This private 6 day Cairo and Nile cruise package is the shortest way to see Egypt the classic way: the Pyramids and the Grand Egyptian Museum in Cairo, then three nights on the river from Aswan to Luxor with the temples of Philae, Kom Ombo, Edfu and Karnak and the Valley of the Kings along the way. Because the cruise ship sails from Aswan on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays and you board it on your second morning, the tour starts every Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. Everything else is built around that sailing.
You land in Cairo and go straight to Giza, standing before the Great Pyramid of Khufu and the Sphinx on your first afternoon. The next morning a flight takes you to Aswan for the High Dam, the Unfinished Obelisk and the Temple of Isis on Agilkia Island before you board the ship. Two days of sailing follow, with the double temple at Kom Ombo, the Temple of Horus at Edfu and the Esna lock, and you reach Luxor for Karnak and Luxor Temple on the afternoon of day four. Day five is the west bank, the Valley of the Kings and the terraced temple of Hatshepsut, then a flight back to Cairo. Your last day belongs to the Grand Egyptian Museum, the Citadel of Saladin and Khan El-Khalili before your departure transfer.
The tour is private for your party, with an Egyptologist guide at every site, two domestic flights, a 5-star standard hotel in Cairo for two nights and a 5-star standard Nile cruise ship on full board for three. Thirteen meals are included. Prices start from $1,075 per person in a triple room in low season. If you would rather keep the same six days on land, with Abu Simbel included and hotel nights in Aswan and Luxor, see the 6 day Cairo Luxor and Aswan tour; if you want the river without the engine, the same route runs on a felucca and on a dahabiya.
The Pyramids on the day you land. Most six-day cruise packages lose the first day to the airport. Ours puts you at Giza on the afternoon of arrival, which is what makes two Cairo nights enough.
Three full nights on the Nile, not two. You sail the whole classic Aswan to Luxor route, with Kom Ombo, Edfu, the Esna lock and Karnak on the way, and sleep on board every night of it.
Two domestic flights and thirteen meals in the price. Cairo to Aswan on day two, Luxor back to Cairo on day five, full board on the ship and lunch on the Cairo sightseeing days. What is left to pay locally is drinks, tips and the optional Abu Simbel excursion.
An Egyptologist, a licensed operator, three Travelers’ Choice awards. Egypt Best Vacations is a licensed local tour operator led by an Egyptologist and a TripAdvisor Travelers’ Choice Award winner for three consecutive years, 2024, 2025 and 2026.
Your Egypt Best Vacations representative meets you inside the arrivals hall at Cairo International Airport holding a signboard, walks you through the visa and passport formalities, and hands you to your private vehicle and driver.
After checking in, your Egyptologist guide takes you to the Giza Plateau. You will see the Great Pyramid of Khufu, the last of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World still standing, alongside the pyramids of Khafre and Menkaure. Then to the Great Sphinx and the Valley Temple, where the granite blocks still carry the tool marks of the Old Kingdom masons who set them.
Lunch at a local restaurant. Overnight in Cairo.
Meals Plan: Lunch Only
After breakfast, transfer to the airport for the short flight to Aswan. Your tour guide meets you inside the arrivals hall at Aswan Airport with a signboard and walks you out to your guide and vehicle.
First the High Dam, built through the 1960s, which ended the Nile’s annual flood after several thousand years and created Lake Nasser behind it. Then a motorboat to the Temple of Philae, which now stands on Agilkia Island. Built largely in the Ptolemaic period, it was cut into more than forty thousand blocks and rebuilt stone by stone on higher ground when the dams threatened to drown its original island. It was the last place in Egypt where the old religion was still practised, centuries after the temples further north had closed. End your Aswan tour at the granite quarry of the Unfinished Obelisk.
Board your Nile cruise ship for lunch. Dinner and overnight moored at Aswan.
