nearby areas such as Gaza. For more than a decade both trails have overcome the challenges of regional unrest and dwindling tourism markets. Bedouin communities have kept trail areas extremely secure and hikers have always arrived. They closed because Egypt's government has in recent years taken deliberate steps to limit and prohibit the growth of official hiking tourism. Hiking permits became increasingly difficult to acquire in recent years and by the end of 2024 were practically unobtainable for hikers along any section of either one of the two trails. 

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Egypt's refusal to grant permits for official hiking activities not only means the Sinai Trail and Red Sea Mountain Trail are closed. It means hikes are not permitted officially in most parts of the Sinai, Red Sea Mountains or any other part of the nation. Hiking is now allowed officially on only a few select routes such as the tourist  hike on Mount Sinai.

 

As a result of these government-forced closures, the Egyptian sections of the Bedouin Trail can no longer be walked. Only its Jordanian sections remain open. It can not be traversed as an intercontinental passage as designed. 

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Whilst hikes do still operate in Egypt today they almost all go without the official permits the government rules are required for activities to be legal. This involves serious risks, including lengthy jail terms for Bedouin operators. 

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Egypt's government has made hiking permits difficult to obtain for many years. Moreover, whatever permits were issued in the past typically held only limited practical use. Official permits were often cancelled without explanation at the last minute, causing difficulties for operators and discouraging future events. The Sinai Trail and Red Sea Mountain Trail were in previous years both forced to cancel hiking events during the time of their operation, despite having all necessary permits in place. Government-issued permits have similarly given our organisations no protection from the harassment and intimidation that have become all too common in Egypt under the authoritarian rule of its current military regime. Over their years of operation people at both trails were subject to threatening attention from Egypt's security services. Personnel at the Red Sea Mountain Trail were detained, interrogated and threatened with jail terms unless they signed documents agreeing to stop hikes. 

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Whilst hiking tourism has been embraced by public-facing sections of Egypt's government such as the Ministry of Tourism, powerful state security agencies with whom decision making power ultimately rests in the nation have consistently opposed it, using whatever means they deem necessary to limit its official growth. 

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Egypt's government has not only shut down the official operation of hiking tourism but has attempted to silence public conversations about the shutdown. Within hours of the Sinai Trail publicly announcing its closure online the organisation was contacted by Egyptian security services who demanded its closing statement be deleted. The Sinai Trail kept its closing statement as long as possible, editing its content partially before removing it entirely as the threats of Egypt's security services increased in severity towards people throughout our organisation. The Red Sea Mountain Trail posted only a short closing satement to avoid suffering similar troubles to the Sinai Trail. 

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Although neighbouring nations such as Jordan and Saudi Arabia have shown unwavering long-term commitments to building hiking tourism into their national tourism offerings - recognising the immense value it holds as one of the fastest-growing, most resilient types of tourism in the world - Egypt has continued to move deliberately in the opposite direction, taking backward steps that set it ever farther behind its closest tourism rivals in the Middle East. Today, of all major tourism destinations in the Middle East, official hiking tourism is restricted nowhere more heavily than in Egypt. Hiking trails such as the Red Sea Mountain Trail and Sinai Trail are not developed easily: they take time and large sums of investment unles and the forced closure of Egypt's flagship hiking trails by its own government is an act of self-harm that does serious damage to its reputation as a hiking and adventure tourism destination and that will most likely set its development back by considerably more than a decade. 

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Bedouin communities live in remote parts of Egypt and rank consistently amongst the most severely marginalised parts of its population: jobs and opportunities remain scarce in Bedouin regions and hiking tourism has opened legitimate employment to which their communities remain uniquely qualified. Bedouin communities have demonstrated professional excellence in guiding people through their territory not just in the modern tourism industry but historically, over many centuries. It is widely said the Egypt's prohibition of hiking tourism stems from a deep-rooted fear of its security services that its ongoing growth will empower Bedouin communities who have always maintained their own unique sense of identity and cultural difference in the nation and who have long been viewed with distrust and suspicion by the state. If this was true it may go at least some way to explaining why the Sinai Trail and Red Sea Mountain Trail - Egypt's most active, visible and successful Bedouin-operated hiking tourism projects - have been the target of such focused state harassment and intimidation. Nevertheless, without a transparent conversation involving branches of Egypt's government that continue to stop hiking tourism, our understanding of the reasons behind their opposition remains only speculative. 

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The Sinai Trail and Red Sea Mountain Trail have both committed to watch what happens in Egypt's hiking tourism carefully. They will continue to underline the status of hiking tourism as a legitimate and important form of employment for Bedouin communities. The Red Sea Mountain Trail and Sinai Trail were developed by Bedouin communities present in their respective territories for centuries and sometimes even millennia, giving them the deepest and most authentic roots. As tourism projects bringing unparallelled success and opportunities to their home regions and the two hiking routes will be long remembered by the communities around them. This gives the Bedouin Trail hope that whether they return with the same leaders soon or with a new generation of leaders in the more distant future, these projects will be back. The Sinai Trail and Red Sea Mountain Trail have both communicated to hikers the biggest, most sincere thanks to those who walked the routes and to everybody who supported their growth through challenging times in Egypt over a decade. The Bedouin Trail will continue to support the Sinai Trail and Red Sea Mountain Trail in Egypt, communicating any important updates for hikers here. It is now more important than ever for the Bedouin Trail to continue its work. The Bedouin Trail will remain fully open in Jordan and our organisation hopes one day the Sinai Trail and Red Sea Mountain Trail will return in Egypt, reviving missing parts of the longer Bedouin Trail and reopening it as a transcontinental passage that can stand as a living monument to Bedouin communities and their rich heritage and culture across the modern Middle East.