20 Day Egypt Tour Packages

That is why they are absent from every 7, 10 and 15 day itinerary. Fitting a Lake Nasser cruise into an Egypt tour costs four days: one to fly south and board at Abu Simbel, three to sail north to Aswan. Our 20 day Egypt tour packages are built around those four days. Everything else in the itinerary — Cairo, Alexandria, the Nile, the Red Sea, the desert — is also on our shorter tours. The lake is the part you only get here.

Comparing Our Three 20 Day Egypt Tour Packages

All three include the 3-night Lake Nasser cruise from Abu Simbel to Aswan, one night in Alexandria, four nights all-inclusive in Hurghada, a night camping in the White Desert, and domestic flights. Prices are per person sharing in our Gold tier during the 1 May to 30 September season; the full room-and-season tables are on each tour page.

Cairo, Alexandria and the Pyramid Fields: Days 1 to 6

Every route gives Cairo three days rather than one. The first is the Giza plateau — the three pyramids and the Sphinx — followed by the museum: the Grand Egyptian Museum with the complete Tutankhamun collection on two of the routes, the original Egyptian Museum in Tahrir Square on the Ultimate itinerary. The second day is medieval and Coptic Cairo: the Citadel of Saladin, founded in 1176, with the Alabaster Mosque of Muhammad Ali inside its walls; the Hanging Church and the churches of Abu Serga and Ben Ezra in Old Cairo; and Khan el-Khalili in the late afternoon, when the bazaar is at its best.

Then two days on the Mediterranean. Alexandria is Greek and Roman rather than pharaonic — the Catacombs of Kom el-Shoqafa, Pompey’s Pillar, the Roman theatre at Kom el-Dikka, Qaitbay’s fort on the site of the ancient lighthouse, and the modern Library. You sleep in Alexandria, which means the second day is not a rushed round trip from Cairo.

The sixth day is the one many tours skip: Saqqara, Memphis and Dahshur together. The Step Pyramid of Djoser at Saqqara is the oldest large stone building in the world, and the Bent and Red Pyramids at Dahshur are where the true pyramid shape was worked out — a century before Giza. Seeing them in one day, in order, is the clearest lesson in pyramid building you can get.

Lake Nasser: Four Days Almost Nobody Sees

On day seven you fly to Abu Simbel and see the two temples of Ramses II and Nefertari, then board your ship in their shadow. Abu Simbel was itself cut into blocks and raised 65 metres between 1964 and 1968, and from the deck you can see the artificial hill it now sits on.

Three days of sailing follow, with a landing each day. Qasr Ibrim is the only site on the lake still in its original position, a fortress on what was once a cliff and is now an island, viewed from the water. Amada is the oldest temple in Nubia, moved 2.6 kilometres on rails in one piece because its painted reliefs were too fine to cut. Wadi es-Seboua, “the valley of lions”, is a temple of Ramses II approached along an avenue of sphinxes; Dakka nearby was begun by a Nubian king and finished by the Ptolemies and Romans. On the last morning, at Kalabsha near the dam, the largest free-standing temple in Nubia stands beside the small rock-cut shrine of Beit el-Wali and the kiosk of Kertassi. Then you are in Aswan, and the Nile proper begins.

The Nile, Three Ways

From Aswan the three routes part company. Aswan itself is the same on each: the High Dam, the Unfinished Obelisk in the granite quarry, and the Temple of Isis at Philae, rebuilt on Agilkia Island when its original island was drowned.

On Egyptian Enchantment you board a 5-star cruise ship for three nights to Luxor, calling at Kom Ombo and Edfu. Edfu is the best-preserved temple in Egypt, built by the Ptolemies between 237 and 57 BC, and the cruise ship’s timetable gets you there before the day tours arrive.

On the Cultural Tour you sail the same stretch on a dahabiya, a two-masted sailing boat with a handful of cabins. It moors at islands and villages where the big ships cannot, and it sails rather than motors when the wind allows.

On the Ultimate itinerary the Nile leg is a felucca: two nights on deck under blankets, the Daraw camel market on the way, and Kom Ombo and Edfu reached by road from the riverbank. It is the least expensive of the three by some margin and, for some travellers, the most memorable.

All three end the Nile in Luxor with the West Bank — the Valley of the Kings, the temple of Hatshepsut at Deir el-Bahari, the Colossi of Memnon — and the East Bank: Karnak, the largest religious complex ever built at roughly 100 hectares, and Luxor Temple as the light goes.

Hurghada and the White Desert: Days 13 to 19

From Luxor it is a four-hour drive over the Eastern Desert to Hurghada, where you have four nights all-inclusive and three full days that belong to you. Snorkel, dive, take a boat to Giftun Island, or do nothing at all — after twelve days of temples, most people choose the last.

A flight returns you to Cairo for the final chapter. On day eighteen you drive west to the Bahariya Oasis and on into the Black Desert, past Crystal Mountain, to camp in the White Desert among wind-carved chalk formations that turn pink at sunset and silver under the moon. Dinner is cooked over a fire; the sky is the darkest you will see in Egypt. You are back in Cairo the next evening for a last night before your flight home.

Travelling Solo on a 20 Day Egypt Tour

Two variants of the Ultimate route are designed for people travelling alone: the same Lake Nasser, felucca, Hurghada and White Desert itinerary in a smaller group of at most 12, so that no one is the odd traveller out. See the Egypt 20 Day Itinerary for Solo Travelers and the single-occupancy Egypt Itinerary 20 Days for Solo Travelers.

Built Around Who You Are Travelling With

Every route is a small group of at most 16 people, guided throughout by licensed Egyptologists. Egypt Best Vacations is run by Essam Ali, an Egyptologist based in Luxor who still leads tours himself, and the company holds three consecutive TripAdvisor Travelers’ Choice Awards, for 2024, 2025 and 2026. Twenty days is a long time to spend with a guide, and it is the guiding that people write to us about afterwards.

The pacing is deliberate. Long days at Giza and in the Valley of the Kings are followed by afternoons on the water; the three lake days and the four Hurghada days are as much rest as sightseeing. Families find that children who are flagging by day ten come back to life on the felucca and in the desert camp. Couples tend to choose the dahabiya. Older travellers usually prefer the cruise ship, which has the most comfortable cabins and the gentlest routine.

Accommodation Tiers

Gold and Platinum are our own tier names for the level of hotel and ship on each route. The Lake Nasser cruise, the Hurghada resort and the desert camp are the same across tiers.

Get a Quote for Your 20 Day Egypt Tour Package

Three routes, $2,950 to $3,990 per person, departing every day of the year. Tell us your dates, your party and which Nile you want — ship, dahabiya or felucca — and we will send an exact quote within a day, with the room-and-season pricing for your tier. Winter departures and the Abu Simbel sun-festival dates of 22 February and 22 October book out early.