9 Days elite Egypt Luxury Package

Nine days to experience Egypt the way it deserves.

Most travelers who have taken a 5- or 7-day trip to Egypt return wishing they had more time. The 9-day itinerary was built in response to that. Nothing is left out. Nothing is rushed. Every significant site gets the time it requires.

Abu Simbel is the addition that changes the trip. Ramesses II built two temples into a sandstone cliff at the edge of ancient Nubia. They were relocated — moved in their entirety, block by block — when the Aswan reservoir was built. An early morning flight from Aswan, two hours at the site, and you will understand why people say this is the most extraordinary thing they've seen in Egypt.

Highlights

• Grand Egyptian Museum — the most significant collection of ancient Egyptian objects in the world
• Giza Plateau and Saqqara — from 4,500-year-old pyramids to the world's first stone monument
• Valley of the Kings and the full Luxor West Bank — tombs chosen with your Egyptologist based on your interests
• Nile cruise: three nights Luxor to Aswan, with Edfu and Kom Ombo temple visits en route
• Philae Temple on its island in the Aswan reservoir
• Abu Simbel — two rock-cut temples carved into a cliff face in Nubia, with your Egyptologist at the site
• One private Egyptologist for all nine days — the context builds from the GEM in Cairo to the temples in Nubia

Who This Tour Is For

• Travelers who want to see the whole of Egypt without rushing any part of it
• Second-time visitors who want to see what they missed the first time — and go deeper
• Anyone for whom Abu Simbel is a non-negotiable part of the trip

What Makes This Tour Different

• Abu Simbel by early morning flight from Aswan — the temples face east and are best seen in the first hours of daylight. A private vehicle meets you on arrival and returns you to Aswan by midday. The logistics are handled; you only need to show up.
• West Bank Luxor in full — Valley of the Kings, Valley of the Queens, Deir el-Medina. Three sites that most itineraries compress into one. On the 9th day, each gets what it requires.
• Two full days in Cairo — the GEM on Day 1, Giza and Saqqara on Day 2. Neither site is borrowed from the other.
• Same Egyptologist, Cairo through Aswan — nine days, one guide. The depth of knowledge that builds when a specialist travels with you for a full week is qualitatively different from a series of city-specific guides.

A Note on Itinerary Sequencing

Nile cruise ships operate on fixed embarkation and disembarkation schedules that are set by the cruise company and may change depending on your travel dates. This means the sequence of days shown above — specifically, which site is visited on which cruise day — may be adjusted to align with the ship's sailing schedule when we book your departure.

What does not change: all sites listed are covered. Every temple, every guided visit, and every day of the cruise is included, regardless of the sequence your particular departure follows. Your Egyptologist remains with you for every site visit, in whatever order the cruise runs

In practice, the common sequencing variations are:

• Southbound (Luxor to Aswan): West Bank → Edfu → Kom Ombo → Aswan. This is the most common direction.
• Northbound (Aswan to Luxor): Aswan → Kom Ombo → Edfu → West Bank. Less common but operated by some cruise lines.

We confirm the exact daily sequence with you before departure, once the cruise departure dates are set. If the direction or sequencing matters to you specifically, tell us when you enquire, and we will match you to the right cruise departure.

What You'll Experience

Day 1 — Arrive in Cairo · Afternoon: Old Cairo 

Private airport transfer to your hotel. After you settle in, your Egyptologist meets you in the afternoon for a walk through Old Cairo — the Hanging Church, Ben Ezra Synagogue, and the Roman fort foundations of Babylon. A measured first afternoon: two thousand years of history in one walkable neighbourhood, before the serious archaeology begins. Evening at leisure. 

Day 2 — Grand Egyptian Museum 

The GEM occupies the morning in full. Your Egyptologist builds the session around the Tutankhamun collection — not as a checklist, but as a story. The golden mask, the canopic chest, the gilded shrine, the shabtis. Four thousand objects from a single tomb. The collection is deep enough that the morning could run to four hours without exhausting it. The guide calibrates the pace to what engages you. This is the context you'll carry through the rest of the trip. 

Day 3 — Giza Plateau & Saqqara 

Giza at dawn. The three pyramid complexes and the Sphinx — your Egyptologist explains the plateau not as a mystery but as an engineering and logistics project: how 20,000 workers quarried, moved, and placed two million stones in twenty years. The Solar Boat Museum if you want it. Saqqara in the afternoon. The Step Pyramid of Djoser — the oldest monumental stone structure in the world, predating Giza by several decades. The painted mastaba tombs of the Old Kingdom viziers. Saqqara is quieter, more personal, and more immediately human than Giza. The two sites together cover 1,500 years of Egyptian pyramid-building in one day. 

