الصحراء الزرقاء

In the mountains near Saint Catherine in southern Sinai lies one of Egypt's strangest sights: a scatter of huge desert boulders painted vivid blue. The work of Belgian artist Jean Vérame, who coloured the rocks in the early 1980s to celebrate peace in the region, the Blue Desert sets flashes of electric colour against the raw ochre and grey of the Sinai wilderness.

The paint has faded over the decades, so some boulders are now soft, ghostly blue while others have weathered almost bare, which only adds to the surreal, end-of-the-world feel. Reaching it means a short off-road trip into empty mountain desert, usually combined with the climb up Mount Sinai or a visit to Saint Catherine's Monastery.