The Eight-Day Path · What Most UK Clients Pick
An 8-day Egypt holiday, hour by hour.
The honest version of what eight days in Egypt actually feels like, written by the people who run it. You'll arrive into Cairo, spend a morning at the Pyramids and an afternoon in the Grand Egyptian Museum, fly down to Luxor and check straight onto your Nile ship for Karnak, spend a day on the west bank for the Valley of the Kings, then sail four nights to Aswan via Esna, Edfu and Kom Ombo, decide on the last morning whether to brave Abu Simbel, and fly home. Hesham guides most of these holidays, Suhaila plans them, and the Cairo desk runs them on the day.
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Day 1Arrival · Cairo
Wheels down in Cairo. A driver, a placard, a drive into Giza.
EgyptAir flies direct from Heathrow in roughly five hours; the one-stops through Istanbul, Doha or Frankfurt usually come in cheaper. Either way, our driver is waiting in the arrivals hall with your name on a sign, so there's no haggling with taxi touts and no working out which exit is which. He takes you straight to your hotel in Giza, where your guide is waiting in the lobby for a cup of mint tea and a quiet walk through what the next week looks like. A light dinner upstairs, an early night. The hard part of the trip is now behind you.
Included Today
- Meet-and-greet in the arrivals hall
- Private air-conditioned transfer to Giza
- Hotel check-in handled for you
- Briefing over tea with your guide
- WhatsApp number for the Cairo desk, 24/7
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Day 2Day 2 · Giza & The GEM
Pyramids before the coaches. Tutankhamun before lunch.
A 7am start so you get the Pyramids more or less to yourself; the coach groups roll in around nine. Your Egyptologist walks you through the three pyramid tombs of Khufu, Khafre and Menkaure, on to the Solar Boat museum and then close enough to the Sphinx to count the missing pieces of its beard. Lunch overlooks the plateau. The afternoon belongs to the Grand Egyptian Museum, which opened in 2026 and finally puts Tutankhamun's complete tomb hoard, all 5,398 objects, under one roof. You'll be back in Cairo for sunset.
Included Today
- Private Egyptologist for the full day
- All three Giza pyramid admissions
- Grand Egyptian Museum entry
- Lunch with a view of the plateau
- Air-conditioned vehicle and driver
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Day 3Day 3 · Down To Luxor, Onto Your Ship
A short flight south, then straight onto your cruise for Karnak.
The Cairo to Luxor flight is fifty minutes; we book it for you and include it in the price. Your Nile cruise ship is waiting at the dock when you land, so you check into your cabin rather than a hotel. Afternoons in Luxor are made for Karnak, the biggest religious complex ever built, added to by pharaohs for over thirteen hundred years. Your guide takes you through the Hypostyle Hall at the hour when the light goes amber between the columns. Luxor Temple as the evening cools, then a felucca sail past it as the sun goes down. Dinner is on board, moored where you docked; from today your week runs on cruise time.
Included Today
- Domestic flight Cairo → Luxor
- Cruise check-in (no hotel)
- Karnak Temple admission and guiding
- Luxor Temple visit
- Felucca sail at sunset
- Dinner on board
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Day 4Day 4 · West Bank
A balloon at dawn if you're game. Royal tombs by lunchtime.
There's an optional 5am hot-air balloon over the Theban Necropolis, about £95 a head, and the photograph everyone in your group will fight over for the next decade. Then the Valley of the Kings: three royal tombs, picked based on which are open that week (usually Ramesses VI, Seti I, and one on rotation). Hatshepsut's terraced temple at Deir el-Bahari afterwards, the Colossi of Memnon on the way back to the ship for lunch. No embarkation today; you sorted that yesterday. The ship pulls away from Luxor in the evening and crosses Esna Lock late at night, the same Victorian-era mechanism still doing the job while most of the ship is asleep.
Included Today
- Optional balloon flight (£95pp)
- Valley of the Kings · three royal tombs
- Hatshepsut Temple
- Colossi of Memnon
- Lunch on board
- Esna Lock crossing (late evening)
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Day 5Day 5 · Edfu, Kom Ombo
Edfu by horse and carriage, Kom Ombo at sunset.
You arrive at Edfu early, while the town's still waking up. The short ride from the dock to the temple is by horse-drawn carriage, a local tradition that's half the fun of the stop. Edfu Temple itself is the best-preserved in the country: the ceiling is still on, the reliefs are still sharp, and you can read most of the hieroglyphs without the usual squinting. Back on board for lunch, then a properly lazy afternoon on the sundeck while the ship sails south. You reach Kom Ombo just before sunset, timed so you're walking through the only temple in Egypt dedicated to two gods, Sobek the crocodile and Horus the falcon, as the light turns gold. A small museum next door holds the crocodile mummies. Dinner back on board while the ship sails on toward Aswan overnight.
Included Today
- Edfu Temple by horse and carriage
- Lunch on board
- Kom Ombo Temple at sunset
- The crocodile museum at Kom Ombo
- Full board throughout (B/L/D)
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Day 6Day 6 · Aswan
Philae, the High Dam, then a sunset felucca to a Nubian house.
The ship arrives in Aswan overnight, so you wake up already there. Philae Temple comes first: a motorboat crossing gets you to the island where the temple was rebuilt in the 1970s, famously cut into 40,000 blocks and moved to higher ground before the High Dam could drown the original site. The Aswan High Dam itself is a short stop after. Late afternoon, a felucca carries you across to a Nubian village for sunset, actual people living their lives rather than a staged show (an optional add-on at £65pp). You're usually invited into a family's living room for tea, with a baby crocodile in a tank in the corner, because the Nubians keep them as pets. Dinner back on the ship.
Included Today
- Philae Temple + motorboat crossing
- Aswan High Dam
- Sunset felucca + Nubian village (optional, £65pp)
- Tea with a Nubian family
- Full board throughout (B/L/D)
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Day 7Day 7 · Abu Simbel, Fly To Cairo
Ramesses II at dawn, or a lie-in, then back to Cairo.
Abu Simbel is optional and it's a full production either way. By road it's around three hours each way and about £120pp. By plane it's a 45-minute hop for closer to £360pp, worth it if six hours in a minibus before breakfast doesn't appeal. Either route gets you to Ramesses II's enormous temples carved into a cliff on the Sudan border, which a lot of our clients describe as the emotional peak of their week. You could just as easily have breakfast in your dressing gown instead; both are acceptable. Either way you'll disembark the ship afterwards, fly Aswan to Cairo, and check into your hotel by mid-afternoon. The evening's yours: book an optional excursion through your guide, or just walk and have dinner at your own pace.
Included Today
- Optional Abu Simbel: road ~£120pp or flight ~£360pp
- Cruise disembarkation
- Domestic flight Aswan → Cairo
- Hotel check-in, Cairo
- Evening free (optional excursion available)
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Day 8Last DayDay 8 · Home
Breakfast, checkout, and the flight home.
Nothing scheduled this morning beyond breakfast and packing. Checkout is whenever your flight requires; our driver times the airport transfer to your departure, not the other way round. You'll land back in the UK with your phone full of temple photos and, if you took the balloon, one shot everyone will ask about for years.
Included Today
- Breakfast at your hotel
- Checkout
- Private transfer to Cairo International
- A final WhatsApp check-in from the team
Use This As A Starting Point
We run 42 other multi-day routes, and reshape every one of them.
Add Alexandria onto the front. Extend the river to seven nights. Slot in a few nights of desert camping in the Western oases. Swap the 5★ ship for a private dahabiya. Tag a Red Sea diving stretch onto the end. Tell us the shape and Suhaila will write back from Cairo by the end of the working day.