Twenty days is long enough to stop rushing. This 20 day Egypt tour gives you the Giza plateau without a stopwatch, a Mediterranean day in Alexandria, two very different cruises, four nights on the Red Sea, and one night asleep under the stars in the White Desert.
It opens in Cairo, where you have seven nights in total across the trip. You’ll walk the Giza plateau — Khufu, Khafre, Menkaure and the Sphinx — and spend an afternoon in the Grand Egyptian Museum with the complete Tutankhamun collection. Beyond Giza there is Saqqara, Memphis and Dahshur, the Citadel of Saladin, Coptic Cairo and the lanes of Khan el-Khalili. Alexandria adds a day of catacombs, Roman theatre and sea air.
Then the trip changes character. You fly south to Abu Simbel and board a three-night Lake Nasser cruise through Nubia — Qasr Ibrim from the deck, Amada, Wadi es-Seboua, New Kalabsha. These are temples most visitors to Egypt never see, on a lake where the nearest other boat is usually hours away. At Aswan you change ships for three nights on the Nile down to Luxor, calling at Kom Ombo, Edfu and Esna Lock, finishing with Karnak, Luxor Temple, the Valley of the Kings and Deir el-Bahari.
Four nights in Hurghada follow on an all-inclusive basis — reef, boat, or nothing at all, as you prefer. The last movement is inland: Bahariya Oasis, the Black Desert, Crystal Mountain, and a camp among the chalk formations of the White Desert.
Every archaeological site on this itinerary is led by a licensed Egyptologist guide. Egypt Best Vacations is a licensed Egyptian tour operator based in Luxor, and has been named a TripAdvisor Travelers’ Choice winner three years running — 2024, 2025 and 2026.
Your Egypt Best Vacations representative meets you inside the arrivals terminal at Cairo International Airport with a signboard and assists with visa and passport formalities. From there it is a private transfer to your hotel, and the rest of the day is yours.
Meals: none
Meals Plan: No Meals Included
Your Egyptologist guide collects you from the hotel for the Giza plateau: the pyramids of Khufu, Khafre and Menkaure, and the Great Sphinx. Khufu’s pyramid is the only one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World still standing. You’ll hear how it was built, who built it, and why the shape changed over three generations. Going inside the pyramid is an optional extra ticket, bought on the day if you want it.
Lunch at a local restaurant, then the Grand Egyptian Museum. The complete Tutankhamun collection — more than 5,000 objects — is displayed together here for the first time since it left the tomb, alongside the Grand Staircase and the main galleries running chronologically from the Predynastic period to the Roman era.
Meals Plan: Breakfast & Lunch
After breakfast, the Citadel of Saladin, begun in 1176 to defend Cairo against the Crusaders and used as the seat of Egyptian government for almost 700 years. Inside it stands the Alabaster Mosque of Muhammad Ali, built between 1830 and 1848 in Ottoman style and faced in the alabaster that gives it its name.
On to Coptic Cairo and the Hanging Church, suspended on the bastions of the Roman fortress of Babylon and named for it. Its carved wooden ceiling, built like an inverted ark, and its collection of icons are the reasons to go slowly here. Next, the Church of Abu Serga — Saints Sergius and Bacchus — built above a crypt where tradition holds the Holy Family sheltered during their time in Egypt. The Coptic quarter ends at the Ben Ezra Synagogue, where the Cairo Geniza was found: a store of nearly 300,000 manuscript fragments that rewrote what historians knew about medieval Mediterranean life.
The day finishes in Khan el-Khalili, a market since 1382 — narrow lanes, copper, spice, glass, and coffee houses that have been in the same families for generations.
Meals Plan: Breakfast Only
Drive north to Alexandria, and start at the Catacombs of Kom el-Shoqafa. Cut three levels into the rock in the 2nd century AD, they began as a private family tomb and grew into a public cemetery holding more than 300 burials. The carving is the point: Egyptian gods in Roman dress, Anubis in a legionary’s uniform, two artistic traditions colliding in one chamber.
Then Pompey’s Pillar — a single 25-metre granite column raised in AD 297 for Diocletian, standing on the site of the Serapeum, the great temple of Serapis that once crowned the hill of Rhakotis. The name is a medieval mistake; Pompey has nothing to do with it.
