Luxor & Aswan Day Tours

Luxor and Aswan are the two greatest temple cities in the world, and almost everything in them can be seen properly in a single well-planned day. This collection gathers our private day tours in both cities and the roads between them: the east and west banks of Luxor, the islands and granite quarries of Aswan, the great temples of Dendera and Abydos, and the long drive or short flight south to Abu Simbel. Every tour runs with a private guide and driver, and each one can start from your hotel, your Nile cruise boat, or the airport after a flight in from Cairo or the Red Sea.

The east bank of Luxor: Karnak and Luxor Temple

The east bank is the living city and the temples of the gods. Karnak is the largest religious complex the ancient world built anywhere, a site that grew for two thousand years, and its hypostyle hall, with one hundred and thirty-four columns in twelve rows, is the largest single room ever roofed in stone. The temple is best in the morning, when the light comes through the clerestory grilles and the great axis of Amun-Re opens in front of you. The Avenue of Sphinxes runs two and a half kilometres from Karnak to Luxor Temple, and Luxor Temple itself is the evening visit: built by Amenhotep III for the Opet festival and finished by Ramses II, it was designed for torchlight, and the modern floodlighting restores some of what the ancient festival felt like. Our Karnak, Luxor Temple and sunset felucca day combines the two temples with an hour on the river at the end, which is the correct way to close a first day in Luxor.

The west bank of Luxor: the Valley of the Kings and the mortuary temples

The west bank is the day most visitors remember for the rest of their lives. The Valley of the Kings holds at least sixty-three royal tombs cut into the desert hills, and the painted corridors of the great tombs, Seti I, Ramses VI, Merenptah and Tutankhamun among them, carry the most complete religious decoration to survive from the ancient world. The climb to the valley is short but dry and hot at midday, which is why every one of our west bank tours starts early. Hatshepsut's temple at Deir el-Bahari rises in three terraces against the limestone cliffs, and the Colossi of Memnon stand where the mortuary temple of Amenhotep III once faced the river. Our two west bank tours split the difference by depth: the Valley of the Kings and Habu tour gives the royal tombs and the finest painted temple on the bank, Ramses III's Medinet Habu, while the Valley of the Queens and Habu tour pairs the queens' painted chambers with the same great temple, for travellers who have already seen the kings' valley on an earlier visit or a cruise excursion.

Dendera and Abydos: the day trips north of Luxor

Two of Egypt's finest temples stand north of Luxor, and both are comfortable day trips. Dendera is the temple of Hathor, the best-preserved large temple in the country, with a nearly complete astronomical ceiling, crypts beneath the floor, and a rare surviving depiction of Cleopatra VII with her son Caesarion on the rear wall. Abydos is the temple of Seti I, the most beautiful relief carving in Egypt, a building that still looks as though the sculptors left last month rather than three thousand years ago, with the mysterious Osireion behind it and the king list that anchors Egyptian chronology carved in a corridor. The two sites combine into one long day, or Dendera alone runs as a shorter half-day trip. Both tours leave Luxor early and return by late afternoon, and both are quiet compared with the west bank: this is the Egypt that most visitors never see because they never leave the cruise itinerary.

Aswan day tours: Philae, the High Dam and the granite quarries

Aswan is the gentler city, greener and quieter than Luxor, and its day tours move at the river's pace. Philae is the temple of Isis, built in the Ptolemaic and Roman periods on an island in the reservoir, and reached by motorboat through granite channels, a approach that is worth the visit on its own. The temple was dismantled and rebuilt stone by stone in the 1960s to save it from the rising water of the High Dam, and the dam itself, with the Unfinished Obelisk still lying in its ancient quarry where the granite cracked three thousand years ago, completes the engineering story of the river. The Nile at Aswan runs between granite islands and palm banks, and a felucca sail around Elephantine and Kitchener's islands is the standard and correct evening in this city. The Nubian villages on the west bank, reached by road or boat, with their painted houses and gardens, add a half day of something the temple circuit cannot give you.

