LUXOR TO ASWAN
DAHABIYA NILE CRUISE
Five days, four nights
on the Nile
This is the longer of our two programs. You board in Luxor at midday on Saturday and step ashore in Aswan after breakfast on Wednesday. Four nights on board and five days of travel.
The pace is slow on purpose. You watch the bank change from the farmland around Luxor to the granite of Aswan over four days instead of through a window at speed.
The program takes in Karnak and Luxor Temple on the first afternoon then the Valley of the Kings and Hatshepsut on the second day. After that comes the Esna Lock, Edfu, Gebel el Silsila, Kom Ombo and Philae. Nights are spent moored beside quiet islands including Besaw and Herdiab where there is nothing to hear but the Nile.
Every temple visit is led by a licensed Egyptologist. Entrance fees, transfers and gratuities are all in the price.
- International and domestic flights
- Egypt visa fees
- Alcoholic beverages and personal expenses
- Anything not listed in the program
Karnak, Luxor Temple
Your journey begins in Luxor, where you board Fleur around midday. Settle into your cabin and have lunch on deck while the river moves past.
The afternoon goes to the two great temples of the east bank. Karnak is the largest religious complex ever built: construction ran for more than 1,300 years, each pharaoh adding to what the last one left. Luxor Temple sits in the middle of the modern city, and is at its best in the late light.
Dinner is on board. The night is spent moored on the west bank of Luxor, which is quiet in a way the east bank never is.
Boarding at Luxor. Lunch goes up on deck before the crew casts off.
Valley of the Kings
& Hatshepsut
Breakfast on board in the quiet of the morning, then across to the west bank. The Valley of the Kings is a dry limestone wadi holding sixty-three royal tombs, their painted walls done by lamplight in near-darkness with pigments that have held their colour for three thousand years.
The Temple of Queen Hatshepsut is cut into the cliff face in three colonnaded tiers, built for the woman who ruled Egypt as pharaoh for two decades.
Back on board for lunch, then we begin sailing south toward Esna. Tea on the sun deck while the bank goes past, dinner served under way, and the night at anchor beside a quiet Nile island under a full sky of stars.
Sailing south in the afternoon, somewhere between Luxor and Esna.
The Esna Lock
& Temple of Horus
Breakfast on board as Fleur crosses the Esna Lock, which is a slow and rather good thing to watch from the deck. Most dahabiyas on this river stop at Esna and put their guests in a minibus. We go through.
We sail on to Edfu, lunch served on the way. The Temple of Horus there is the most completely preserved ancient temple in Egypt: reliefs and hieroglyphs still cover nearly every surface, and the astronomical ceiling in the hypostyle hall is largely intact.
Afterwards we continue toward Al Ramady. Dinner on board, then overnight beside Besaw Island, where there is silence and very little else.
Edfu. The best-preserved temple in Egypt, and quiet if you get there early.
The quarry cliffs
& Kom Ombo
Breakfast, then we sail to Gebel el-Silsila, where the Nile narrows between sandstone cliffs quarried for three thousand years to build Egypt's temples. Millions of tonnes of stone left this spot on barges. The Temple of Horemheb is carved straight into the rock face. Large ships cannot stop here because the water is too shallow, so it is usually just us.
On to Kom Ombo, the only temple in Egypt built symmetrically for two gods at once: Sobek the crocodile god on one side, Haroeris on the other, with two of everything.
Lunch is served under way. In the evening, tea and dinner on Herdiab Island, under an open sky with no one else around. Afterwards Fleur sails gently on toward Aswan.
Kom Ombo in late afternoon light, the hour most guests end up photographing.
Philae Temple
& disembarkation
A final breakfast on board. Disembarkation is at 08:00.
The morning goes to Philae, the island temple of Isis, taken apart and rebuilt stone by stone on Agilkia Island between 1972 and 1980 to save it from the water rising behind the dams. It was one of the last working temples of ancient Egypt: the cult of Isis carried on here into the 6th century AD. You arrive by boat, through granite outcrops, into a landscape that looks nothing like the country further north.
And there the cruise ends.
Aswan. The desert closes in and the river narrows between granite islands.