No one climbs Mount Everest on a whim.

It is difficult and unpleasant.

Also dangerous.

Like, I looked it up, and just to get to base camp, so not the top of the mountain, but

the place where you start climbing to the top of the mountain, you have to hike for at

least two weeks straight.

Getting to the actual peak is going to cost you at least $35,000, and you'll spend

two months trudging headfirst into blistering winds, picking your way across ice, feeling

sick while you adjust to the altitude, and worrying about frostbite.

But imagine, if to summit Mount Everest, all you had to do was walk across a hot beach

in your swimsuit, wade into the warm water, and start swimming.

Just bright red and yellow corals, down through a hole in the reef, descending deeper and

deeper into the abyss.

I'm Sarah Wyman, and this is Atlas Obscura, an exploration of the world's strange, incredible,

and wondrous places.

Today, we are visiting the Mount Everest of Diving, the Blue Hole in the Red Sea.

It's been called one of the deadliest dive spots in the world.

Its nickname is the Diver's Cemetery, and there are literal tombstones on the beach.

But the most dangerous thing about the Blue Hole is not the Blue Hole.

We cannot call this place the dangerous place.

The dangerous come always from the diver's themselves.

Just after this.

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