Egypt hands out five stars generously. The MS Farah Nile Cruise is one of the few ships on the river that would earn them anywhere — five stars in Egypt, and five stars by European and North American measures too. Fifty-one deluxe cabins and four Royal Suites sit behind soundproofed panoramic windows, the sundeck carries a full-size pool, a bar and a telescope for the Upper Egyptian night sky, and dinner is served à la carte rather than off a buffet line.
Three itineraries sail between the two great cities of Upper Egypt: a 3-night cruise from Aswan every Friday, a 4-night cruise from Luxor every Monday, and a 7-night round trip from Luxor, also departing Mondays. Every sailing covers the classics — Karnak and the Valley of the Kings, Edfu and Kom Ombo, Philae and the High Dam — with entrance fees and a licensed Egyptologist included.
What sets the Farah apart on shore is that the touring is entirely private. No coach, no group to wait for, no fixed pace: just you, your guide and your driver, starting when you want and lingering where you want. It is the difference between seeing the Valley of the Kings and actually understanding it.
Behind every excursion stands Egypt Best Vacations: a licensed tour operator based in Luxor, founded by a professional Egyptologist, and a TripAdvisor Travelers’ Choice winner three years running. Browse our full collection of luxury Nile River cruises or reserve your cabin on the MS Farah today.
Your cruise begins in Aswan, where the Nile breaks around granite islands and the pace drops to the speed of a felucca sail. Your Egyptologist guide from Egypt Best Vacations will be waiting at the airport or railway station holding a signboard with your name.
Touring starts straight away, and it is yours alone. Begin at the Aswan High Dam, the structure that remade modern Egypt in the 1960s, holding back Lake Nasser and lighting homes the length of the country. A short motorboat ride then carries you to Philae Temple, the island sanctuary of Isis that engineers dismantled and rebuilt block by block to save it from the rising water. Finish among the granite quarries at the Unfinished Obelisk, a 1,200-tonne monument abandoned mid-carving and all the more revealing for it.
Board the MS Farah in the afternoon, settle into your cabin and take lunch on board. The evening is yours — the sundeck, the corniche, or the Aswan souk.
Optional Tour: Nubian Village tour and camel ride in Aswan.
Meals Included: Lunch & Dinner
Early risers can set out before dawn on the optional excursion to Abu Simbel, where the four seated colossi of Ramses II have watched the desert sun rise for more than three thousand years. If you would rather stay aboard, the morning is unhurried: breakfast on the sundeck as the Farah casts off and Upper Egypt slides past.
The ship reaches Kom Ombo around midday. Kom Ombo Temple is unlike anything else in Egypt — two mirrored sanctuaries under one roof, the southern half belonging to Sobek the crocodile god, the northern to Horus the Elder. Your guide will point out the carved panel of Roman surgical instruments before you step next door to the Crocodile Museum and its mummified residents.
The Farah continues north through the afternoon and moors at Edfu for the night.
Meals Included: Breakfast, Lunch & Dinner
A horse-drawn carriage clatters through Edfu’s waking streets to the Temple of Horus — buried under sand for centuries and, for exactly that reason, the most complete temple standing in Egypt. Walk beneath its 36-metre pylon, meet the granite falcon at the gate, and follow the wall reliefs telling of Horus avenging his father Osiris.
Back on board, the Farah sails for Luxor and drops through the Esna Lock on the way — half feat of engineering, half street theatre, as rowboat traders toss scarves up to the deck.
Luxor’s East Bank fills the afternoon. At Karnak Temple, pharaoh after pharaoh spent twenty centuries outbuilding one another; the Great Hypostyle Hall alone runs to 134 columns. Then Luxor Temple, rising straight out of the modern city and finest after dark, when floodlights turn the colonnades to gold.
Optional Tour: Karnak Sound & Light Show.
Meals Included: Breakfast, Lunch & Dinner
One last chamber to open. Cross to the West Bank and descend into the Valley of the Kings, where the New Kingdom pharaohs hid their tombs in the rock and painted ceilings still blaze with colour three thousand years on. Your guide will take you to the three finest tombs open that day. Continue to the Temple of Hatshepsut, three terraces cut into the cliff for the queen who ruled as king, and close beneath the Colossi of Memnon.
Then a private transfer to Luxor airport, the railway station, or your hotel — the end of three unforgettable nights on the river.
Optional Tour: Sunrise Hot Air Balloon Ride over Luxor.
Meals Included: Breakfast Only
Homer called it Thebes of the hundred gates. Your Egypt Best Vacations Egyptologist meets you at Luxor airport or railway station, signboard in hand, and the discovery starts from the terminal.
Karnak Temple comes first — less a single temple than an entire sacred city, enlarged by ruler after ruler across two thousand years. Nothing quite prepares you for the Great Hypostyle Hall: 134 columns as thick as redwoods, every surface carved. Then along the river to Luxor Temple, where the colossi of Ramses II flank the gateway and an avenue of sphinxes once ran all the way back to Karnak itself.
Board the MS Farah, unpack, and take lunch as your floating home comes to life around you. Evening free in Luxor.
Optional Tour: Attend the spectacular Karnak Sound and Light Show in the evening
Meals Included: Lunch & Dinner
Balloon chasers can start before sunrise with the optional flight over the Theban hills — the west bank at first light, seen from the air, outlasts most photographs.
After breakfast you cross to the West Bank, where the pharaohs built for eternity. More than sixty royal tombs burrow into the rock of the Valley of the Kings, their corridors a painted map of the underworld; your guide picks the three best open that morning. The Temple of Hatshepsut follows, rising in three sweeping terraces against the cliffs at Deir el-Bahari, and the Colossi of Memnon close the morning.