Lunch at a local restaurant, then check in to your Alexandria hotel with a free evening on the Corniche.
Meals Plan: Breakfast & Lunch
Breakfast, then the Citadel of Qaitbay, built between 1477 and 1479 by Sultan al-Ashraf Qaitbay on the exact spot where the Pharos Lighthouse stood — and partly out of its fallen stone. It guarded the harbour against Ottoman attack.
Next, the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, opened in 2002 near the site of the ancient library and built as a deliberate answer to it: a disc-shaped reading room for eight million volumes, walls carved with script from every writing system. The day ends at the Roman theatre at Kom el-Dikka, the only Roman theatre found in Egypt — thirteen tiers of white marble seating, discovered by accident in 1960.
Lunch at a local restaurant, then the drive back to Cairo.
Meals Plan: Breakfast & Lunch
One day that covers the whole pyramid experiment. Begin at Saqqara and the Step Pyramid of Djoser — the oldest colossal building in dressed stone anywhere in the world, designed by Imhotep in the 27th century BC. Nothing that came after it would have happened without it.
Then Memphis, Egypt’s first capital, where the fallen colossus of Ramesses II lies in its own hall and the alabaster sphinx keeps watch over an open-air garden of statuary. Finish at Dahshur, where Sneferu built twice in one lifetime: the Bent Pyramid, where the angle changes halfway up because the design was failing, and the Red Pyramid, the first successful true pyramid — and one you can usually walk into without a queue.
Meals Plan: Breakfast Only
Breakfast at the hotel, or a breakfast box if the flight is early, then transfer to Cairo Airport for the flight to Abu Simbel, where your three-night Lake Nasser cruise to Aswan begins.
Our representative meets you at Abu Simbel airport and transfers you to the ship. Lunch on board, then Abu Simbel itself: the Great Temple of Ramesses II (1279–1213 BC), fronted by four seated colossi twenty metres high, and beside it the Small Temple built for Queen Nefertari, where she is carved at the same scale as the king — almost unheard of in Egyptian art. Both were cut into a cliff roughly 280 km south of Aswan.
When the High Dam raised the lake, both temples were sawn into more than a thousand blocks, lifted 65 metres, and rebuilt inside an artificial mountain. The rescue ran from 1964 to 1968 and is the reason UNESCO’s World Heritage system exists at all.
Meals Plan: Breakfast, Lunch & Dinner
Your ship sails north from Abu Simbel to Qasr Ibrim, viewed from the top deck. It is the only Nubian monument still standing on its original site — everything else was moved. It once sat on a cliff 70 metres above the valley floor; the lake now reaches its walls. Occupied more or less continuously from around 1000 BC until 1812, it has been a temple town, a Christian cathedral city and an Ottoman garrison. Then the ship sails on to moor at Amada.
Meals Plan: Breakfast, Lunch & Dinner
Ashore at Amada. The Temple of Amada is the oldest surviving monument on Lake Nasser, begun by Thutmose III and Amenhotep II in the 18th Dynasty (c. 1550–1295 BC). Its painted reliefs are extraordinarily fresh, because Christians plastered over them when the temple became a church and the plaster preserved what it hid. Nearby is the rock-cut tomb of Pennut, viceroy of Nubia under Ramesses VI.
The ship then sails to Wadi es-Seboua — the Valley of the Lions, named for the sphinx avenue leading to Ramesses II’s temple. Also here: the Temple of Dakka, dedicated to Thoth, and the small Roman temple of Maharraqa, all three relocated to this one site. Sail on to Aswan for the night.
Meals Plan: Breakfast, Lunch & Dinner
Disembark at Aswan and cross to New Kalabsha. The Temple of Kalabsha is the largest free-standing temple in Lower Nubia, built under Augustus (30 BC–AD 14) for the Nubian god Mandulis, with Isis and Osiris worshipped alongside him. On the same island are the rock-cut chapel of Beit el-Wali, carved for Ramesses II with battle reliefs still holding their colour, and the unfinished Kiosk of Kertassi.
In the afternoon you board your Nile cruise ship for three nights from Aswan down to Luxor. Overnight moored in Aswan.
