Last Updated: October 28, 2026
Cleopatra lived closer in time to the Moon landing than to the building of the Great Pyramid. Keep that in mind on the Nile, because most of the temples you sail past are from her end of the story, not the beginning. Dendera, Kom Ombo, Philae and Esna were built or finished under the Ptolemies, the Greek dynasty that ruled Egypt after Alexander the Great, and under the Roman emperors who came after them. Foreign kings had themselves carved into the walls in the crowns and kilts of the pharaohs, making offerings to Egyptian gods in a style that was already ancient, because that was what a ruler of Egypt was supposed to look like. Alexander himself is there inside Luxor Temple, in a chapel built in his name, dressed as one.
We came to Egypt in late fall, after a pre-cruise extension in Jordan — Amman and Jerash, Madaba, Mount Nebo and the Dead Sea, the desert at Wadi Rum and Petra, all gathered in our Jordan Travel Guide — and a short flight from Amman to Cairo. We spent four nights in Cairo, split between the start and the end of the trip, flew to Luxor, and boarded Uniworld’s River Tosca for the cruise from Luxor up the Nile to Aswan and back, with a flight south to Abu Simbel. By the time we left we had made some very good friends after three weeks of traveling together.
Three other things kept surfacing across the ten posts. The first is erasure: faces chiseled off, names hammered out of cartouches, a pharaoh’s whole reign cut from the record by the one who came next. The second is color. Egypt was not built in beige; it was painted, and at Dendera and Esna you can see it again, because cleaning has taken the soot of centuries off ceilings that were blue and gold all along. The third is that some of the most famous monuments on the river are no longer where they were built. Abu Simbel and Philae were cut into blocks and moved to higher ground in the 1960s and 1970s, ahead of the water rising behind the Aswan High Dam.
This guide is organized by region, from Cairo south up the Nile to Abu Simbel near the Sudanese border, rather than strictly in the order we traveled. Each section links to the full post, with the photographs, visitor information and practical detail for that part of the trip.
Cairo and the Grand Egyptian Museum
Cairo is the largest city in the Arab world, and it does not ease you in. The traffic is constant, the horns are a language, and in the fall the air is heavy with smoke from farmers in the Nile Delta burning off the rice straw after harvest. Some days it felt less like smog than standing inside a chimney. We stayed at the Nile Ritz-Carlton, which is a beautiful hotel, and we left it disappointed: smoking was permitted everywhere, a nightclub on the first floor played until one in the morning loud enough to hear on the twelfth, and the clubs along the river kept going until four. If sleep matters to you, ask about it before you book.
And yet the city is worth the noise. The Khan el-Khalili bazaar is best treated as theater — haggle hard and enjoy the tea — and the El-Attaba market nearby is where Cairenes actually shop. The Muhammad Ali Mosque on the Citadel looks out over the whole city. And the Grand Egyptian Museum, which opened fully on November 1, 2025 near the Giza plateau, now holds the complete Tutankhamun collection together for the first time, along with the colossal statue of Ramesses II in the Grand Hall and Khufu’s 4,600-year-old solar boat. It is reason enough to come. Everything is in Cairo, Egypt: Ancient Wonders, the Grand Egyptian Museum & a City That Never Sleeps.
Saqqara, the Pyramids of Giza and the Great Sphinx
Go to Saqqara first. It is where the pyramid begins: the Step Pyramid of Djoser, designed by his architect Imhotep around 2670 BC, is a stack of six diminishing platforms and the oldest of Egypt’s pyramids, built roughly a century before the Great Pyramid. Nearby, the walls inside the Pyramid of Unas carry the Pyramid Texts, among the oldest religious writings in the world. Saqqara does not overwhelm you the way Giza does, which is exactly why it is the right way in.
Then Giza, which does overwhelm you. We went inside the Great Pyramid of Khufu, up the long, steep passage to the King’s Chamber, and it is as close and as quiet as you would expect a room inside six million tons of stone to be. The Sphinx comes with a famous story that is wrong: Napoleon’s soldiers did not shoot its nose off. Drawings made decades before the French arrived in 1798 already show it missing. Saqqara, Giza, a silk-rug workshop in between, and our last night in Cairo are in A Visit to Saqqara, the Pyramids of Giza, the Great Sphinx, and the Tombs of Ancient Egypt.
