Bustan el Birka

 


You can find a large number of Byzantine ruins in the Bustan al-Birka (al-Freah) area. They are often not easy to recognize, because the Bedouin built similar structures. One giveaway is the rocks: Byzantine builders did not break them, as the Bedouin do, and instead used very large stones placed together skillfully with only earth as mortar. Another clue is the door: if it is very small and has a channel-like entrance, it is most probably a Byzantine building.

Photos coming soon.


Popular posts from this blog

Sharm el Sheikh

Image
  Srictly speaking Sharm el Sheikh is only one hub along a stretch of resorts, but usually the whole area is referred to as Sharm el Sheikh.  Locations within Sharm el Sheikh: Sharm el Maya, El Hadaba, Naama Bay, Shark Bay, Montazah, and Nabq along the coast, plus Rawasat a little inland.  More info and map: Sharm el Sheikh   Photos were taken in 2006, 2011, 2014, and 2026.
Read more

Welcome!

Image
This is a screenshot of what the Sinai Photo Archive used to look like. It was part of the Sinai Trekking and Safari website and, like the rest of the site, was available in five languages.  As you can see, 27,396 photos were available at the time, all tagged by location and other important keywords. For example, if you searched the tags for “Mt. Sinai + camel + snow”, you would find all the photos taken there after a snowfall that also included a camel. Perhaps more importantly, the archive was created as a supplement to the trekking and safari guidebook . Every location mentioned in the book, however small or little known, was tagged, so readers could get a visual impression of each place.  Unfortunately, it is all gone. The website crashed in 2016, and all this work was lost. I still have the photos on my hard drives, but I will never attempt to rebuild the archive to the same extent. It was a huge amount of work, uploading more than 27,000 photos to the server and then tag...
Read more

Dahab

Image
  Livelier and more developed than Nuweiba, Dahab is the second resort city of South Sinai, but it is more human-scale than Sharm el Sheikh. Locations within Dahab: Wadi el Beda, Asala, Eel Garden, Light House, Masbat, Mashraba, City Center, Laguna, and Wadi Gnai.  More info and map: Dahab Photos were taken at different times, as indicated.
Read more