Optional tour: Nubian Village in Aswan
Meals Plan: Breakfast, Lunch & Dinner
Aswan in the morning. The High Dam, built between 1960 and 1970, which ended the annual flood, generates a substantial share of Egypt’s power and created the lake you have just cruised. Then Philae — the Temple of Isis, built by the Ptolemies and extended by Roman emperors, and the last place in Egypt where the old religion was still practised, into the 6th century AD. The temple you visit is not where it was built: it was moved stone by stone to Agilkia Island, the island reshaped to match the original setting, in a rescue completed in 1980. Finish at the granite quarry of the Unfinished Obelisk, abandoned mid-cut when the stone cracked — which is why it still shows exactly how obelisks were made.
Sail to Kom Ombo for the double temple of Sobek the crocodile god and Haroeris, mirrored down its central axis so that each god has his own sanctuary. The Crocodile Museum next door holds the mummified crocodiles found in the surrounding tombs. Back aboard, sail to Edfu.
Meals Plan: Breakfast, Lunch & Dinner
Early, before breakfast, a horse and carriage takes you to the Temple of Horus at Edfu — Ptolemaic, built between 237 and 57 BC, and the best preserved temple in Egypt. Buried in sand until the 1860s, it kept its roof, its pylon and a continuous carved record of how the building itself was meant to work: the festivals, the rituals, the founding myth of Horus defeating Seth, all inscribed on the walls.
Back to the ship, and sail north to Luxor through Esna Lock. On arrival, Karnak — the largest religious complex ever built, around 100 hectares, worked on by roughly thirty kings across two thousand years. The Great 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. Both temples served the Theban triad: Amun, Mut and Khonsu. Overnight in Luxor.
Meals Plan: Breakfast, Lunch & Dinner
Disembark and cross to the West Bank. The Valley of the Kings — known to the ancient Egyptians as Ta-Set-Maat, the Place of Truth — holds the tombs of the pharaohs of the 18th to 20th Dynasties, roughly 1550 to 1069 BC. Thutmose I is traditionally named as the first king buried here; Ramesses XI was the last to have a tomb cut in the valley. Your ticket covers three tombs, chosen from those open on the day.
Then Hatshepsut’s temple at Deir el-Bahari, three colonnaded terraces cut back 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 reliefs on the middle terrace show her expedition to Punt, and her divine birth. Finish at the Colossi of Memnon, the twin seated statues of Amenhotep III that are all that remains above ground of the largest temple ever built in Egypt.
In the afternoon, the road transfer to Hurghada, where you have four all-inclusive nights on the Red Sea.
Optional tour: Sunrise Hot Air Balloon over Luxor
Meals Plan: Breakfast, Lunch & Dinner
A free day. The house reef, a pool, and nothing scheduled. Diving, snorkelling trips, glass-bottom boat, desert quad safari and submarine trips can all be arranged locally on request.
Meals Plan: Breakfast, Lunch & Dinner (all-inclusive)
A second free day on the Red Sea. Optional excursions available on request.
Meals Plan: Breakfast, Lunch & Dinner (all-inclusive)
A third free day. Giftun Island and the reefs off Hurghada are worth the boat trip if you want one more thing on the list.
Meals Plan: Breakfast, Lunch & Dinner (all-inclusive)
Transfer to Hurghada Airport for the flight to Cairo, then a transfer to your hotel. The rest of the day is free.
Meals Plan: Breakfast Only
Leave Cairo early for the drive west to Bahariya Oasis — roughly four hours across open desert. Lunch there, then transfer to a 4×4 for the Black Desert, its hills capped with volcanic dolerite. On to the village of El-Heiz and its cold springs, then Crystal Mountain, a ridge of barite and calcite that catches the low sun, and Aqabat, where white chalk towers rise out of yellow sand.
Camp for the night in the White Desert National Park, among chalk formations wind-carved into mushrooms, chickens and sails. Dinner is cooked at the camp. There is no light pollution here at all.
Meals Plan: Breakfast, Lunch & Dinner
Sunrise over the white rock, breakfast at camp, then the 4×4 back to Bahariya and the road to Cairo for your final night.
Meals Plan: Breakfast Only
Transfer to Cairo International Airport for your flight home. When you want to come back — Siwa, Sinai, the Red Sea south — just ask.
Meals Plan: Breakfast Only
