Coloured Canyon

A crack in the desert floor of the Sinai opens into a winding corridor of sandstone banded in red, pink, yellow, violet, grey and white, its walls swirling with colour where the rock has been smoothed by wind and water. The Coloured Canyon, in the mountains north-west of Nuweiba in Egypt's South Sinai Governorate, is a narrow slot often only two to ten metres wide and about 25 to 30 metres deep, with rock formations rising up to around forty metres above the path.

The canyon appears to have begun as a great natural fissure in the sandstone, probably opened by an earthquake, and was then widened and sculpted by erosion. The colours come from the mixture of minerals in the rock, which also contains inclusions of granite and traces of ancient corals, a reminder that this material was once laid down under water. In places the passage pinches so tight that walkers must squeeze between the walls; elsewhere it opens into small chambers where the bands of colour can be seen running across the cliffs. The area receives only a handful of rain showers a year, but when flash floods do come, water drains through these gorges towards Wadi Watir.

The canyon sits on the edge of the Tih plateau. Nearby are Gebel El-Berka and, further west, the White Canyon, another slot in the same rock. Local tradition holds that Moses passed this way during the Exodus, a story that, like many in the Sinai, belongs to folklore rather than documented history. The trailhead is reached by four-wheel-drive across the desert, after which a narrow path descends into the canyon.

Getting there

The canyon lies in the mountains north-west of Nuweiba, in South Sinai; Sharm el-Sheikh is about 138 km away in a straight line. The nearest airport is Taba International (TCP), about 53 km away in a straight line. The closest town in a straight line, Haql, is in Saudi Arabia across the Gulf of Aqaba, so access is from the Egyptian side via Nuweiba.