Nile Cruise Luxor to Aswan, Balloon, Abu Simbel Last Day

Luxor

A representative meets you in Luxor, at your hotel, the airport or the railway station, and takes you to the 5-star boat. Check-in is at 12:00 PM, so arriving early works in your favour: the tour starts straight away instead of leaving you in the lobby, and it keeps the sightseeing out of the midday heat.

The Karnak Temple

Karnak covers 247 acres. The scale registers before anything else does, courts, halls and pylons raised by one pharaoh after another rather than any single building.

Costo extra

Luxor Temple

Luxor Temple was built by Amenhotep III and Ramses II. Ritual here set the human side of a ruler against the divine one, and the layout still reads that way.

Costo extra

Luxor

Back to the boat for dinner once the tour is done, with nothing else on the schedule. The first night is spent on board, moored at Luxor.

Luxor

An early pickup for the balloon over the west bank of Luxor. The ride runs 40 to 60 minutes, and it goes up with the light, so the landmarks below come out of the dark rather than sitting in flat midday sun.

Temple of Hatshepsut

The temple of Hatshepsut, among the best preserved in Egypt. Three levels linked by wide ramps, set straight against the cliff behind it.

Costo extra

Colossi of Memnon

The Colossi of Memnon, two quartzite sandstone statues of King Amenhotep III and the most visible remnant of what was once a complete mortuary temple.

Valley of the Kings

The Valley of the Kings, where pharaohs were buried in stone sarcophagi cut into the rock. You can walk the complex and go down into the tombs of kings including Merneptah, Ramesses III and Ramesses VI.

Costo extra

Esna

Back to the boat after the morning excursions. Sailing starts in the afternoon towards Edfu, through the Esna lock, with lunch on board and afternoon tea on the sundeck while the bank slides past. The lock crossing is worth staying up on deck for. Dinner on board, and the night is spent docked at Edfu.

Edfu Temple

Breakfast on board, then Edfu. It is the best preserved temple in Egypt, raised for the hawk god Horus on ground where an earlier temple already stood, and dated to the reign of Ptolemy III, 237 BC. Its walls carry the myth of the contention between Horus and Seth, probably staged there once a year as religious drama.

Costo extra

Kom Ombo Temple

Back on the boat afterwards and on towards Kom Ombo, with lunch and afternoon tea on the sundeck while the river goes by. The temple stands 45 kilometres north of Aswan and was dedicated to two gods, Sobek the crocodile god and Horus the Elder. It was built in 180 B.C. under the Ptolemaic dynasty. Its position right on the bank between Edfu and Aswan is why it is on almost every cruise itinerary.

Costo extra

Aswan

The boat sails on to Aswan after the temple. Dinner on board, then the Galabyia party. The night is spent at Aswan.

Aswan High Dam

Breakfast on board, then the High Dam, finished in 1960 to control the Nile floods and generate electricity. The numbers carry it: 3,600 metres long, 980 metres thick at the base, 111 metres high at its highest point. Behind it sits Lake Nasser, the largest man-made lake in the world, which supplies irrigation water and power to the whole country. The dam is 13 kilometres south of Aswan.

Costo extra

Temple of Philae

Philae after the dam, reached by a short motorboat ride. The Greco-Roman temple was built for the goddess Isis and stands on Aglika Island, just south of the old Aswan Dam. It is not on its original site: the High Dam would have submerged the complex permanently, so it was taken apart and moved. Philae was the centre of the cult of Isis under the Ptolemies, and it held on as one of the last working sites of ancient Egyptian religion after Christianity reached Egypt, closing officially only in 551 AD. The main temple on the island was then taken over as a Christian church.

Costo extra

Aswan

Back to the boat after Philae. Lunch and dinner on board, a folkloric show in the evening, and an optional tour to the Nubian Village for anyone who wants it. The night is spent docked at Aswan.

Abu Simbel Temple

Checkout is around 4:30 AM, and the pickup runs to Abu Simbel as part of a shared small group tour. The temples were cut into the rock for King Ramesses II and Queen Nefertari, and their design has no real parallel elsewhere in Egypt, which is why they are counted among the high points of New Kingdom building. They are also not where they were carved. Rising water from Lake Nasser would have drowned them, so the Egyptian government and UNESCO ran a project to move the complex. The larger of the two, the temple of Ramesses II, is known as the Sun Temple and was dedicated to Ptah, Re-Her-Akhtey and Amun-Re, and to Ramesses II himself.

Costo extra

Aswan

The drive back to Aswan follows, and from there the transfer to Aswan airport, the railway station or your hotel in Aswan. Lunch is not included on this day. A breakfast box is provided for the journey.