The road between the cities: Philae, Kom Ombo and Edfu in one day

For travellers who want the two cities without a cruise, or cruise passengers with a free day, the Aswan to Luxor road day is the best single tour in Upper Egypt. It begins in Aswan with Philae, follows the river north with the irrigated fields and the desert on both sides, stops at Kom Ombo, the double temple on its riverside bluff dedicated to two gods at once, the crocodile Sobek and Haroeris the elder Horus, whose carved medical instruments are among the most graphic depictions of ancient surgery anywhere, and closes at Edfu, the temple of Horus, the best-preserved sanctuary in Egypt, where the sand that buried the building until 1860 left the reliefs as sharp as the day they were cut. The tour ends in Luxor or returns to Aswan, and it replaces three cruise stops with one comfortable private day.

Abu Simbel: the day trip to the great temple

Abu Simbel is the farthest and the most impressive excursion in Egypt. Ramses II cut the great temple into a Nubian hillside with four twenty-metre statues of himself at the entrance, and engineered the axis so the rising sun reaches the inner sanctuary twice a year. The small temple beside it, dedicated to his queen Nefertari, is the more delicate of the two. Both temples were cut apart and rebuilt sixty-five metres higher in the 1960s in one of the greatest engineering rescues ever attempted. Two of our tours run there from Aswan: the tour by car joins the early road convoy, which is the classic 3am departure with the desert running flat and empty to the horizon, and the tour by flight runs later in the morning and returns by noon, which trades the convoy experience for two extra hours of sleep. Both give you the temples in the quiet of the early day before the day-trip buses from the cruise boats arrive.

Day tours to Luxor from the Red Sea and Cairo

Most of Egypt's visitors stay somewhere other than Luxor, and the day tours that bring them in are some of the most popular tours we run. From Hurghada, the day trip to the Valley of the Kings crosses the eastern desert by road, a drive of about four hours each way through mountains and wadis, and lands you at the west bank for a full day of tombs and temples before the drive back to the coast. From Marsa Alam, the Luxor day tour covers the same essentials on a slightly longer road. And from Cairo, the one-day Luxor tour and the one-day Aswan tour run on the early flights, which put you at Karnak or Philae by mid-morning and back in Cairo the same night, a compressed but entirely workable version of Upper Egypt for travellers who cannot add nights to the trip.

What an Egyptologist guide changes

Every tour in this collection runs with a licensed Egyptologist guide rather than a general driver-guide, and in Luxor and Aswan the difference is the whole product. The tombs and temples here are not empty shells; they are inscribed religious texts that were written to be read, and a guide who can read them turns a corridor of painted gods into a story with a plot. A good guide also manages the day itself, which in Upper Egypt is a genuine skill: the order of the sites to stay ahead of the buses, the timings around the heat, the tombs worth the extra ticket and the ones to skip, and the corners of Karnak where the crowds are not. Our guides are graded and reviewed, and we match the guide to the tour and to you, because the right guide for a family's first day in Egypt is not the same guide as the right one for a traveller on their fifth visit who wants three hours in the Valley of the Kings and no shopping stops at all.

How much a Luxor or Aswan day tour costs

Day tour prices in Upper Egypt move on four dials, and knowing them makes the quotes easier to read. The first is transport: a private car for two is priced differently from a minibus for six, and the flights from Cairo or to Abu Simbel are the largest single item on their itineraries. The second is the guide level: a licensed Egyptologist costs more than a driver-guide, and a senior Egyptologist more again. The third is what is inside: a day that includes the entry tickets, the motorboat to Philae and lunch is a different quote from a day that covers transport and guiding alone, and our tour pages state exactly what is included. The fourth is the season, with the winter high season priced above the shoulder months and the summer low season below both. As a rule, the private car and Egyptologist days in this collection sit above the group-bus excursions sold at the cruise boats, and below the luxury private programs, and the Abu Simbel by flight day is the most expensive single day because the flight dominates it.

Planning your day in Upper Egypt

Three practical rules make every day in this part of the country work. Start early: the sites open generous hours, the light is better in the morning, the tombs are cooler, and the crowds from the cruise boats arrive from mid-morning. Build the middle of the day around rest: a long lunch, the pool, the boat deck or the drive itself between sites, rather than a fourth temple at noon. And keep the felucca for the evening, because the sunset sail in Luxor or Aswan is the one thing in the day that improves by being last. If you are arriving on a cruise, tell us the boat and the mooring nights and we will fit the day around the ship's itinerary, and if you are travelling independently, send us your hotel and your nights and we will sequence the banks, the temples and the excursions in the order that works.

Browse the day tours below, or send us your dates and your nights in Luxor and Aswan, and we will build the sequence around them.