In late 2013 three working desert guides operating out of Hurghada and Marsa Alam met at a marina café in El Gouna to discuss a problem all three had been running into for the previous five years. International visitors were arriving with photocopies of a topographic field map of Mons Porphyrites published in 1998 by a British research mission. The map had been scanned and re-uploaded by various travel blogs without the authors' knowledge, and by 2013 it bore almost no resemblance to the actual track conditions on the ground. Two of the four routes shown on the map had been impassable since the 2010 winter rains; one had been blocked by a permanent SCA gate since 2008.
The three guides — Yusuf Abou Khairy, Mounir El-Sharif and Hala Abdelghaffar — decided to write down what they actually knew, in English, with dates on every claim, and put it online. The fourth founder, the SCA inspector Mahmoud El-Naggar (no relation to the Asyut family of the same name), joined a month later. By March 2014 they had registered Saqalan Expeditions L.L.C. in Quseir and published the first edition of the Mons Porphyrites file.
Twelve years on, the editorial discipline is essentially what was agreed at that El Gouna meeting. No commission income. Every claim dated. The routes are driven once a year. Operator listings carry a published-to-the-public note explaining the relationship history; if we have not personally worked with the operator, they do not go on the list. Subscribers can request the underlying GPS tracks for any published route.
The four editors below cover the geography between them. Each is responsible for the annual field verification of their assigned routes and for the bilingual translation of SCA bulletins that fall in their patch.
Working desert guide since 1998. Native of the Ababda Bedouin community of Wadi el-Gemal. Edits the Wadi el-Hammamat and Mons Claudianus files and is the standing contact for the Quseir office.
Mechanical engineering background, ten years with the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism before joining Saqalan. Mounir runs the Mons Porphyrites file and the Hurghada-base operator shortlist.
Marine biologist, certified PADI dive master since 2006. Hala edits the Coral Reefs file and the Marsa Alam regional walkthrough from her desk in Port Ghalib. She is the bilingual lead for dive-operator correspondence.
Former SCA inspector for the Quseir district (2002–2013). Mahmoud runs the Quseir Old Port file, the operator background checks, and the day-to-day office. He is the person who reads incoming desk mail.
The bench is small because the field is small. We pay a fixed stipend out of the subscription revenue and ask for between two and four signed pieces over the term.
Université de Strasbourg, Roman provincial archaeology. Currently on a two-year term running through 2027; contributes the inscription-readings supplements to the Mons Porphyrites and Mons Claudianus files. Has published the standard French-language edition of the Mons Claudianus ostraca.
Retired Red Sea harbourmaster (Quseir port, 1996–2019). Captain Mansoura writes the operational pieces on the Quseir Old Port file — currents, ferry routes, the survival of the Hajj pilgrim trade into the early 20th century, and the museum collection at the restored customs house.
| Year | What changed |
|---|---|
| 2014 | Saqalan Expeditions L.L.C. registered in Quseir. Three field files at launch: Mons Porphyrites, Wadi el-Hammamat, Quseir Old Port. |
| 2016 | Coral Reefs file added with Hala Abdelghaffar joining as resident editor. First Field-tier printed notebook shipped from Cairo. |
| 2018 | Mons Claudianus file completed after three full seasons of verification trips. Operator-listing standard formalised; commission income explicitly forbidden in the company articles. |
| 2020 | Pandemic suspension of normal field cycle from March to October. Editorial pages held at last-verified status with a banner; subscriptions paused for affected months. |
| 2022 | Desert Safari file launched after eighteen months of operator-vetting work. Marsa Alam regional walkthrough added in the footer. |
| 2024 | The site moves to its current domain at explore-egypt.xyz. Bilingual Arabic précis added to every field file. |
| 2026 | Two-year contributor bench formalised with Dr. Maréchal and Captain Mansoura. GPS-track release for subscribers entered as a standing offer. |
The funding model is the single most important reason the field guide works. If we earned a commission on bookings made through listed operators, we would have an incentive to keep operators on the list past their point of failure. We do not, and we explain that publicly because it is the difference between an editorial archive and a marketing site dressed up as one.
A claim on these pages is verified when an editor has either personally observed it on the ground in the previous twelve months or has reconciled it against a primary published source. The list of acceptable primary sources is: the published season reports of the British Eastern Desert Survey, the French ifao publication series, the Polish Mons Claudianus reports, the Egyptian SCA Quena and Red Sea inspectorate bulletins, and the on-site signage as photographed and dated. Anything else is provisional and is marked as such.
A claim with one source is published as provisional. A claim sourced only to commercial guidebooks or to undated online material is not published. A claim that cannot be reconciled between two sources is published with both versions stated and a note flagging the discrepancy.
If we cannot defend it in writing on a Wednesday afternoon, it does not go on the page.
The change log at the foot of every field file records every published revision with the date, the editor signature, and a one-sentence note. The log is append-only; corrections appear as new entries and the old entries are not silently overwritten. This is the structural reason our pages do not look like a content-marketing site.
Mons Porphyrites and Wadi el-Hammamat are the longest. Either gives a fair picture of how the desk works.