7-Day Cairo and Nile Cruise Tour by Sleeper Train

A representative holding a sign with your name meets you at Cairo International Airport and walks you to a private air-conditioned vehicle. The drive into the city is handled for you, which matters in a capital of more than 20 million people where traffic follows rules of its own.

The remainder of the day is unscheduled. You only spend one hotel night on this trip, so this is your chance to rest properly before the sightseeing and the first overnight train. Sleep off the flight, shower, and let your body find the local time. If you arrive early and feel restless, your hotel concierge or guide can suggest a gentle first outing close by, but nothing is required.

Your guide will confirm tomorrow's pickup time, either at the airport or in a short welcome call the evening before. It helps to prepare tonight for the next 24 hours: tomorrow you tour Giza and the museum and then board the train, so pack a small overnight bag with toiletries, medication, a phone charger, a warm layer and a change of clothes. Your main luggage can then stay closed until you reach the cruise ship.

No meals are included today.

Check out after breakfast and head to the Giza Plateau, where three royal pyramids have dominated the desert edge for some 4,500 years. Your Egyptologist walks you through the evidence for how they were built, from the copper tools and ramps to the workers' town excavated just south of the monuments, and explains why Khufu's pyramid held the title of the tallest human-made structure for thousands of years. Then you move on to the Great Sphinx, carved from a single limestone outcrop, with the body of a lion and the face of a pharaoh, generally attributed to Khafre.

From Giza, the Grand Egyptian Museum is a short drive away. It is the largest archaeological museum devoted to one civilization, and your guide leads you up its grand staircase of royal statues and into the halls where Tutankhamun's complete treasure is displayed in one place. Seeing the chariots, shrines and personal objects together gives you a sense of the sheer volume of material packed into a small tomb.

After lunch at a local restaurant you have some free time in the late afternoon. In the evening you transfer to the railway station and board the overnight sleeper train to Aswan. Settle into your private cabin as the train rolls south through the Nile Valley.

Meals: breakfast and lunch.

Raise the blind in the morning and the scenery has changed completely: the green strip of fields is narrower, the desert presses closer, and the light has the sharper quality of the far south. The train pulls into Aswan, where your local guide meets you at the station.

The first stop is the Aswan High Dam, finished in 1970 to control the Nile's flood and to supply electricity across the country. Behind it lies Lake Nasser, one of the largest artificial lakes on Earth, stretching south into Sudan. Your guide explains the trade-offs: reliable irrigation and power on one hand, and on the other the resettlement of Nubian communities and the emergency rescue of ancient temples that would otherwise have been drowned.

Philae is one of those rescued temples. You reach it by a short motorboat ride, and the complex, dedicated to Isis, was taken apart block by block in a UNESCO-led operation and rebuilt on higher ground. The setting on its small island, surrounded by water and dark granite, is one of the loveliest in Egypt.

After lunch you transfer to the dock and board your Nile cruise ship. Check in, unpack at last, and spend the rest of the afternoon on deck while the ship prepares to sail. Dinner is served on board.

Meals: breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Breakfast is served as the ship leaves Aswan and heads north. Late in the morning or early in the afternoon you tie up at Kom Ombo, where the temple sits on a low rise above a curve in the river. It was built during the Ptolemaic and Roman periods for two gods at once: Sobek, the crocodile, and Horus, the falcon. Everything is doubled, from the two entrances in the facade to the paired halls and twin sanctuaries running side by side.

Walk the outer corridor with your guide to find the reliefs that interest most visitors, including a scene often interpreted as a set of surgical tools and a calendar of festivals carved into the wall. The adjoining Crocodile Museum is small but striking, with rows of mummified crocodiles recovered from nearby burial grounds, a reminder that Sobek's sacred animals were raised, honored and embalmed here.

Back on board, lunch is served while the ship continues toward Edfu. The afternoon belongs to the river. Find a lounger on the sun deck and watch the farming villages, date palms and irrigation channels pass at walking speed, or join one of the ship's onboard activities. Dinner is served on board in the evening, and the ship moors at Edfu.

Meals: breakfast, lunch and dinner.

After breakfast you step ashore at Edfu and ride a horse-drawn carriage or tuk-tuk a short distance to the Temple of Horus. The carriage is an optional extra paid locally. Edfu is one of the best-preserved temples in Egypt, and you feel it as soon as you pass under the entrance pylon: the courtyard, the halls and the sanctuary are all still roofed or walled, so the space reads the way its builders intended, moving from bright sunlight into near darkness.

Your guide will help you read the walls. One long relief describes the annual festival in which the statue of Hathor sailed upriver from Dendera to visit Horus at Edfu, and another narrates his battles with Seth. A granite falcon statue, wearing the double crown, stands guard at the entrance to the hypostyle hall, a popular photo spot.

You return to the ship for lunch as it continues sailing toward Luxor, typically arriving in the afternoon or evening. If the arrival time allows, you may visit Luxor Temple after dark, when its colonnades and statues of Ramesses II glow under floodlights beside the Nile corniche. Dinner is served on board, and you spend the night docked in Luxor.

Meals: breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Breakfast and checkout come first, then you cross to the West Bank, the ancient city of the dead. In the Valley of the Kings you descend into royal tombs whose painted walls show the sun god's voyage through the underworld, colors still vivid after 3,000 years underground. The entry ticket typically includes three tombs, and Tutankhamun's tomb can be added separately for a fee paid locally.

Next is the Temple of Hatshepsut at Deir el-Bahari, a series of terraces built into a wall of cliffs for one of the few women to rule Egypt as pharaoh. You stop for photographs at the Colossi of Memnon, the two seated statues of Amenhotep III that are almost all that remains of his vast mortuary temple. After lunch at a local restaurant you return to the East Bank for Karnak, the largest religious complex of the ancient world. Walk through the forest of 134 columns in the Hypostyle Hall, and notice the avenue of ram-headed sphinxes at the entrance.

In the evening there is some free time to freshen up at a day-use facility or a nearby café before your transfer to Luxor's railway station. Board the overnight sleeper train to Cairo and settle into your private cabin as it heads north along the river.

Meals: breakfast and lunch.

Breakfast is served on the train, which reaches Cairo in the early morning. A representative meets you at the station and arranges your private transfer, and where you go next depends on your flight time.

If your flight leaves later in the day, you can be taken to a day-use hotel room to shower, rest and repack. This room is optional and paid locally, so tell us in advance if you want it. If your flight leaves in the morning, your driver takes you straight to Cairo International Airport. In either case, the pickup time is planned around Cairo traffic and airline check-in so you arrive at the terminal without a rush.

Keep your passport, tickets and any medication in the bag you carry on the train, so nothing important is buried in the main luggage on this last morning. A few small notes in Egyptian pounds are useful for a final coffee at the airport. By the time you board, you will have traveled the length of Egypt's Nile Valley twice, by rail and by river, without a single domestic flight.

Meals: breakfast (on the train).