Ahram Online: Tell us more about the idea of the recently launched Bedouin trail

Ben Hoffler: The Bedouin Trail was launched in May 2023 and is the first intercontinental hiking route between Africa and Asia and the longest hiking trail in the Arab World.

Connecting Petra in Jordan with Luxor in Egypt, it runs 1,200 km between two great capitals of the ancient world, crossing continents, nations and the lands of seven Bedouin tribes.

It is a fusion of three Bedouin-created community tourism projects – the newly-launched Wadi Rum Trail in Jordan, Egypt's Red Sea Mountain Trail, and the Sinai Trail. The Bedouin Trail aligns with long sections of each one and extends them into new, adjoining areas, to become the intercontinental route it is today. The idea evolved over time, starting with the Sinai Trail in Egypt.

AO: How did the Sinai Trail pave the way for this initiative?

Despite these challenges, the Sinai Trail grew quickly after opening, against what we expected. People came to hike it from Cairo, other parts of Egypt and all over the world. In later years it grew into the most successful, highly-decorated adventure tourism project in Egypt's history. 

The Sinai Trail gave access to one of the most beautiful, fabled wildernesses on earth. It helped people rediscover a deep human bond with nature; it gave a way of escaping the busy, tech-heavy lives many lead in the towns and returning to a slower, simpler way of life. More than anything, it connected people to the Bedouins. 

Eight Bedouin tribes work on the Sinai Trail, and hikers on the Sinai Trail walk with guides from each one when passing their lands. 

It opened a space for learning more about the traditional knowledge, skills and heritage of the Bedouin, which made a powerful impact on many hikers. With hikers walking with Bedouins from different tribes, it also showed something of the rich diversity that exists in tribal cultures within Egypt. 

AO: What impact did the success of the Sinai Trail have on local communities?

BH: The Sinai Trail made a positive impact on the communities around it; it created legitimate jobs and opportunities in some of the most remote parts of Egypt, in which they had not existed before; especially jobs of a kind that kept traditional knowledge and skills relevant in a time when they are being increasingly forgotten and lost.

It opened a space of intergenerational exchange where older Bedouin guides could pass their knowledge to younger apprentices.

Moreover, it also gave the Bedouins a platform for representing the Sinai in their own voice; for showing a more hopeful, positive side and ultimately, a more accurate side of a region that had often been misrepresented in the media. 

A new philosophy of tourism grew out of the Sinai Trail; a new model for creating tourism projects emerged from its pioneering work. 

AO: What other hiking routes sprung off the Sinai Trail?

BH: Sinai Trail inspired the creation of a sister project in the Eastern Desert of Egypt, known as the Red Sea Mountain Trail, which opened an entirely new area of Egypt for adventure tourism.

Its success for hikers and local communities underlined again how this Bedouin model of tourism worked; additionally, it showed how the model could be transferred to new regions.

After the Red Sea Mountain Trail, we began developing a new trail project in the deserts of Wadi Rum in southern Jordan, known as the Wadi Rum Trail.

It was at this stage the idea of a longer, more ambitious path that could tie all three Bedouin trails into a single long-distance hiking route traversing the Bedouin deserts between Africa and Asia, emerged.

AO: What is the deeper idea behind the Bedouin Trail?

There is no better way to understand who the Bedouin are, where they have come from, and perhaps to glimpse where they are going, than to walk with them. The Bedouin Trail opens up a way to walk with tribes across the region and we hope it stands as a monument to a nomadic civilization of the greatest antiquity. 

As well as opening a space for people to learn more about the Bedouin, discover the natural beauty of the Middle East and be part of tourism initiatives that leave the most positive impacts behind them, the Bedouin Trail seeks to tell stories that matter on other levels.

It crosses landscapes upon which many peoples have left their marks, from prehistoric nomads to the Pharaohs, Romans, Nabataeans, Ottomans, and others, underlining something of how the modern Middle East became the place it is today.

In its final stages, it runs into the Nile Valley, which represents one of the oldest heartlands of settled civilization in the world; in doing so, we hope to tell an origin story of the settled world in which most of us live today, underlining how it emerged from a nomadic one to which all humanity ultimately traces its roots.

The Bedouin Trail is a path that tells a story not only about the Bedouin but about the origins of humanity and the world today. 

AO: And what challenges loom ahead?

BH: The Bedouin Trail is an initiative of unparalleled scope in the Middle East and there were many challenges. The Sinai Trail was created in a region where tourism had virtually collapsed. It was about encouraging people to see beyond the travel warnings and portrayals of the Sinai as a danger zone, which was not easy.

The Red Sea Mountain Trail was developed in an entirely new area for hiking tourism, where everything had to be started from scratch.

The Wadi Rum Trail in Jordan came with the challenge of boosting hiking tourism where mass market 4x4 tours dominate.

Egypt and Jordan also gave very different working contexts. Whilst Jordan has moved with global trends, embracing adventure tourism and making it a major pillar of its tourism market, Egypt continues not just to overlook the great potential of its wilderness regions for adventure tourism - focusing instead on the older markets of antiquities and beaches - but it has taken progressive, backward steps from where its adventure tourism industry was 20 years ago. 

The Sinai Trail and Red Sea Mountain Trail have proved the potential Egypt has in adventure tourism. 

Egypt has an extraordinary community of people at the grassroots level, all over the country, who do amazing things in developing adventure tourism. The industry has grown and continues to grow through them, mostly with voluntary efforts.

We hope Egypt will begin to invest more in its adventure tourism, as its regional neighbours Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and others are doing. 

AO: What are the future plans?

BH: The Bedouin Trail has a lot of scope for further development. There has been talk of widening it into a broader network of trails that reaches into other Bedouin parts of the Middle East, showing new regions and tribal cultures.

It could align with old pilgrim routes such as the Darb El-Hajj in Saudi Arabia, moving south towards Islam's holy cities of Medina and Mecca. It could align with ancient trade routes.

It could be extended into other parts of Egypt and North Africa, where nomadic cultures with different origins and languages are found. We created the Bedouin Trail not just for now, but for the long term; we hope it will last decades, even centuries, as other travelling routes have done in history, and we hope the generations that follow it will carry it onwards, extending it when circumstances allow in a way that works for their own times.