Luxor: Karnak and Luxor Temple at Night
Luxor was ancient Thebes, the religious capital of the New Kingdom, and Karnak was its great temple — not one building but a walled religious city of some 200 acres, added to by pharaoh after pharaoh for about two thousand years. Its Great Hypostyle Hall has 134 columns, the tallest of them nearly 70 feet high, and walking among them is the moment most people remember from Egypt. Karnak is also where the erasure is easiest to read. Akhenaten had the god Amun’s name cut out of the walls; his successors had Akhenaten cut out in turn; and Hatshepsut, one of the most successful pharaohs Egypt ever had, was removed from her own monuments after her death. Her obelisk still stands. The story is in Karnak Temple, Egypt: Amun-Ra, the Great Hypostyle Hall & the Avenue of Sphinxes, which ends with us boarding the River Tosca on the Luxor waterfront.
Luxor Temple, less than two miles south and joined to Karnak by the restored Avenue of Sphinxes, is best seen after dark, when it is floodlit and the crowds have thinned. The first pylon still has one of its two obelisks; the other has stood in the Place de la Concorde in Paris since 1836. Inside, a mosque sits on top of the temple courtyard, and a chapel carries Alexander the Great in the dress of a pharaoh. Our evening visit with a small group is in Visiting Luxor Temple at Night: A Small-Group Experience in Egypt.
Dendera: Hathor and Cleopatra
The Temple of Hathor at Dendera, north of Luxor, is a day trip by road that many Nile itineraries skip, and it is the best-preserved temple we saw in Egypt. The roof is intact, the columns are crowned with the face of the goddess, and the ceilings of the hypostyle hall are painted with the sky — the sky goddess Nut, the hours of the night, the signs of the zodiac — in blues and golds that have been cleaned back to something close to what the builders saw. On the outside of the rear wall is one of the few surviving temple reliefs of Cleopatra VII, standing with Caesarion, her son by Julius Caesar.
We had long stretches of it almost to ourselves, then spent the evening on the deck of the ship watching the Luxor waterfront. It is all in Dendera Temple, Egypt: Hathor, Cleopatra’s Relief & Life on the Nile.
The Valley of the Kings and the Temple of Hatshepsut
Across the river, on the west bank, the pharaohs of the New Kingdom gave up on pyramids, which had been robbed long before, and cut their tombs into a desert valley under a peak that is itself shaped like one. The standard ticket covers three tombs; we saw four, including Tutankhamun’s, one of the smallest in the valley and the one Howard Carter found almost intact on November 4, 1922. The others, among them the tomb of Ramesses III, called the Tomb of the Harpers, are larger and more richly painted, their ceilings covered with the guidebooks to the underworld that the king would need to reach the afterlife.
Below the cliffs at Deir el-Bahri is the terraced Temple of Hatshepsut, which is Karnak’s erasure story again in a single building — her statues smashed and her images chiseled away after her death. The valley, the temple and an alabaster workshop on the way back to the ship are in Valley of the Kings, Egypt.
Esna: The Temple of Khnum
Esna’s temple sits at the bottom of a pit in the middle of a working town, several meters below the modern street, because the town grew up around and over it while it filled with sand and silt. Only the hypostyle hall is excavated, a Roman-period hall of 24 columns dedicated to Khnum, the ram-headed god who shaped people on a potter’s wheel. What makes it worth the stop is the recent restoration: for centuries the ceiling was black with soot, and cleaning has brought back an astronomical ceiling and painted columns so vivid that, compared to other temples we saw, the colors are startling. You can still see the line between the cleaned and uncleaned stone. The visit is in Esna Temple, Egypt.
