4-Night Luxor to Aswan Nile Cruise

You're transferred from your hotel or Luxor Airport to the dock and board your ship, where the crew shows you to your cabin. You have lunch on board while the crew completes check-in formalities. In the afternoon you visit Karnak Temple, the largest religious complex ever built and expanded by generations of pharaohs over two thousand years, and continue to Luxor Temple, connected to Karnak by the restored Avenue of Sphinxes. You have dinner on board and stay the night in Luxor.

This morning you cross to Luxor's West Bank, the Theban necropolis where New Kingdom pharaohs built their tombs into the hillside for nearly five hundred years. You visit the Valley of the Kings, where the standard ticket covers three tombs from a rotating set, including some of the most vividly painted burial chambers in Egypt. You continue to Hatshepsut's mortuary temple at Deir el-Bahari, built in three tiered terraces for Egypt's most successful female pharaoh, and stop briefly at the Colossi of Memnon on the way back. You return aboard for lunch as the ship casts off, and the afternoon is spent sailing toward Esna. You have dinner on board and stay the night moored near Esna.

After breakfast you transfer by horse-drawn carriage or motorized vehicle to the Temple of Horus at Edfu. You're standing in the best-preserved temple in Egypt, its roof and outer walls almost entirely intact because it was buried under desert sand for centuries before being excavated in the 1860s. Dedicated to the falcon god Horus, its scale and preservation make it the clearest picture anywhere of what a complete Ptolemaic temple originally looked like. You return aboard for lunch while the ship sails on toward Kom Ombo. You have dinner on board and stay the night moored near Kom Ombo.

You wake moored at Kom Ombo and, after breakfast, walk the short distance from the dock to the temple. This is Egypt's only double temple, split symmetrically down its axis to honor two gods at once — the crocodile god Sobek on one side, the falcon god Horus on the other. You may also visit the small Crocodile Museum beside the temple, home to mummified crocodiles found at the site. Back aboard, you have lunch as the ship continues to Aswan. In the afternoon you visit Philae Temple, dedicated to the goddess Isis and relocated stone by stone to Agilkia Island when the High Dam was built. You have dinner on board and stay the night in Aswan.

After breakfast you disembark and visit the High Dam and the Unfinished Obelisk, still attached to its quarry bedrock and abandoned mid-carving after a crack appeared in the granite. Why not finish with a felucca sail around Elephantine Island before your transfer to Aswan Airport or your onward journey? Your guide sees you off, and the cruise ends here.