Marsa Alam is where the Red Sea goes quiet. Far down the southern coast, beyond the reach of the big package strips, it is a thin line of dive resorts pressed between raw desert mountains and water of an almost unreal blue. There is little to "do" here in the conventional sense, and that is precisely the appeal — the town is a base, and the real destination is offshore. People come for the diving and snorkelling, for the chance of swimming with creatures that have largely vanished elsewhere, and for nights so dark the stars feel close enough to disturb.

The marine roll-call is extraordinary. Elphinstone Reef, a sheer offshore drop-off patrolled by oceanic whitetip and hammerhead sharks, is one of Egypt's legendary dives. Abu Dabbab Bay draws snorkellers hoping to share the shallows with dugongs and green turtles grazing the seagrass, while Sataya and the Dolphin House reefs out in the Fury Shoals are famous for resident pods of spinner dolphins. North of town, Marsa Mubarak offers another gentle bay of turtles and seagrass, and the protected sweep of Wadi El Gemal National Park guards reefs, islands and mangroves along the shore.

On land the texture is desert and history rather than nightlife. Wadi El Gemal runs inland into Ababda Bedouin country, where you can drink sweet tea and read the wadis for gazelle and ibex, and the old Sikait Roman emerald mines hide in the hills — Egypt's ancient source of the green stone. Most evenings, though, belong to the dive lodges: low-slung, salt-bleached places like The Oasis or Marsa Shagra Village, where the day ends with a barefoot dinner, a debrief over the day's sightings, and the long silence of the deep south.