12-Day Private Egypt Tour: Pyramids, Nile Cruise and Desert Oases

Our representative meets you at Cairo International Airport, holding a King Tut Tours sign, and helps you through arrivals. A private air-conditioned car takes you to your hotel in Cairo. The rest of the day is yours.

Overnight: Cairo hotel.

After breakfast your Egyptologist meets you at 9:00 AM for the Giza Plateau. You see the three pyramids of Khufu, Khafre and Menkaure, the Valley Temple and the Great Sphinx. The Great Pyramid alone holds more than two million limestone blocks, and it is still the largest pyramid ever built.

Next is the Grand Egyptian Museum, a short drive away. Its galleries hold the complete Tutankhamun collection, shown together for the first time, along with thousands of pieces from every period of ancient Egypt.

In the evening you are taken to Giza station for the sleeper train to Aswan, about 14 hours. You have a private cabin, and dinner and breakfast are served there. If you prefer, we can replace the train with a domestic flight.

Meals: Breakfast, lunch, dinner. Overnight: sleeper train.

You are met at Aswan station and driven south along the shore of Lake Nasser to Abu Simbel. Ramses II cut these two temples into the cliff to mark Egypt’s southern border with Nubia. The four seated colossi at the entrance of the Great Temple are among the largest statues to survive from ancient Egypt. The smaller temple is dedicated to Hathor and to his queen, Nefertari. Both temples were moved, block by block, in the 1960s to save them from the rising lake.

You return to Aswan in the afternoon.

Meals: Breakfast, lunch. Overnight: Aswan hotel.

After breakfast you are picked up at 10:00 AM and board your 5-star Nile cruise before lunch. In the afternoon you visit the Aswan High Dam, then take a small boat to Agilkia Island for Philae Temple, the temple of Isis. Like Abu Simbel, it was rescued from the waters and rebuilt on its present island, with the original layout kept intact.

Meals: Breakfast, lunch, dinner. Overnight: Nile cruise, Aswan.

The ship sails north. Your first stop is Kom Ombo, a riverside temple with a rare double plan: one half for Sobek, the crocodile god, and the other for Haroeris, a form of Horus. Back on board for lunch, you continue to Edfu and visit the Temple of Horus, the best-preserved temple in Egypt, with its roof, pylon and sanctuary still standing.

Meals: Breakfast, lunch, dinner. Overnight: Nile cruise.

You reach Luxor and cross to the West Bank with your Egyptologist. In the Valley of the Kings you enter several royal tombs, still painted in strong colors more than 3,000 years after they were sealed. Then you visit the terraced Temple of Hatshepsut at Deir el-Bahari, built for one of the few women to rule Egypt as pharaoh, and stop at the Colossi of Memnon on the way back.

Meals: Breakfast, lunch, dinner. Overnight: Nile cruise, Luxor.

After breakfast you leave the ship at 8:00 AM and drive west into the desert in a private air-conditioned vehicle, about five hours. You visit the Roman-era temple of Dush, near Baris, and spend your first night at a desert camp.

Meals: Breakfast, lunch, dinner. Overnight: desert camp.

Your 4×4 takes you north to Kharga Oasis. You see Qasr el-Labakha, a Roman fort on the old caravan route, and the oasis museum. You see the Temple of Hibis and the fort of Nadura from outside, then walk through the Bagawat cemetery, one of the oldest Christian cemeteries in the world, where some chapels still keep their painted domes. In the afternoon you drive on to Dakhla.

Meals: Breakfast, lunch, dinner. Overnight: simple oasis lodge in reed huts, Dakhla.

In the morning you walk the lanes of Al Qasr, a medieval mud-brick town with an old school, an olive press and a granary. You see the Roman tombs of Muzawaka from outside and visit the Roman temple of Deir el-Hagar. After lunch there is time to rest in a hot spring through the heat of the day.

In the late afternoon you set off by camel, about 10 km, across open desert to the foot of the escarpment, where camp is set up for the night.

Meals: Breakfast, lunch, dinner. Overnight: desert camp.

You drive north to Farafra, visit the Badr Museum, a local artist’s house-museum, and swim in the warm sulfur spring at Bir Sitta. In the afternoon you enter the White Desert, where wind has carved the chalk into mushroom and pillar shapes. You walk among them at sunset and sleep in camp under a very dark, very clear sky.

Good to know: nights are cold from October to March, so bring warm layers. Sleeping bags and blankets are provided.

Meals: Breakfast, lunch, dinner. Overnight: White Desert camp.

On the way north you stop at Crystal Mountain, a ridge of quartz, and cross the Black Desert, with its dark volcanic hills. In Bahariya you visit the hilltop ruins known as the English House, the Golden Mummies museum, the Tombs of the Nobles, the Temple of Alexander and the Temple of Ain el-Muftella. Then you drive back to Cairo, about four hours.

Meals: Breakfast, lunch. Overnight: Cairo hotel.

Breakfast and free time at the hotel until check-out at 12:00 PM. Our representative then takes you to Cairo International Airport for your flight home.

Meals: Breakfast.