Abu Simbel Overnight Trip with Sound and Light Show from Aswan

DAY 1
ASWAN / ABU SIMBEL

You are picked up from your hotel in Aswan in the afternoon and settle into your private air-conditioned vehicle for the road transfer to Abu Simbel, which takes three to four hours. Your Egyptologist guide travels with you and prepares you for the temples, while your driver handles the permits. When you arrive, you check in at a hotel built in the Nubian style, where you have time to settle in, rest and enjoy the quiet of the lakeside town before the evening.

In the evening you attend the Sound and Light Show at the temples of Abu Simbel, where the monuments are lit up against the night sky while the story of Ramesses II and the building of the temples is told. The show gives you a first sense of the scale of the façade and prepares you for your visit the next morning. Afterwards you return to your hotel, have dinner and stay the night in Abu Simbel.

DAY 2
ABU SIMBEL

You rise early and drive to the temples to see them at sunrise, when the light warms the sandstone and the site is at its quietest. Your guide takes you to the Great Temple of Ramesses II, guarded by four seated colossi of the king and dedicated to Amun-Re, Re-Horakhty, Ptah and Ramesses himself. You walk through the halls, whose walls record his military victories, to the inner sanctuary, and your guide explains how the temple was cut from the rock and later raised above the lake.

You then visit the smaller Temple of Nefertari, dedicated to the goddess Hathor and to Ramesses II's queen. You see how her statues stand at almost the same height as the king's, which is unusual in Egyptian royal art. Your guide explains the importance of Nefertari, and how the whole site is part of the UNESCO World Heritage monuments of Nubia, saved by a rescue campaign in the 1960s. You have time to photograph the façade before the day visitors begin to arrive.

You return to the hotel for breakfast, then begin the road journey back to Aswan in your private air-conditioned vehicle, which takes three to four hours. Your guide stays with you on the road and answers any remaining questions about the monuments you have seen, while your driver keeps the pace comfortable on the desert road. You can rest or review your photographs as the desert passes by, and you are dropped at your hotel in Aswan later in the day, where your tour ends.