Kom Ombo, a Felucca and the Old Cataract Hotel
Kom Ombo is a double temple, built by the Ptolemies on a bend of the river with two of everything — two entrances, two halls, two sanctuaries — one side for Sobek, the crocodile god, and one for Horus. A Nilometer in the grounds measured the height of the annual flood, which told the state what the harvest would be and what to tax. The small Crocodile Museum next door holds mummified crocodiles from the local cemetery. And on one wall is a relief that is widely read as a set of surgical instruments, though some Egyptologists think the tools are ritual rather than medical.
From there we went to Aswan, sailed a felucca into the marshes along the river to watch kingfishers and herons, and ended the day with tea on the terrace of the Old Cataract Hotel, which has been looking out over the Nile since 1899. All of that is in Kom Ombo, Egypt.
Philae, the Aswan High Dam and Aswan
Philae is reached by small boat, and the Temple of Isis rises out of the water the way it was always meant to be seen. It was one of the last places in Egypt where the old gods were worshipped: the last known hieroglyphic inscription anywhere was carved here in AD 394, and the temple was not closed until the reign of the Byzantine emperor Justinian, more than a century after that. But the island you land on is not Philae. The original island was partly submerged for much of each year after the first Aswan Dam was built in 1902, and when the High Dam threatened to drown it for good, UNESCO dismantled the temple and rebuilt it on neighboring Agilkia Island between 1972 and 1980, landscaped to match.
The High Dam itself, finished in 1970, is worth the stop for what it explains. It ended the annual Nile flood that had governed Egyptian life for five thousand years, and it created Lake Nasser, which stretches roughly 500 kilometers, across the border into Sudan. The Nubian villages along that stretch of river were moved, as well as the temples. None of that makes the place less worth visiting. It just means somebody paid for it. Philae, the dam, the Unfinished Obelisk still lying cracked in its quarry, a papyrus workshop and the Aswan spice market are in Philae Temple, Egypt.
Abu Simbel
From the ship in Aswan we flew south for about forty minutes to Abu Simbel, close to the Sudanese border. Ramesses II had two temples cut into the sandstone cliff here: the Great Temple, fronted by four seated statues of himself some 20 meters high, and a smaller temple to Hathor and his queen Nefertari, who is shown nearly at his own scale — a rare honor. The Great Temple was aligned so that twice a year, around February 22 and October 22, the rising sun reaches all the way into the sanctuary.
The international campaign to save Abu Simbel and the other Nubian monuments led directly to the 1972 World Heritage Convention. Between 1964 and 1968 an international team cut both temples into more than a thousand blocks and reassembled them about 65 meters higher, inside an artificial hill, out of reach of Lake Nasser. Photography is not allowed inside either temple. The visit is in Abu Simbel, Egypt.
Planning an Egypt Trip: Visitor Information
Official sources: Egypt’s Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities publishes opening hours, ticket prices and site information at egymonuments.gov.eg, and its travel site is egypt.travel. Hours and prices change often, and many sites now take cards only, so check both before you go.
Grand Egyptian Museum: On the Cairo–Alexandria Desert Road near the Giza pyramids. Open daily; the Tutankhamun galleries may require a separate ticket. Book online in advance. Website: gem.eg.
Giza Pyramids and Saqqara: Giza is on the western edge of Cairo, Saqqara about 30 kilometers south. Both are generally open from early morning to late afternoon. Entry to the interior of the Great Pyramid and to individual tombs at Saqqara is ticketed separately from the site, and numbers are limited. A guide and a car for the day is the easiest way to see both.
Luxor: Karnak and Luxor Temple are on the East Bank and each has its own ticket; Luxor Temple stays open into the evening. The Valley of the Kings and the Temple of Hatshepsut are on the West Bank. The standard Valley of the Kings ticket covers three tombs, and Tutankhamun’s tomb is an additional ticket. Dendera and Esna are day trips by road from Luxor.
Aswan and Abu Simbel: Philae is reached by boat from the Shellal dock south of Aswan; the High Dam and the Unfinished Obelisk are short drives. Abu Simbel is about 280 kilometers south of Aswan — roughly a 40-minute flight, or three to four hours each way by road. The temples open very early and photography inside them is not permitted.
