Esna, Edfu & Kom Ombo Temples Day Trip from Luxor

Leave Luxor in the morning and drive about an hour south to Esna. Its Temple of Khnum, the ram-headed creator god, sits below street level in the middle of the town. The hypostyle hall has recently been cleaned, revealing brightly painted ceilings and column capitals that were hidden under soot for centuries, and it is now one of the most colourful temple interiors in Egypt.

Continue south to Edfu, where the Temple of Horus is the best-preserved temple in Egypt, with its massive entrance pylon, roofed halls and granite shrine still intact. The walls tell the story of Horus avenging his father Osiris by defeating his uncle Seth, and your Egyptologist shows you how the temple's festivals were celebrated.

Finish at Kom Ombo, a double temple on a bend of the Nile with twin sanctuaries for the crocodile god Sobek and the falcon god Horus the Elder. See the carved calendar and the relief of medical instruments, and the mummified crocodiles in the museum next door, before the drive back to Luxor in the late afternoon.