Day 4 — Fly to Luxor · Karnak · Board cruise same evening

Morning domestic flight from Cairo to Luxor. Private transfer from the airport to Karnak Temple — the largest religious complex ever built, 2,000 years of successive construction by thirty pharaohs. Your Egyptologist explains the political sequence: who built what court, and why. The hypostyle hall — 134 columns, the tallest 23 metres — is the single most visually overwhelming interior in ancient Egypt. Luxor Temple in the late afternoon at dusk: the sandstone turns amber and the scale becomes more intimate than Karnak's accumulated grandeur. Board your 5-star Nile cruise ship at the Luxor dock in the evening. Your cabin, the sundeck, and dinner on board. The cruise begins tonight — the first of four nights on the Nile. 

Day 5 — Luxor West Bank from cruise · Sail south after

The cruise ship is still docked in Luxor this morning. Private vehicle from the dock to the West Bank — Valley of the Kings, Hatshepsut's Temple at Deir el-Bahari, the Colossi of Memnon. Three tombs in the Valley chosen by your Egyptologist based on the conversation you had at the GEM four days ago — by now, you have the context to understand what you're seeing in the painted chambers. Hatshepsut's temple: your guide explains who systematically removed her cartouches and why it ultimately failed to erase her from history. Return to the cruise ship after the West Bank visit. Set sail south toward Edfu through the afternoon. Upper deck as the Nile landscape changes — the agricultural strip narrows, the desert approaches the water on both sides, the light flattens toward evening.

Day 6 — Sailing South · Edfu Temple 

The boat docked overnight near Edfu. Morning visit to the Temple of Horus by horse-drawn carriage from the dock — the best-preserved temple in Egypt, built during the Ptolemaic period in a style that deliberately echoes the ancient Egyptian forms. Your Egyptologist reads the reliefs on the inner walls, where the full mythology of Horus and Set is recorded in extraordinary detail. The morning light in the hypostyle hall is exceptional. Return to the ship and continue sailing south through the afternoon. 

Day 7 — Kom Ombo · Continue to Aswan 

Kom Ombo in the morning — the dual temple dedicated simultaneously to Sobek, the crocodile god, and Horus, the falcon god, each with its own sanctuary, its own priestly hierarchy, its own ritual calendar. The architectural symmetry is unlike anything else in Egypt. The small crocodile mummy museum attached to the temple is genuinely interesting. Continue sailing toward Aswan through the afternoon. The Nile narrows, and the landscape changes — the first granite outcrops of the Aswan region appear in the river. 

Day 8 — Aswan: Philae Temple · High Dam · Disembark 

Disembarkation in Aswan. Philae Temple by motorboat — the island sanctuary of Isis, relocated stone by stone before the Aswan reservoir rose in 1968. One of the most quietly beautiful sites in Egypt, with a human scale that the larger temples on the mainland don't have. The High Dam in the afternoon: your Egyptologist explains the engineering, the cost, and the consequences — the Nubian communities relocated, the ancient sites surveyed and partially saved. The UNESCO salvage operation that saved Philae and Abu Simbel. Hotel check-in in Aswan. Evening on the corniche.

Day 9 — Abu Simbel · Departure 

Early morning flight to Abu Simbel. The temples face east — the light at sunrise is the only time the full façade is in direct sun, which is when the scale of the four seated colossi is most readable. Your Egyptologist is with you at the site and provides context that the setting itself doesn't: what the temples meant politically, what the 1968 relocation required technically, and why the astronomical alignment Ramesses II built into the sanctuary was reproduced — with an error of one day — at the new location. Return flight to Aswan by midday. Private transfer to Aswan Airport for your onward international flight or Cairo connection.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Abu Simbel worth the extra days? 

Consistently yes. The temples are the most visually extraordinary site in Egypt — two rock-cut sanctuaries 65 metres deep into a sandstone cliff, fronted by 20-metre seated colossi of Ramesses II. What makes it genuinely moving is the story of their relocation: in 1968, a UNESCO operation dismantled both temples into 20-tonne blocks and reassembled them 60 metres higher to save them from the rising waters of the Aswan reservoir. Your Egyptologist explains this at the site. The combination of the physical scale and the modern engineering story is unlike anything else in Egypt. 

What is the Abu Simbel astronomical alignment? 

The Great Temple was oriented so that twice a year — around Ramesses II's birthday and coronation dates — sunlight penetrates the full length of the inner corridor and illuminates the sanctuary statues. The 1968 engineers recalculated and reproduced this alignment at the new site, with an error of one day. Your guide explains this during the visit — it's one of the more surprising facts about a site that already surprises people. 

Can the itinerary be reversed, starting from Aswan? 

Yes. The circuit can run south to north: fly to Aswan first, with Abu Simbel as an early priority, then cruise north from Aswan to Luxor, and finally fly to Cairo. Some travelers prefer this direction as it ends in Cairo with easy international flight connections. 

Is there a single supplement for solo travelers? 

No. The per-person rate is the same regardless of whether you are traveling alone, as a couple, or in a small group. There is no supplement for single occupancy.