The first female Bedouin guides, from right, Selima, Umm Yasser, Umm Soliman, and Aicha, pose for a photograph in Wadi Sahw, Abu Zenima, in South Sinai, Egypt.

Four Bedouin women are for the first time leading tours in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, breaking new ground in their deeply conservative community, where women almost never work outside the home or interact with outsiders.

The women guide groups of female tourists through the stunning mountain landscapes, part of a Bedouin-led project of hiking tours in southern Sinai aiming to benefit a population that often complains it is left out of major tourism development.