Hot Air Balloon Luxor, Valley of the Kings & Hatshepsut

The day starts on the water. A driver collects you from your Luxor hotel in the early morning and a motorboat carries you across the Nile to the West Bank, where the balloons are laid out and filling on the desert floor. The flight is quoted at about 45 minutes in one part of the listing and 40 in another, so expect somewhere in that range. From the basket the desert opens out on one side and the monuments of the West Bank sit below, with the Nile valley behind them. Cameras are not allowed in the basket, so those pictures are phone pictures. Back on the ground the day continues by air-conditioned vehicle. In the Valley of the Kings you walk into royal tombs cut straight into the rock, the burial of Tutankhamun among them, their walls painted with scenes from Egyptian mythology. The Temple of Queen Hatshepsut stands in terraces against the cliff at Deir el Bahari, and the Colossi of Memnon, two quartzite figures left from a temple that has otherwise disappeared, close the circuit. A guide travels with the group and explains each site, and there is plenty of free time at the West Bank stops. Door-to-door transfers, a licensed driver, the Nile motorboat and its captain, a flight certificate, and all taxes and charges are included in the price. Entrance fees are not, and the operator puts them at around 12 US dollars per person for all the sites. Children under 6 cannot fly, and if weather grounds the balloon the refund is 30 US dollars per person.