This 5 day Cairo Luxor Aswan Christmas tour is a private, Egyptologist-guided run through the three cities that hold Egypt’s greatest monuments. You start on the Giza plateau, fly south to Aswan for Philae and Abu Simbel, take the train north to Luxor for the Valley of the Kings and Karnak, then fly back to Cairo for the Grand Egyptian Museum, the Citadel and Khan el-Khalili. Two domestic flights and one rail journey carry the distance, so the five days go on temples rather than on roads.
Accommodation runs at two levels. Gold is our 5-star standard selection, roughly a Western 3.5-star. Platinum is our 5-star deluxe selection, roughly a Western 4-star. Gold and Platinum are Egypt Best Vacations’ own service tiers rather than Egyptian hotel license categories, so we publish the Western equivalent beside each one. Triple, twin/double and single rooms are available at both levels.
Late December and early January give Egypt its best weather: Luxor and Aswan sit around 22 to 25°C by day, Cairo a few degrees cooler, with genuinely cold nights and almost no rain. The Christian calendar here runs twice over, with Western Christmas on 25 December and Coptic Christmas on 7 January, both marked in Cairo’s churches. Every day is led by a licensed Egyptologist guide, and because the tour is private, the pace and the running order are yours.
An Egypt Best Vacations representative meets you inside the arrivals terminal at Cairo International Airport, holding a signboard with your name, and takes you through passport control and the visa formalities. Your private vehicle and your Egyptologist guide are waiting on the other side. After lunch at a local restaurant you drive to the Giza plateau for the Great Pyramid of Khufu, the pyramids of Khafre and Menkaure, and the Great Sphinx. Your guide takes the construction question head on: the ramps, the copper tools, the quarry marks, and the workers’ village at Heit el-Ghurab that tells us who actually built them and how they were fed. Transfer to your Cairo hotel for the night.
Meals Plan: Lunch Only
Transfer to Cairo Airport for the short flight south to Aswan, where our representative meets you inside the arrivals hall. You begin at the Aswan High Dam, built between 1960 and 1970 to control the Nile flood and generate hydroelectricity, and the reason so many Nubian monuments had to be moved. A motorboat then takes you across to Agilkia Island for the Temple of Philae, the sanctuary of Isis raised mainly under the Ptolemies and rebuilt here when its original island went under the water. Finish at the ancient granite quarries and the Unfinished Obelisk, abandoned in the bedrock when it cracked; at around 42 metres and more than 1,000 tonnes it would have been the largest ever raised. Lunch at a local restaurant, then your hotel.
Optional tour: Nubian Village in Aswan
Meals Plan: Breakfast & Lunch
An early start with a breakfast box for the drive south to Abu Simbel, close to the Sudanese border. Ramesses II cut two temples into the sandstone cliff here in the 13th century BC: the Great Temple with its four seated colossi, and the temple for Nefertari, where the queen is carved at the same height as the king, which is close to unheard of in Egyptian royal art. Between 1964 and 1968 both were sawn into blocks and rebuilt 65 metres higher and 200 metres further back, ahead of the rising water of Lake Nasser. Return to Aswan for lunch, then board an air-conditioned seated train to Luxor, following the Nile north through the farmland of the valley. Transfer to your Luxor hotel on arrival.
Meals Plan: Breakfast & Lunch
The West Bank first, while the light is still low. In the Valley of the Kings you enter three of the open tombs, chosen by your guide on the day for what is best preserved and least crowded. Then Deir el-Bahari and the terraced temple of Hatshepsut. Hatshepsut began as regent for Thutmose III and went on to rule as a crowned king in full pharaonic regalia, with his regnal years still running alongside hers. The Colossi of Memnon follow: two seated statues of Amenhotep III that once flanked the entrance to his mortuary temple, the largest ever built on the west bank.
After lunch you cross to the East Bank for Karnak, the largest religious complex ever built at roughly 100 hectares, added to by pharaoh after pharaoh for some 2,000 years. Luxor Temple comes next, joined to Karnak by the avenue of sphinxes that reopened in 2021. Both were dedicated to the Theban triad of Amun, Mut and Khonsu. Transfer to Luxor Airport for your flight back to Cairo and your final night.
Meals Plan: Breakfast & Lunch
Your last day opens at the Grand Egyptian Museum on the Giza plateau, the largest museum in the world devoted to a single civilization. Twelve galleries carry you from the prehistoric Nile through to the Roman period, the Grand Staircase is lined with royal colossi, and the whole of Tutankhamun’s burial equipment — more than 5,000 objects — is displayed together for the first time since Howard Carter emptied the tomb in the 1920s. Khufu’s cedar solar boat has a hall of its own. Your entry slot is reserved in advance, because the museum admits visitors in timed sessions on a daily cap and turns away anyone without a booking.
From Giza you cross the city to the Citadel of Saladin, begun in 1176 to fortify Cairo against the Crusaders and the seat of Egyptian government for roughly the next 700 years. Inside it stands the Alabaster Mosque of Muhammad Ali, built between the 1830s and 1848 in Ottoman style, its domes visible from most of the city. Lunch at a local restaurant, then Khan el-Khalili, the market quarter founded in 1382 and still the busiest in Cairo. Transfer to Cairo Airport for your departure flight.
Meals Plan: Breakfast & Lunch
