5-Day Luxor, Aswan & Abu Simbel Classic Tour

Your Egyptologist meets you at your Luxor hotel for a full day covering the city's greatest sites. On the West Bank, enter three royal tombs in the Valley of the Kings, walk the terraces of Queen Hatshepsut's temple at Deir el-Bahari and stop at the Colossi of Memnon. After lunch, cross to the East Bank to explore Karnak, with its Great Hypostyle Hall of 134 columns, and finish at Luxor Temple as the late afternoon light warms the stone. Overnight in Luxor.

After breakfast, drive north to Abydos, the legendary burial place of Osiris. The Temple of Seti I has some of the finest painted reliefs in Egypt and the famous Abydos King List, and behind it lies the mysterious, half-flooded Osirion. Continue to Dendera and the Temple of Hathor, one of the best-preserved temples in Egypt, with its painted astronomical ceiling, crypts and rooftop chapels. Lunch, drinks and snacks are included, and you return to Luxor for the night.

Check out and head south along the Nile. Stop at Edfu to explore the Temple of Horus, the most complete temple in Egypt, still standing much as it did 2,000 years ago. Continue to Kom Ombo, a riverside double temple for the crocodile god Sobek and Horus the Elder, and see the mummified crocodiles in its small museum. Arrive in Aswan in the afternoon and check in to your hotel.

Spend the day exploring Aswan. Start at the ancient granite quarries and the Unfinished Obelisk, which would have been the largest obelisk ever raised. Continue to the High Dam, with views over Lake Nasser, then take a motorboat to Philae and the Temple of Isis, rescued from the Nile and rebuilt on Agilkia Island in the 1970s. The rest of the afternoon is free to enjoy the Corniche or the souk. Overnight in Aswan.

Leave early for the drive across the Nubian desert to Abu Simbel, where the Great Temple of Ramesses II is guarded by four colossal statues of the king, and the Temple of Hathor and Queen Nefertari stands beside it on the shore of Lake Nasser. After your guided visit, return to Aswan, where your tour ends with a transfer to your hotel, the airport or the train station.