6 Day New Year in Egypt: Pyramids & Nile Cruise

Your Egypt Best Vacations representative meets you inside the arrivals terminal at Cairo International Airport with an Egypt Best Vacations signboard, and assists with your visa and passport formalities. The Egyptian tourist visa on arrival is $30, payable at the airport. Bags to the hotel, and then straight out to Giza — this tour does not waste your arrival afternoon.

You start at the Great Pyramid of Khufu — 2.3 million blocks, the tallest structure on earth for close to four thousand years — then Khafre, whose casing stones still cling to the summit, and the smaller Menkaure. Your guide will show you why Khafre looks taller than his father’s pyramid and isn’t.

From the panoramic point you get all three in one frame, then you drop down to the Valley Temple of Khafre, where the granite piers and alabaster floor survive almost intact, and walk out along the causeway to meet the Sphinx at eye level. Late afternoon light on the plateau is the best of the day.

Lunch at a local restaurant, then transfer to your hotel.

Overnight: Cairo.

Meals: Lunch

Transfer to Cairo airport for the morning flight to Aswan, where your Aswan guide meets you.

You begin at the Aswan High Dam and the lake it made, then stop at the northern granite quarries to stand over the Unfinished Obelisk — a single shaft that would have risen about 42 metres and weighed well over a thousand tonnes, abandoned in place when a flaw opened along its length. It is the clearest lesson in ancient stoneworking anywhere in Egypt, because the tool marks are still there.

By motorboat to Philae Temple on Agilkia Island. The temple you walk through was cut into more than forty thousand pieces and rebuilt on higher ground after the dam was completed — Isis’s sanctuary moved, stone by numbered stone, to an island shaped to match the original.

Board your ship, lunch on board, and the rest of the day is free. A felucca around Elephantine Island at sunset is the classic Aswan hour, and we can arrange it.

Overnight: on board, moored at Aswan.

Meals: Breakfast, lunch and dinner

Optional early start for Abu Simbel by road — three hours south, Ramesses II’s four colossi and the Sun Festival alignment, back on board for lunch. Ask us to add it when you book, as it needs arranging in advance.

Otherwise, a slow morning on deck while the ship sails north to Kom Ombo, where the temple sits right on the riverbank — a rare double temple, split down its axis between Sobek the crocodile god and Haroeris the falcon-headed healer, with the Crocodile Museum and its mummified crocodiles a few steps away.

Back on board, sail on to Edfu. Afternoon tea, sunset from the top deck.

Overnight: on board, moored at Edfu.

Meals: Breakfast, lunch and dinner

Horse carriage from the mooring to the Temple of Horus at Edfu, Ptolemaic, built between 237 and 57 BC. Sand buried it to the roofline for centuries, which is why the pylon, the colonnaded court, the hypostyle hall, the sanctuary and its granite shrine are all still standing — along with the reliefs recording the falcon god’s victory over Seth.

Back on board and north to Esna, where the ship queues for the lock. The transit is worth being on deck for: the chamber, the gates, the drop, and the rowing boats that come alongside to sell tablecloths by throwing them up to the sun deck.

On to Luxor, and the East Bank in the afternoon: Karnak, the largest religious complex ever built, covering roughly 100 hectares — the Hypostyle Hall’s 134 columns, the obelisk of Hatshepsut, the sacred lake — then Luxor Temple, best reached at dusk when the lighting comes up along the avenue of sphinxes.

Overnight: on board, moored at Luxor.

Meals: Breakfast, lunch and dinner

Breakfast on board, then disembark and cross to the West Bank.

The Valley of the Kings first, with three tombs included — your guide will pick the three that are open and least crowded on the day, and can arrange separate tickets for Tutankhamun or Seti I if you want them. Then the mortuary temple of Hatshepsut at Deir el-Bahari, terraced into the cliff. 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 on the way out, all that is easily visible of what was once the largest temple on the West Bank.

Lunch at a local restaurant, then transfer to Luxor airport for the flight to Cairo, and a private transfer to your hotel.

Overnight: Cairo.

Meals: Breakfast and lunch

Breakfast, check out, bags in the vehicle.

The Grand Egyptian Museum first, while you are fresh: the Grand Staircase lined with royal statuary, the complete Tutankhamun collection displayed together for the first time, and Khufu’s cedar solar boat. You will have stood at the foot of his pyramid on day one, which makes the boat land differently.

Then east across the city to the Citadel of Saladin, begun in 1176 on the Muqattam spur and held by every ruler of Egypt for the next seven hundred years. Inside it stands the Alabaster Mosque of Muhammad Ali, its Ottoman domes and pencil minarets visible from most of Cairo — and on a clear day you can see the Pyramids from the terrace.

Lunch at a local restaurant, then finish in Khan el-Khalili, trading on the same ground since the fourteenth century. Your guide will walk you past the tourist frontage into the lanes where the metalworkers and perfume sellers actually are, and there is time for a mint tea at El Fishawy before you go.

Transfer to Cairo airport for your international departure. This is a full day, so an evening or overnight flight suits it best.

Meals: Breakfast and lunch