9-Day Cairo, Luxor & Aswan Tour with Abu Simbel

When you walk out of customs at Cairo International Airport, a representative holding a sign with your name is waiting. You are then driven privately to your hotel in an air-conditioned car, which spares you the taxi line and the challenge of finding your way across a sprawling capital after a long flight.

No touring is planned today, so the rest of the day bends to your arrival time. Land in the morning and you might take a gentle first look around the neighborhood, with suggestions from your guide or the hotel concierge. Land at night and the best plan is simple: unpack, eat something light, and sleep well, because the next two days in Cairo are full.

Your guide will confirm tomorrow's pickup time, either in person at the airport or with a brief welcome call this evening. Meals are not included on arrival day.

After breakfast you drive to the Giza Plateau and the three pyramids of Khufu, Khafre and Menkaure, built about 4,500 years ago. Your guide explains how a workforce of skilled laborers, not slaves, quarried and moved the blocks, and why the Great Pyramid's sides line up so precisely with the points of the compass. The Great Sphinx, carved from a single outcrop of limestone, is your last stop on the plateau.

Next you head south to Saqqara, the vast burial ground of the old capital. Here stands the Step Pyramid of Djoser, designed by the architect Imhotep around 2650 BC and often described as one of the earliest large-scale stone buildings in the world. Its six stacked tiers show the experiment that eventually led to the smooth-sided pyramids at Giza.

The final stop is Memphis, the capital of a unified Egypt for much of the Old Kingdom. Little of the city survives above ground, but an open-air museum holds a giant fallen statue of Ramesses II and an alabaster sphinx. Lunch is at a local restaurant before you return to your hotel in the evening.

After breakfast you drive to the National Museum of Egyptian Civilization in Fustat. Its centerpiece is the Royal Mummies Hall, a dimly lit gallery where pharaohs such as Ramesses II and Seqenenre Tao lie in climate-controlled cases; they were moved here from the Egyptian Museum in a televised parade in 2021. Your guide explains how mummification worked and what the bodies reveal about royal health and diet, and also walks you through galleries tracing Egypt from prehistory to modern times.

From Fustat you continue to Cairo Citadel, the hilltop fortress Salah al-Din began in the 1170s. The skyline here belongs to the Mosque of Muhammad Ali, clad in alabaster and topped by slender pencil minarets, and its terrace looks across the rooftops of Islamic Cairo; on a clear day you can pick out the pyramids on the horizon.

The day ends at Khan el-Khalili, a market that has traded since the 14th century. Browse lanes of brass lamps, spices, silver and perfume, ask your guide to point you to trusted shops, and stop for mint tea at a historic café. You are back at your hotel in the evening, with lunch included today.

You are picked up early for the transfer to Cairo Airport and the morning flight to Luxor. Your Luxor-based guide meets you on arrival and goes straight to the East Bank, starting with Karnak Temple, the largest religious complex built in the ancient world. Rulers added to it over roughly 2,000 years, so you move through pylons, courts and obelisks from many different reigns. The Hypostyle Hall is the climax: 134 giant columns, many still bearing painted reliefs, arranged so densely that you feel the scale with your whole body. The entrance is lined with ram-headed sphinxes, the animal sacred to Amun.

Next you visit Luxor Temple, right on the Nile corniche in the heart of town. Two colossal statues of Ramesses II sit before its pylon, and the colonnade of Amenhotep III inside is one of the most elegant spaces in Egyptian architecture. A mosque built on top of the temple centuries later still stands within its walls.

After lunch at a local restaurant, you check into your Luxor hotel and have the evening free.

Today is devoted to the West Bank, where the people of ancient Thebes buried their kings and nobles. You start in the Valley of the Kings, where tombs were cut deep into the hillside for New Kingdom pharaohs, Tutankhamun among them. Entry typically covers three tombs, and the tomb of Tutankhamun can be added separately for an extra fee. Inside, painted corridors show the king's passage through the underworld, with the colors often brighter than you expect.

You continue to the Temple of Hatshepsut at Deir el-Bahari. Its three wide terraces rise against a wall of golden cliffs, and the reliefs record the queen's expedition to the land of Punt. Then you stop for photographs at the Colossi of Memnon, two weathered stone giants of Amenhotep III that once stood at the gate of his temple.

After lunch at a local restaurant, you visit an alabaster workshop, where local craftsmen show how they still shape and polish the stone with hand tools. You return to your Luxor hotel in the evening to rest before tomorrow's drive south.

After breakfast you leave Luxor in a private air-conditioned vehicle for the three-to-four-hour drive south to Aswan. The road follows the Nile, and the scenery shifts steadily from sugarcane fields and palm groves to stretches of bare desert and small riverside villages with painted doorways.

In Aswan your local guide begins the city tour with a felucca sail among the islands around Elephantine. The traditional sailboats move only with the wind, and from the water you see the Old Cataract Hotel on its granite bluff and the busy markets along the riverbank. The felucca fee is paid locally.

You also visit the Unfinished Obelisk, still lying in the granite quarry where ancient masons abandoned it after a crack appeared. Complete, it would have stood about 42 meters high, and the marks of their pounding stones are still visible.

Lunch is at a local restaurant. If timing allows, you can also visit the Nubian Museum, which tells the story of the Nubian people and the villages lost to Lake Nasser; its entrance fee is paid locally. You check into your hotel by evening, and dinner is on your own.

You leave Aswan very early this morning for Abu Simbel, close to the Sudanese border. The road convoy takes about three hours across the Nubian desert, and a short flight is available as an optional alternative at extra cost. Breakfast is included today.

At Abu Simbel you visit the Great Temple of Ramesses II, cut directly into the sandstone hillside. Four seated statues of the king, each about 20 meters tall, guard the entrance, and inside, reliefs of the Battle of Kadesh cover the walls of the main hall. The temple's axis was aligned so that the sun reaches the inner sanctuary twice a year. Next door, the Temple of Hathor was dedicated to Queen Nefertari, Ramesses II's great royal wife.

In the 1960s, as the waters of Lake Nasser rose behind the new High Dam, an international UNESCO campaign cut both temples into huge blocks and rebuilt them on higher ground, a feat of engineering your guide will explain on site. You then drive back to Aswan, with lunch on the way or on arrival, and transfer to Aswan Airport for your flight to Cairo, landing in the evening.

After breakfast the day is yours. After a week of early starts, many travelers simply sleep in, enjoy the hotel pool and take a slow lunch. Others use the day to go back to a site they want to see again at their own pace, or to explore a Cairo neighborhood on foot, such as the cafés and galleries of Zamalek on its island in the Nile.

If you want to keep sightseeing, several optional tours can be arranged locally. You could take a day trip to Fayoum Oasis, with its lake and desert landscapes southwest of the city; sail the Nile in a felucca at sunset; visit the Coptic churches of Old Cairo and the Ben Ezra Synagogue; or watch the sound and light show at the Giza Pyramids in the evening. Your guide or the hotel concierge can help book whichever suits your interests, and these optional tours are paid separately. Breakfast is included.

Your last morning starts with breakfast at the hotel. Depending on the time of your flight, you may have a few free hours to pack, take a final walk or have one more Egyptian coffee. Hotels can usually store luggage after checkout if your flight leaves later in the day.

At the agreed time, your driver collects you for the private transfer to Cairo International Airport. Cairo traffic is famously changeable, so the driver plans the timing around both the roads and your airline's check-in requirements, and you arrive with room to spare.

With that, your trip comes to an end after nine days that covered the length of ancient Egypt, from the pyramids of the Old Kingdom to the temples Ramesses II built on the southern frontier. Breakfast is included today.