8-Day Cairo, Luxor and Aswan Tour with Abu Simbel

A representative holding a name sign greets you in the arrivals hall at Cairo International Airport. From there a private air-conditioned vehicle carries you into the city, and your driver takes care of the traffic while you watch the minarets, overpasses and apartment blocks of Egypt's capital roll past.

Once you check in, the day is yours. Nothing is booked, which gives you room to recover from the journey before a week of touring. Most travelers sleep, have a quiet meal and go to bed early. If you land in the morning and want to get out, your hotel concierge or guide can suggest a relaxed outing in the area.

Your guide will confirm the pickup time for Day 2, either at the airport or in a short welcome call the evening before. This is also a good evening to sort out the small things that make the week easier: a local SIM card or roaming plan, a supply of small Egyptian banknotes for restrooms and purchases, and a refillable bottle so you can top up from the bottled water supplied on tours.

No meals are included today.

Your first full day starts after breakfast with the drive to the Giza Plateau. The three pyramids of Khufu, Khafre and Menkaure were built in the Fourth Dynasty, about 4,500 years ago, and your Egyptologist explains both the engineering and the belief system behind them. You will learn why the pyramids sit on the west bank of the Nile, the side of the setting sun and the dead, and how each was linked to a valley temple by a long causeway. The Great Sphinx lies at the foot of Khafre's causeway, shaped from a natural limestone outcrop into a lion's body with a pharaoh's face.

From Giza you continue to the Grand Egyptian Museum, the largest archaeological museum in the world devoted to a single civilization. Its grand staircase is lined with royal statues spanning thousands of years, and at the top you enter the halls that hold Tutankhamun's complete collection, displayed together. Allow yourself to slow down at the jewelry and the gilded shrines, where the craftsmanship is extraordinary at close range.

Lunch is at a local restaurant during the day, and you are transferred back to your hotel in the evening.

Meals: breakfast and lunch.

After breakfast you head to the National Museum of Egyptian Civilization, where the royal mummies of Egypt's pharaohs rest in a purpose-built hall. The mood is quiet and respectful, and seeing the faces of kings and queens who ruled more than 3,000 years ago is a powerful experience. Your guide explains the mummification process and the burial customs on display, while the wider galleries cover Egyptian life from prehistory to modern times.

Next is the Cairo Citadel on its rocky spur above the city. Salah al-Din started building it in the 12th century as a defense against the Crusaders, and for centuries it was the seat of Egypt's rulers. Today the Mosque of Muhammad Ali, faced in alabaster and topped by tall Ottoman-style minarets, dominates the walls. On a clear day the terrace looks across the city to the pyramids you visited yesterday.

The day closes at Khan el-Khalili, a market trading since the 14th century, where you find spices, perfume oils, silver, brass lanterns and handmade crafts. Your guide can point you to reputable vendors, and there is time to bargain or relax at a historic café with Egyptian tea or mint lemonade. You return to the hotel in the evening, ahead of tomorrow's early flight.

Meals: breakfast and lunch.

An early pickup takes you to Cairo Airport for a morning flight to Luxor. Your Luxor guide meets you on arrival and goes straight to the East Bank, the side of the living, where the great temples of ancient Thebes stand.

Karnak comes first. Built and expanded over roughly 2,000 years, it is the largest religious complex of the ancient world, and every pharaoh who could afford it added a pylon, a hall or an obelisk. You enter past an avenue of ram-headed sphinxes and reach the Hypostyle Hall, where 134 massive columns carved with reliefs and hieroglyphs crowd together under the open sky. Look for the obelisk of Hatshepsut and the sacred lake where priests purified themselves.

From there you continue to Luxor Temple, in the heart of the modern city along the Nile corniche. Colossal statues of Ramesses II flank its entrance, and its elegant colonnades were the setting for the annual Opet festival, when the god Amun traveled from Karnak to visit. After lunch at a local restaurant you check into your hotel, with the evening free to relax or walk along the corniche.

