Suez Canal

The Suez Canal is a 193-kilometre waterway cut through the Egyptian desert between Port Said on the Mediterranean and Suez on the Red Sea. Ships transit in convoys, and the passage takes about 12 to 16 hours. The canal has no locks, as the Mediterranean and Red Sea sit at roughly the same level. For most of the journey, the view is flat desert on both sides, with occasional military outposts and small settlements along the banks. The newer parallel channel, opened in 2015, allows two-way traffic along part of the route. The Friendship Bridge (the El Ferdan Railway Bridge) crosses the canal near Ismailia. You may see small ferries shuttling people and vehicles across the canal at points where no bridge exists yet. The transit is more of a curiosity than a spectacle, but it is genuinely interesting to watch the scale of the engineering and the steady stream of container ships passing in the opposite lane.