There isn’t much about the view along the Red Sea’s northeast coastline that gives you a clue to its promised future. Flat, burnt-orange sands loll gently to the deep blue coastline of this remote patch of Saudi Arabia. The sky, most of the time, lacks the haze usual for the overheated Gulf states, a climatic feature that has made Sharm el-Sheikh and Hurghada on the sea’s Egyptian shore popular holiday resorts for British and Russian sun-seekers. The Sinai mountains that are Sharm’s backdrop are clearly visible from the Saudi side.
Those mountains are pretty much all there is to disturb the gaze. In one part of the beach, a broken-up Catalina seaplane, its distinctive outline still recognisable, rots slowly where it was abandoned 60 years
