Places

A directory of the places worth the detour.

Siwa

A palm-and-salt oasis three hours west of the road, where electricity arrives after sunset and nobody is in a hurry.

White Desert

Wind-cut limestone that looks like snow or meringue, depending on who you ask and what time of day.

Aswan

Two seated colossi moved, stone by stone, to save them from the lake.

Alexandria

A Mediterranean city built on the ruins of one, with a library that burned and a lighthouse that went missing.

Aswan

Granite, feluccas, and the point where the Nile stops being a river and starts being a view.

Cairo

A thousand years of capital layered on top of each other, and a million people who make it work.

Red Sea

A Bedouin town on the Red Sea where the diving is the reason to come and the reason to leave.

Fayoum

Green, agricultural and ancient, an hour from Cairo and on nobody's itinerary.

Luxor

Half of ancient Thebes, a living city around it, and a museum that still has not finished being unpacked.

Sinai

A fortified monastery in the Sinai that has been guarded, by one route or another, for seventeen centuries.