Optional tour: Nubian Village in Aswan
Meals Plan: Breakfast, Lunch & Dinner
An early optional excursion to Abu Simbel, either by road across the desert or by short flight, to see the two rock-cut temples of Ramesses II and Nefertari — themselves lifted and reassembled above the waterline in the 1960s. Ask us to price this into your quote before you book and it will be arranged in advance.
Back aboard for lunch as the ship casts off. In the afternoon, Kom Ombo: the only temple in Egypt built as two mirrored halves, one dedicated to Sobek the crocodile god and one to Haroeris, with twin entrances, twin sanctuaries and a perfectly symmetrical plan. Begun under Ptolemy VI. The adjacent Crocodile Museum holds mummified crocodiles recovered from the surrounding sands.
Dinner and overnight moored at Edfu.
Meals Plan: Breakfast, Lunch & Dinner
Before breakfast a horse-drawn carriage takes you through Edfu to the Temple of Horus. Built between 237 and 57 BC under the Ptolemies, it is the most completely preserved temple in Egypt — roof intact, walls intact, its sanctuary still holding the granite shrine that once housed the god’s statue.
Back aboard, the ship sails north and transits the Esna Lock, the single narrow gate through which every vessel on this stretch of the Nile must pass. It is worth being on deck for.
On arrival in Luxor you visit Karnak, the largest religious complex ever built — around 100 hectares, raised and re-raised across some two thousand years. Its hypostyle hall alone holds 134 columns. Then Luxor Temple, built mainly by Amenhotep III and Ramesses II and connected to Karnak by an avenue of sphinxes nearly three kilometres long.
Dinner and overnight moored at Luxor.
Meals Plan: Breakfast, Lunch & Dinner
Breakfast aboard, then disembark for the west bank.
The Valley of the Kings holds more than sixty tombs cut into the rock beneath the pyramid-shaped peak of el-Qurn. Your ticket admits you to three; your guide will tell you which are open and which are worth your time on the day, because the rotation changes.
Then the Temple of Hatshepsut, set against the cliffs of Deir el-Bahari in three great terraces. Hatshepsut began as regent for the child Thutmose III and went on to rule as a crowned king in full pharaonic regalia — with his regnal years still running alongside hers. Immediately to the south lie the remains of the much older mortuary temple of Mentuhotep II, the model her architects were answering.
End at the Colossi of Memnon, two seated statues of Amenhotep III that once flanked the entrance to his mortuary temple — in its day the largest on the west bank, though little of it now survives above ground.
Transfer to Luxor Airport for the flight to Cairo. Overnight in Cairo.
Optional tour: Sunrise Hot Air Ballooning Over Luxor
Meals Plan: Breakfast Only
After breakfast, the Grand Egyptian Museum at Giza, the largest archaeological museum in the world, where the complete Tutankhamun collection is displayed together for the first time — more than five thousand objects, most of which had never been shown publicly before the museum opened.
Then, the Citadel of Saladin, the fortress begun in 1176 to defend Cairo against the Crusaders. Its most prominent feature is the Alabaster Mosque of Muhammad Ali Pasha, its Ottoman domes and twin minarets visible from most of the city.
Lunch, then time in the Khan el-Khalili bazaar before your transfer to Cairo International Airport for departure.
Meals Plan: Breakfast & Lunch
This is the cruise-ship version of our most popular six-day route. If you would rather stay on land, the 6 day Cairo Luxor and Aswan tour covers the same cities with hotel nights in Aswan and Luxor and the Abu Simbel excursion included, from $1,090. If you want the river without the crowds, the 6 day Cairo and felucca Nile cruise sails the same stretch on a traditional sailing boat, from $999, and the 6 day Cairo and dahabiya Nile cruise does it on a private sailing yacht with twin and single cabins only, from $1,555. Over the holidays the same package runs as the 6 day Egypt Christmas tour. All of our six-day itineraries are compared on the 6 day Egypt vacations page.