Our cruise: We sailed between Luxor and Aswan on Uniworld’s River Tosca, with Jordan as a pre-cruise extension and our Cairo nights at the start and end of the trip.
Practical Tips for Traveling Egypt
Go between October and April, and know about the smoke. Summer in Upper Egypt is brutally hot, and the cooler months are the season for a reason. The trade-off in late fall is the burning of rice straw in the Nile Delta, which can leave Cairo under a brown haze for days. The skies at Philae were still clear when we were there; Cairo’s were not.
Expect early mornings. The way to beat the heat and the tour buses is to be at the gate when it opens, which on a cruise often means a 5:00 or 6:00 AM wake-up. Abu Simbel and the Valley of the Kings are both at their best before nine.
Buy the extra tickets. Tutankhamun’s tomb, the inside of the Great Pyramid and the Tutankhamun galleries at the Grand Egyptian Museum all cost more than the base ticket. For most people they are the reason they came, so decide in advance rather than at the gate.
Ask about photography at each site. The rules vary: no photography inside the Abu Simbel temples, separate rules in some tombs, and at the Grand Egyptian Museum we were first told no photography and then watched everyone around us taking pictures. The restriction appears to be on commercial use. Never use a flash on painted surfaces anywhere.
Plan for the shopping stops. Organized tours in Egypt include workshop visits — alabaster on the West Bank, papyrus and perfume in Aswan, silk rugs near Giza. Some are genuinely interesting demonstrations of the craft. All of them end in a showroom, and there is no obligation to buy.
Haggle in the bazaars and carry small notes. At Khan el-Khalili the first price is an opening position. Tipping is part of daily life in Egypt, for guides, drivers, boat crews and the guardians who unlock a tomb, so keep a supply of small Egyptian pound notes.
Dress for temples and mosques. Shoulders and knees covered is respectful everywhere and required in mosques, where women will also need a head covering. Bring a hat and serious sun protection; there is very little shade at Karnak, Abu Simbel or the Valley of the Kings.
Choose your Cairo hotel for sleep, not just for the view. Nile-front hotels are beautiful and the river is loud at night. Ask whether smoking is allowed and where the nightclubs are before you book.
Frequently Asked Questions About Traveling in Egypt
How many days do you need in Egypt? Ten to twelve days covers the essentials at a sensible pace: three or four in Cairo for Giza, Saqqara and the Grand Egyptian Museum, then a cruise of four to seven nights between Luxor and Aswan, with a day for Abu Simbel. We had the luxury of a longer trip, with Jordan first, and Egypt never felt padded.
Is a Nile cruise the best way to see Upper Egypt? For most travelers, yes. The major sites between Luxor and Aswan are strung along the river, the boat is your hotel, and the hours on deck watching feluccas, farms and herons go by are part of the experience rather than a gap between temples. The alternative is to base yourself in Luxor and Aswan and travel between them by road or train.
Which temples should you not miss? Karnak for scale, Abu Simbel for drama, and Philae for its setting. Our personal recommendation is to add Dendera, which many itineraries skip and which is the best-preserved temple we saw, and Esna, where the newly cleaned ceiling shows what these buildings looked like in color.
Is Cairo worth visiting, or should you head straight for the Nile? Give it at least two full days. Cairo is loud, polluted and exhausting, and it is also where the pyramids, Saqqara and the Grand Egyptian Museum are. The museum alone — the whole Tutankhamun collection in one place for the first time — justifies the stop.
Can you go inside the Pyramids of Giza? Yes, with a separate ticket. We went inside the Great Pyramid of Khufu to the King’s Chamber. The passage is steep, narrow and hot, with handrails and low ceilings in places, so it is not for anyone who struggles with confined spaces or stairs. There is little to see inside but the stone, which is the point.
What is the best time of year to visit Egypt? October through April. December and January are the coolest and busiest months. Late February and late October bring the solar alignment at Abu Simbel, which draws large crowds. From May through September temperatures in Luxor and Aswan regularly pass 100°F.
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