Dahab — the word means gold, for its sands — is the anti-Sharm: a former Bedouin fishing village an hour up the Sinai coast that backpackers, freedivers and yogis discovered decades ago and never quite let go of. Shoes come off, plans dissolve, and the day organises itself around the water and the light. The social heart is the Masbat promenade, a car-free ribbon of cushioned cafés and dive shops where the whole town drifts down at sundown.

Its fame, though, is the Blue Hole — a submarine sinkhole over a hundred metres deep just north of town, world-renowned among freedivers and equally rewarding to snorkel along its coral-fringed rim. Dahab is, in fact, one of the planet's great freediving and shore-diving destinations: at Lighthouse Reef you step straight off the promenade into the blue, and the Islands and Three Pools offer a beginner-friendly coral maze close in. For the wild version, Ras Abu Galum — reached by camel or boat — pairs untouched reef with a tiny off-grid Bedouin settlement.

Dahab has quietly become Egypt's wellness capital too: sunrise yoga on the beach, breath-hold training at a freedive school, and an unhurried café culture that runs from Ralph's German Bakery at breakfast to genuinely good Thai curries above the seafront at night. When you want desert, the banded sandstone walls of the Coloured Canyon are a half-day trip inland.