On Monday 2 August 2027 the moon’s shadow crosses the Nile Valley and lands almost squarely on Luxor. This 2027 solar eclipse Nile cruise puts you on the sun deck of a ship moored in Luxor for the whole of it: around 6 minutes and 22 seconds of totality, within a second of the longest duration available anywhere on the eclipse path, and the longest totality reachable from easily accessible land until June 2114.
Duration is not Luxor’s only advantage. At maximum eclipse the sun sits 82 degrees above the horizon, almost directly overhead, so nothing on the riverbank — palm, minaret or neighbouring moored ship — can come between you and the corona. And Upper Egypt in early August is about as close to a weather guarantee as eclipse chasing offers: the sky over Luxor on this date has been clear year after year on record.
The geography also explains the direction of travel. Luxor sits close to the centre line. Aswan, 210 kilometres upriver, falls outside the path of totality altogether and sees only a very deep partial eclipse. So the eclipse belongs to Day 1, in Luxor, before the ship moves anywhere. Only afterwards do you turn south — through the Esna Lock to the Ptolemaic temple of Horus at Edfu, the double sanctuary at Kom Ombo, the colossi of Abu Simbel and finally Philae.
Five days, four nights, full board, and a qualified Egyptologist with you at every site. One departure, one date, and no second chance in our lifetimes.
Planning around the eclipse? Read our full guide to the Luxor 2027 total solar eclipse, or compare this cruise with our 2027 Luxor eclipse day tours, and the 13-day Luxor eclipse tour with Cairo, Nile cruise and Sharm El-Sheikh.
Our representative meets you inside the arrivals hall at Luxor International Airport, holding a signboard with your name, and will help you through visa and passport formalities before your transfer to the ship. Guests already in Luxor are collected from their hotel. Embarkation is early — this is the one morning of the trip where the clock genuinely matters.
You go straight to Karnak, the largest religious complex ever raised in the ancient world and the work of roughly two thousand years of pharaohs. We start at opening time, partly for the temperature and partly because your guide wants you back aboard in good time. In the Great Hypostyle Hall, 134 columns still carry their architraves; the sun cuts through the clerestory openings much as it was designed to.
Back on board by late morning. Your guide runs through eclipse safety and the sequence of the event, and the sun deck is set up with shade and cold drinks. The partial phases begin around three quarters of an hour before midday and build slowly — the light goes strange and metallic long before anything looks obviously wrong.
Totality begins at about 1:02 in the afternoon and holds until roughly 1:08, with maximum eclipse at about 1:05. For those six minutes and twenty-two seconds the sun is completely covered, the corona is out, and it is safe to look with the naked eye. The sun is 82 degrees up — almost directly overhead — so you are looking nearly straight into the sky above the Nile. The partial phases finish in the early afternoon and lunch follows on board.
In the late afternoon, once the heat has broken, you walk to Luxor Temple. It is at its best after dark, when the floodlights pick out the colonnade of Amenhotep III and the Roman-period painting in the imperial cult chamber. Dinner and overnight aboard, moored in Luxor.
Meals Plan: Lunch & Dinner
An early breakfast, then across to the west bank while it is still bearable. In the Valley of the Kings your standard ticket admits you to three tombs from the group open on the day — the rotation protects the painted plaster, so nobody sees the same three. The tombs were emptied in antiquity, almost without exception; what survives is not treasure but decoration, and the decoration is the point: painted ceilings, the Book of Gates, colour that has held for three thousand years underground.
From there to Deir el-Bahari, where Hatshepsut’s terraced mortuary temple is built straight into the cliff face — the most architecturally radical building of the New Kingdom, and a deliberate statement by a woman ruling as king. On the way back, the Colossi of Memnon: two quartzite statues of Amenhotep III that once flanked the entrance pylon of the largest mortuary temple ever built on the west bank, now almost entirely gone.
Lunch aboard as the ship casts off and heads upriver. The afternoon is spent on deck watching the valley narrow, and in the evening the ship enters the Esna Lock. Overnight in Edfu.
Optional tour: Sunrise Hot Air Ballooning over Luxor
Meals Plan: Breakfast, Lunch & Dinner
A horse-drawn caleche takes you from the mooring to the temple of Horus at Edfu. Built between 237 and 57 BC under the Ptolemies, it is the most completely preserved temple in Egypt — roof, pylon, sanctuary and the granite naos still standing — and its walls carry the fullest surviving account of temple ritual anywhere: the daily service, the festival calendar, the annual Feast of the Beautiful Meeting when Hathor sailed downriver from Dendera.
The ship sails on to Kom Ombo, which sits on a bluff directly above the river. It is the only major Egyptian temple built as a true double: two parallel axes, two sanctuaries, two sets of doorways, one half for Sobek the crocodile god and one for Haroeris — Horus the Elder. The small crocodile museum next door holds mummified crocodiles recovered from the site. Sail on to Aswan; overnight moored there.
Meals Plan: Breakfast, Lunch & Dinner
A very early start — you leave Aswan before dawn for the three-and-a-half-hour drive south across the desert, timed so you are at the temples in the cooler part of the morning. Abu Simbel sits about 280 kilometres from Aswan, close to the Sudanese border.
Ramesses II cut both temples directly into the sandstone cliff in the thirteenth century BC: the Great Temple with its four seated colossi of the king, and the smaller temple for Nefertari and Hathor, where the queen is shown at the same scale as her husband — almost unheard of in Egyptian art. The Great Temple was built around a solar alignment: twice a year the rising sun reaches 60 metres into the rock to light three of the four gods in the sanctuary, while Ptah, a god of the underworld, is left in shadow. When the temples were cut up and moved to higher ground ahead of Lake Nasser in the 1960s, the alignment shifted by a day; it now falls on 22 February and 22 October.
Back to Aswan in the afternoon and your last night aboard.
Optional tour: Nubian Village Tour
Meals Plan: Breakfast, Lunch & Dinner
Breakfast, then disembarkation, with your Aswan sightseeing following on the same morning and your luggage travelling with you. First the Aswan High Dam, which ended the annual inundation, generates a substantial share of Egypt’s hydroelectric power and created Lake Nasser behind it.
Then the granite quarry that holds the Unfinished Obelisk — around 42 metres long and close to 1,090 tonnes, which would have made it the largest obelisk ever raised. It was abandoned in the trench when fissures opened in the granite, and because it was never finished it is the clearest evidence anywhere of how these monuments were actually cut.
Finally Philae, principally Ptolemaic with Roman additions including Trajan’s Kiosk, and dedicated to Isis. This was the last functioning temple of the old religion in Egypt, closed under Justinian in the sixth century AD. Like Abu Simbel it was dismantled and rebuilt on higher ground, moving from Philae island to neighbouring Agilkia.
Transfer to Aswan Airport, Aswan railway station or your onward hotel.
Meals Plan: Breakfast Only
One departure only: 2 August 2027. Prices are per person for the full five-day, four-night cruise.
| Cabin | Price per person | Occupancy |
|---|---|---|
| Triple cabin | US$2,200 | Three sharing |
| Twin cabin | US$2,700 | Two sharing |
| Single cabin | US$5,000 | Sole occupancy |
Because this is a single fixed departure there is no low or high season — the price above is the price on the day, and it does not fall closer to the date.
