This 5 day luxury Cairo Luxor and Aswan tour is a private trip from $1,899 per person in 5-star hotels. It covers the Giza Pyramids, the temples of Aswan, Abu Simbel, the Valley of the Kings, Karnak and the Grand Egyptian Museum, and it uses three domestic flights so that none of your five days is lost on the road.
The flights are what make the route work. You fly from Cairo to Aswan on the second morning, and from Aswan to Abu Simbel and back on the third. By road, Abu Simbel is about three and a half hours from Aswan in each direction. By air you are standing in front of the temples of Ramesses II the same morning, and in Luxor by the evening.
You stay in a 5-star hotel in each city, with breakfast and dinner included, and you choose between two hotel levels. Your own Egyptologist guide and driver meet you in Cairo, Aswan and Luxor, so every visit runs at your pace and not at the pace of a group.
It is a tour for travellers with little time who do not want to choose between Abu Simbel and Luxor: couples, families with older children, and anyone adding Egypt to a longer journey.
With one more day, the 6 day luxury tour of Cairo, Luxor and Aswan, from $2,110, slows the pace. Would you rather see the Mediterranean than Aswan? The 5 day luxury Cairo Luxor and Alexandria tour starts at $1,650. For the same route in standard 5-star hotels, see the 5 day Cairo Luxor and Aswan tour, from $1,015. All our private high-end trips are on the Egypt luxury tours page, and every five-day route is on the 5 day Egypt tour packages page.
Our representative meets you inside the arrivals terminal at Cairo International Airport, holding a sign with your name, and helps you through the visa and passport desks. Your Egyptologist guide then takes you to the Giza Plateau for the pyramids of Khufu, Khafre and Menkaure and the Great Sphinx, and explains how the pyramids were built and why. Going inside the Great Pyramid is possible with an extra ticket. After lunch at a local restaurant you check in to your hotel, where dinner is served.
Meals Plan: Lunch & Dinner
A private vehicle takes you to Cairo Airport for the flight to Aswan, where your guide is waiting. You begin at the High Dam, completed in 1970, which ended the yearly Nile flood and created Lake Nasser. A motorboat then carries you to the Temple of Isis at Philae, built mainly under the Ptolemies and moved stone by stone to Agilkia Island when the dam’s waters threatened it. The day ends at the granite quarry of the Unfinished Obelisk, abandoned when the stone cracked. Lunch is at a local restaurant and dinner at your hotel.
Optional tour: Nubian Village in Aswan
Meals Plan: Breakfast, Lunch & Dinner
You fly from Aswan to Abu Simbel in the morning. Ramesses II had the two temples cut into the rock in the 13th century BC: the Great Temple, with its four seated statues of the king, and the smaller temple for Queen Nefertari and the goddess Hathor. Both were cut into blocks and raised above the lake in the 1960s, in a rescue led by UNESCO. You fly back to Aswan for lunch, then travel to Luxor by train along the Nile, a journey of around three hours. A private vehicle takes you to your hotel for dinner.
Meals Plan: Breakfast, Lunch & Dinner
You cross to the West Bank for the Valley of the Kings, where the pharaohs of the New Kingdom cut their tombs into the rock. Your ticket covers three tombs, chosen with your guide. You continue to the terraced Temple of Hatshepsut, the queen who ruled Egypt as pharaoh for about 20 years, and stop at the Colossi of Memnon, two seated statues of Amenhotep III. After lunch you visit Karnak, the largest temple complex in Egypt, and Luxor Temple in the centre of the city, built by Amenhotep III and enlarged by Ramesses II. In the evening you fly back to Cairo, and dinner is at your hotel.
Meals Plan: Breakfast, Lunch & Dinner
After breakfast and check-out you visit the Grand Egyptian Museum, where the full Tutankhamun collection is displayed in one place. After lunch at a local restaurant you continue to the Citadel of Saladin, founded in 1176, and the Alabaster Mosque of Muhammad Ali inside it. The tour ends with your private transfer to Cairo Airport.
Meals Plan: Breakfast & Lunch