Meals: breakfast and lunch.

After breakfast you cross to the West Bank for a full day among the monuments of the dead. The Valley of the Kings was the burial ground of the New Kingdom pharaohs, and its tombs plunge deep into the limestone, their walls covered with painted scenes from the books of the afterlife. Entry typically includes three tombs, and you can add Tutankhamun's tomb separately for a fee paid locally. Because you are not racing a schedule today, you can take your time inside each one.

Next is the Temple of Hatshepsut at Deir el-Bahari, a row of colonnaded terraces set beneath a sheer amber cliff. Hatshepsut was one of the few women to rule as pharaoh, and her temple's reliefs include the famous expedition to Punt, with its boats, incense trees and exotic animals. A photo stop follows at the Colossi of Memnon, two weathered seated statues of Amenhotep III that once guarded the entrance to his mortuary temple.

After lunch at a local restaurant you visit a nearby alabaster workshop, where local artisans demonstrate traditional stone-carving techniques passed down through generations. You return to your hotel in the evening to rest before tomorrow's drive to Aswan.

Meals: breakfast and lunch.

After breakfast you leave Luxor in a private air-conditioned vehicle for the three-to-four-hour drive south to Aswan. The road runs alongside the Nile through farmland, desert and small villages, and the changing landscape gives you a real feel for how narrow Egypt's fertile strip actually is.

In Aswan your local guide begins the city tour with a felucca sail around Elephantine Island and the Nile's smaller islands. The felucca fare is an optional extra paid locally. From the water you can see the granite boulders of the First Cataract, the colorful riverside markets and the Old Cataract Hotel, a Victorian-era landmark associated with Agatha Christie.

You also visit the Unfinished Obelisk, still attached to the bedrock in its ancient quarry. The masons abandoned it after a crack appeared, but had it been finished it would have been one of the largest obelisks ever made. The chisel marks and pounding stones around it give rare insight into how these monuments were carved.

Lunch is at a local restaurant. Depending on timing, you may also visit the Nubian Museum, which traces the history and culture of the Nubian people (entrance is optional and paid locally). You check into your hotel by evening, with dinner on your own.

Meals: breakfast and lunch.

Today starts very early. You leave Aswan by road convoy for the roughly three-hour drive to Abu Simbel near the Sudanese border, or take the optional short flight if you prefer, paid locally. The desert road is empty and flat, and dawn breaking over the sand is worth staying awake for.

The Great Temple of Ramesses II is one of the most recognizable monuments in Egypt. Four seated statues of the king, each about 20 meters high, are carved directly into the cliff face, and inside, the halls are lined with pillars carved as Ramses in the form of Osiris. The reliefs celebrate his military campaigns, above all the Battle of Kadesh. Next door, the Temple of Hathor is dedicated to his wife, Queen Nefertari, and her figures on the facade are carved at the same scale as the king's, a rare honor.

In the 1960s both temples were cut into blocks and reassembled on higher ground in a UNESCO engineering effort to save them from the rising waters of Lake Nasser after the Aswan High Dam was built. After the visit you drive back to Aswan, with lunch en route or on arrival, and transfer to Aswan Airport for your flight to Cairo, landing in the evening.

Meals: breakfast and lunch.

Your last morning is free of sightseeing. Have breakfast at the hotel, then use whatever time your flight allows to pack, rest by the pool if your hotel has one, or take a final stroll.

Your driver collects you at the agreed time for the private transfer to Cairo International Airport. The pickup time is set with Cairo's traffic and airline check-in in mind, so you arrive at the terminal relaxed rather than rushed.

Before you leave, wrap fragile souvenirs such as alabaster vases from the Luxor workshop in clothing and keep them in your hand luggage, hold on to receipts for reproduction pieces, and keep a few Egyptian pounds for a coffee after security. Over eight days you will have traveled from the pyramids to Abu Simbel, with time to look properly at each site along the way.

Meals: breakfast.