The Itinerary
7 days. Giza at the front, three nights of Zamna in the middle, the Red Sea to put you back together.
LAND CAIRO · PYRAMIDS, SPHINX, INSIDE A PYRAMID
Land in Cairo in the morning and drop your bags at a hotel that looks straight out at the Giza plateau. Then we go and stand under the last surviving wonder of the ancient world.
The three pyramids, the Great Sphinx, and a descent into a pyramid, which is a narrow and steep climb down into the burial chambers and takes about thirty minutes. Evening is the Grand Egyptian Museum, where Tutankhamun's full burial collection sits together for the first time in a century.
Then the welcome dinner, the one where the group stops being strangers. Fatteh, and afterwards a cafe in Khan el-Khalili that has been standing since 1486, once a refugee shelter, once a princess's house, with a crypt underneath it from the fight against the French occupation in 1798. We do not name our secret spots.
FLY TO SHARM EL SHEIKH · ZAMNA, NIGHT ONE
Left: Khoroum Valley, the desert amphitheatre you walk into on night one. Right: what the Sharm El Sheikh edition actually looks like. Our batch is there for Nov 20, 21 and 22.
A slow morning with the pyramids in front of you and coffee in your hand, then an hour in Khan el-Khalili where everyone picks one perfume, on Team OJ.
Midday flight from Cairo to Sharm El Sheikh, an hour in the air. Check in, sleep in the afternoon, and take it seriously, because tonight runs late.
Gates open at Khoroum Valley at 8:30 PM and we are on the road early enough to be there when they do. Night one of Zamna starts in a natural rock valley in the Sinai desert.
DAHAB · THE BLUE HOLE · ZAMNA, NIGHT TWO
Night two at Khoroum Valley. MRAK, Mind Against and the Zamna sound system, filmed on the valley floor.
Out early and two hours up the coast to Dahab, an old Bedouin fishing village that never quite agreed to grow up.
The Blue Hole is here, a sinkhole in the reef about 130 metres deep that you can snorkel into straight from the shore. Lunch is on cushions with your feet almost in the water, in a town where nobody has been in a hurry since 1980.
We start back by half three and you are at the hotel by half five, with time to shower properly and eat. Gates at Khoroum Valley open at 8:30 PM and we are there when they do. Turning up late to your own festival is not a thing we do.
PARASAILING · FARSHA SUNSET · ZAMNA, CLOSING NIGHT
Morning is parasailing. You go up around fifty metres over the Red Sea on a tow line behind a boat, four to six minutes in the air with the reef and the Sinai mountains laid out underneath you, and the option to dip your feet on the way back down. About ninety minutes door to door, harness, life jacket and full briefing included.
Then the afternoon is yours. Naama Bay and the Old Market at your own speed, shisha, fresh mango juice, a nap, whatever your body is asking for by day four.
Sunset at Farsha, the cafe cut straight into the cliff face, all low cushions and lanterns stacked down the rock with the Red Sea dropping away below. The sun is down by ten to five in November, so we are back with time to eat and change properly.
Then the closing night. Sasha and John Digweed play this one out, and if you know anything about the last thirty years of dance music, you already understand why that matters.
RAS MOHAMMED · TWO DIVES AND SNORKELLING
Recovery, by seawater. One boat, one full day, out to Ras Mohammed where the reef wall drops off into deep blue and the visibility is so absurd that your photos will look edited.
Two dives, in the same water the Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara diving scene was shot in. If you have never dived before this is the right place to start, the instructors here are among the best trained anywhere.
Not diving? Snorkel the same reef straight off the boat. Lunch on the deck, sleep in the sun, back by evening with the whole night free.
QUAD SAFARI · STARGAZING AND BBQ IN THE DESERT
Slow morning, then an afternoon pickup and out into the Sinai desert on quad bikes. Around forty five kilometres of open sand, with a stop at Echo Mountain to hear the thing it is named for.
A Bedouin camp as the light goes. Tea first, then a BBQ dinner in the sand, a fire, and a camel if you want one. This is the last dinner together and it is a good one to go out on.
Then the telescope comes out and an astronomer walks you through what you are actually looking at. Out here with no town light there is a great deal of it.
DEPART SHARM EL SHEIKH
Breakfast, a last swim if your flight is late enough, then the transfer to Sharm El Sheikh airport.
You leave with sand in your bag, a ring in your ears, and the fairly specific feeling of having danced in a desert that has been watching people dance for five thousand years.
