Solo trip to Sinai: scared at the Taba border

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Israelis are amazed by Sinai! And they transmitted their enthusiasm to me

'I would love to go to Sinai so much, it is amazing, but I am afraid to go because I am a Jew. Go there if you can, it's the best place on the Earth! It shouldn't be dangerous for you!'

This is the sentence I've heard from Israelis many times since my first solo trip to Israel in July 2017.

However, some others of them I met were brave enough to go there once. And then they kept coming back there again and again. They were telling me about amazing food, perfectly clean water, stunning underwater world, kind and warm locals, and... smoking weed all day long! There is also an Israeli group on Facebook, Sinai Lovers, with beautiful pictures from this peninsula [so, open the link, look the pictures, weird Hebrew letters, and then come back to my article, thanks]. However, there is way much more to be experienced there than what you can see in the pictures - especially as a solo traveller, when you really engage with locals.

I've chosen Dahab: small, local, and maximum chill - sababa!

Well, I did some research, but didn't find many articles on the Internet about tourism in Sinai. Okay, we all know for Sharm El Sheikh, but I prefer more "local" places, not hotels, and lazy travelling and stuff. So, I asked a few travellers for whom I knew they travelled around there for recommendations, they told me about Dahab - calm, cheap, local, and beautiful. I asked about safety, and everyone told me it feels perfectly safe, and very easy to reach. So, exactly the same as the name of the restaurant in the picture below - sababa! (In Hebrew 'sababa' means something like cool, no problem, all right, great.)

I booked some hostel with pretty good reviews there, made plans how to get there by crossing the border at Taba, and I was ready for around 12 hours long trip from Tel Aviv. Or I just thought I was ready...

Crossing the Taba border, feeling helpless, and having the best taxi drive in my life!

After 5 hours long bus drive from Tel Aviv to Eilat, and attending the sunrise at the bus station in Eilat, I took the first bus to Taba at 8 am, and crossed the border by foot at around 10 am (here is well-explained how to go from Egypt to Israel by bus).

My plan was to take a bus from Taba to Dahab. Also, I expected other travellers to go in the same direction, as usual. However, after answering all the questions at the border for half an hour, I ended up alone, surrounded by tons of taxi drivers who were slowly driving around me wanting to drive me for $50-70, which, I knew, was way too much. They told me the first bus to Dahab was coming after 6 hours. I didn't know if I should have believed them, the timetable was only in Arabic, and I was also afraid to sit alone with the male taxi driver at my first time entering an African country. There was no place with wifi, and no restaurant or anything where I could ask for the information in English, or at least to sit and wait for the bus in the shadow (it was 50 degrees Celsius!). I walked around, tried to ask passengers for the information about the bus, there were no women around. I got scared to continue to the next place in Egypt, felt that it was a big mistake to just show up there solo, so I decided to walk back to the border ready to come back to Eilat at least to feel safe, but the sun was burning my head! 

The feelings of powerless and a big mistake were so overwhelming, and I just went to the closest wall, put my stuff next to it, and started crying! 

Fortunatelly, a few policemen came to me to ask what happened, as well as some Israelis coming back from Sinai. They were nice and kind, wanted to help me, and took me to a taxi driver who also drove them, assured me that I can feel safe with him, and he agreed to drive me for a good and real price.

And the taxi driver was really a relaxed and fun man with sunglasses and in traditional bedouin clothes! He bought me water, sandwich, and a mango shake, and as I've realized later, it is usual for longer taxi rides in Egypt, which I see as a real act of kindness. It was also my first time I tried mango shake, and it was the most delicious shake I've ever drunk. It was the first moment I really started falling in love with Egypt - through my stomach! During the two-hour long taxi ride we listened to Amr Diab, my favourite Arabic singer, and the driver was singing, telling me stories about Egypt, and teaching me some Arabic words. We also stopped at one famous view point where I took this picture.

And these are the pictures from the area around.

An unexpected hug?!

Everything was good - he took me to the hostel I booked, the location on the Google Maps was wrong, but we eventually found it.

So, I am arriving to the hostel, there are 5-6 extremely kind, friendly, and smiling men, no women around. The hostel boss was very funny, making jokes that were very similar to my jokes. Everything was sababa about the accomodation - I got a nice room with a terrace and a seaview as in the picture below, I got a soap, even a laundry soap, a big bottle of water, and he took some small fridge to my room to have cold water.

However, after all of that, when he was about to leave, he asked me to hug me after 'all the work we had to do about the room'. I was mentally and physically exhausted after the night spent on the bus and 15-hours long travelling, so I said 'yes, idk'. He hugged me with a big smile, and left quickly, and I remained confused...