Lunch is served as the Farah casts off. The afternoon belongs to the river — villages, palm groves and buffalo at the waterline — with the Esna Lock lifting the ship between the Nile’s two levels. Overnight at Edfu.
Meals Included: Breakfast, Lunch & Dinner
A carriage ride through Edfu’s morning streets brings you to the Temple of Horus, sand-sealed for centuries and the best-preserved temple in Egypt today. Walk beneath the towering pylon, meet the granite falcon at the gate, and read the walls that tell of Horus’s battle to avenge Osiris.
Back aboard, the Farah glides south to Kom Ombo Temple, perched photogenically on a bend in the river. It is Egypt’s only perfectly doubled temple — one aisle for Sobek the crocodile god, one for Horus the Elder — and the neighboring Crocodile Museum displays the mummified crocodiles once raised in the temple’s own pools.
By evening the lights of Aswan appear on the horizon.
Meals Included: Breakfast, Lunch & Dinner
Aswan does mornings beautifully. Start in the granite quarry at the Unfinished Obelisk, still lying where it cracked, then the Aswan High Dam and the story of how a single structure tamed the world’s longest river. A motorboat carries you across to Philae Temple on Agilkia Island, where the cult of Isis outlasted the pharaohs by centuries.
The afternoon is deliberately unscheduled — Aswan rewards wandering. A final dinner on board closes the day.
Optional Tour: Visit a traditional Nubian Village in Aswan
Meals Included: Breakfast, Lunch & Dinner
A final breakfast on the river, then check-out and a private transfer to Aswan airport, the railway station, or your hotel. If your flight allows, ask us about adding the Abu Simbel Temples before you fly — a fitting last exclamation mark on four nights of wonders.
Meals Included: Breakfast Only
The New Kingdom pharaohs gave up on pyramids — too visible, too easily robbed — and turned instead to a dry ravine behind the Theban cliffs. The Valley of the Kings holds more than sixty tombs cut deep into the limestone, and the paint inside them has barely faded in three millennia; your guide chooses the three best open on the day.
From there the road bends to Deir el-Bahari, where the Temple of Hatshepsut stacks three colonnaded terraces against a wall of rock — the boldest building of its age, raised for a woman who ruled Egypt as king for two decades. The Colossi of Memnon, all that survives of Amenhotep III’s vanished mortuary temple, make the last stop.
Lunch on board as the mooring lines come in. The Farah sails south through the Esna Lock while rural Egypt drifts past the rail. Overnight at Edfu.
Optional Tour: Sunrise Hot Air Balloon Ride over Luxor
Meals Included: Breakfast, Lunch & Dinner
Morning brings the trip’s most agreeable ritual: a horse-drawn carriage through Edfu town to the Temple of Horus. Sand buried it almost completely for centuries, which is why the pylon, the granite falcons and the carved walls look barely touched by time. This is as close as anyone now gets to seeing an Egyptian temple as its priests knew it.
The afternoon belongs to Kom Ombo Temple, the double sanctuary shared by crocodile-headed Sobek and falcon-headed Horus the Elder, complete with its panel of carved surgical instruments and the mummified crocodiles in the Crocodile Museum next door. Then onward to Aswan, your mooring for the next two nights.
Meals Included: Breakfast, Lunch & Dinner
A classic Aswan day, taken at whatever speed suits you — the touring is private, so nothing is rushed. The Unfinished Obelisk still lies in its quarry bed, cracked and abandoned, and teaches more about ancient stonework than any finished monument could. The Aswan High Dam follows, with the story of Lake Nasser stretching away behind it.
Then a motorboat across to Philae Temple, the island shrine where the last hieroglyphic inscription in Egypt was carved in AD 394 — centuries after the pharaohs were gone. The afternoon is free for the corniche, the souk, or the pool.
Optional Tour: Visit a traditional Nubian Village in Aswan
Meals Included: Breakfast, Lunch & Dinner
This is the day the shorter cruises do not get. The Farah stays moored at Aswan and the morning is entirely yours. Sleep late and claim a lounger by the pool, or take the optional excursion to Abu Simbel, where four seated colossi of Ramses II guard a temple aligned so precisely that sunlight reaches the inner sanctuary on only two mornings a year.
A felucca sail around Elephantine and Kitchener’s Island at golden hour makes a gentler alternative. Dinner and a final Aswan night on board.
Meals Included: Breakfast, Lunch & Dinner
No alarm clocks today. The Farah turns north and the Nile takes over the entertainment: kingfishers over the shallows, fishing skiffs, minarets above the palm line, desert gold meeting field green.
The ship calls briefly at Kom Ombo — already in your photographs from the journey south — leaving you free for the pool, afternoon tea, and the rare pleasure of going nowhere in particular, beautifully. Overnight at Edfu.
Meals Included: Breakfast, Lunch & Dinner
The morning passes on the water, descending through the Esna Lock on the approach to Luxor. Then the cruise saves its biggest chords for last: Karnak Temple, where the Hypostyle Hall’s 134 columns dwarf everyone who walks in, followed by Luxor Temple on the corniche — best near dusk, when the floodlit stone glows against a darkening sky.
A farewell dinner rounds off the evening. Final night on board in Luxor.
Meals Included: Breakfast, Lunch & Dinner
Breakfast, check-out around 08:00 AM, and a private transfer to Luxor airport, the railway station, or your hotel. Seven nights, a dozen temples and one river you will not forget — and if you are not ready for it to end, ask us about Luxor day tours or the temples of Dendera and Abydos.
Meals Included: Breakfast
