| Duration |
12 Days / 11 Nights |
|---|---|
| Tour Location |
Cairo / Luxor / Aswan / Alexandria / Bahariya Oasis / White Desert / Black Desert |
| Tour Type |
Daily Tour |
| Pickup |
Cairo Airport |
This 12-day Egypt tour covers Cairo, a full Nile Cruise from Luxor to Aswan, Alexandria on the Mediterranean coast, and a desert safari through Bahariya Oasis, including the White Desert and Black Desert. It is Egypt's most comprehensive hidden-gems itinerary, designed for travelers who want to go beyond the standard pyramid-and-Nile route. If you’re exploring different styles of itineraries or want to see how this journey compares, you can browse other complete Egypt travel packages for more route ideas and travel inspiration.
The tour starts in Cairo with the Great Pyramids of Giza and the Grand Egyptian Museum, then flies to Luxor to board a Nile Cruise. Over three days on the river, you visit Karnak Temple, Luxor Temple, the Valley of the Kings, Hatshepsut Temple, Edfu Temple, Kom Ombo Temple, and the Philae Temple in Aswan. After returning to Cairo, you travel north to Alexandria to explore Pompey's Pillar, the Catacombs of Kom El Shoqafa, the Citadel of Qaitbay, and the Bibliotheca Alexandrina. Day 9 covers Old Cairo, the Hanging Church, Church of Abu Serga, and Ben Ezra Synagogue. The final two active days head deep into the Western Desert for the Valley of the Golden Mummies, Ain El-Maftella Temple, the Banatiu Tomb, and a full-day 4x4 safari through the White and Black Deserts.
Only on this route
Most Egypt Nile cruise packages skip Alexandria and the Western Desert, since sticking to a Cairo-Luxor-Aswan loop keeps logistics simple. This route adds a full day in Alexandria and a night of desert camping near Bahariya's White Desert on top of the four-night cruise.
Giza to Luxor
Pyramid mornings give way to a flight south toward Luxor
Your guide meets you at Cairo International Airport and transfers you to your hotel in a private air-conditioned vehicle. Once you've settled in, the evening starts on the water — a Nile dinner cruise with a buffet, live music, and belly dance performance as the city lights drift past.
Your first night in Egypt, and you're already on the river. Watch Cairo from the water as it lights up after dark; it's a genuinely good way to arrive, and the performance gives you an early taste of Egyptian hospitality before the serious sightseeing begins.
Dinner
After breakfast, your Egyptologist guide picks you up for one of the most loaded sightseeing days of the trip. The Giza Plateau in the morning, the Grand Egyptian Museum in the afternoon, then a domestic flight to Luxor.
You've seen photos your whole life, but nothing quite prepares you for standing at the base of these and looking up. They're bigger than your brain expects, and they were already 2,000 years old when the ancient Romans came to stare at them, too. Your guide will walk you through who built them, how, and why the engineering still baffles people today.
Most visitors walk past this one on the way to the Sphinx, but stop here. These pink granite walls, some blocks heavier than a jumbo jet, are where ancient priests completed the embalming rituals before a pharaoh was laid to rest. It's quieter than the pyramid plateau, and the stonework is extraordinary up close.
You'll want time here just to take it in. Carved from a single ridge of natural limestone and stretching 73 meters long, the Sphinx has been watching over this plateau for 4,500 years. Your guide will tell you about the ongoing debates over its age, its missing nose, and the smaller Dream Stele tucked between its paws.
Opened in 2024, this is the largest archaeological museum in the world, and it shows. Over 100,000 artifacts, including the complete collection of Tutankhamun's treasures, are on display publicly for the first time. Set aside at least two hours. You won't want to rush it.
Breakfast and Lunch
Luxor to Aswan
Sail from Karnak to Philae, then fly back to Cairo
Morning flight to Luxor. Your guide meets you at the airport and takes you straight to the East Bank, where two of Egypt's most extraordinary temple complexes are waiting. You board your Nile cruise that evening.
Walk in and give yourself a moment to adjust to the scale. Thirty different pharaohs built here over 2,000 years, and you can feel the accumulated ambition in every direction. The Hypostyle Hall 134 columns, the tallest over 20 meters high, is one of those places where photographs genuinely don't do it justice.
Come back to this one at sunset if you can; the light on the entrance columns at golden hour is something else. Built for the Opet Festival, this temple was a place of celebration rather than burial, and that energy still comes through. Look for the Roman frescoes painted over the older Egyptian carvings near the back layers of history, literally on top of each other.
Breakfast, lunch, and Dinner
Early morning crossing to the West Bank. This is the ancient Egyptian city of the dead, where pharaohs, queens, and nobles are buried in the limestone cliffs across the river from Luxor. Three major stops, all within easy reach by road.
You'll enter tombs that have been sealed for over 3,000 years. The painted walls inside scenes from the Book of the Dead, guiding the pharaoh through the underworld, are still vivid. Your guide will take you into three tombs and explain what you're actually looking at, because without context, the imagery can be overwhelming. Budget time to simply stand still and let it sink in.
Built into the base of sheer golden cliffs at Deir el-Bahari, Hatshepsut's temple is one of the most dramatic architectural settings in Egypt. She ruled as pharaoh, not queen, for over 20 years, and her successor tried to erase her from history.
These two massive quartzite statues every 18 meters tall, are all that's left of what was once the largest mortuary temple in Egypt. Standing between them gives you a sense of the scale that the ancient Egyptians were working at.
Breakfast, lunch, and Dinner
The cruise sails south overnight and docks at Edfu by morning. Two temple stops today on opposite banks of the river, then onward toward Aswan.
This is the best-preserved ancient temple in Egypt, full stop. Because it was buried under desert sand for centuries, it survived in extraordinary condition. The colors, the carvings, and the towering 36-meter entrance pylon are all intact. Walking through here, you get a real sense of what these temples looked like when they were active. Your guide will explain the rituals that took place in each chamber.
Kom Ombo sits right on the riverbank, and the view arriving by boat is one of the highlights of the cruise. What makes this temple genuinely unusual is its double layout two identical halves, one side for Sobek, the crocodile god, and the other for Horus. Look out for the medical instrument carvings near the back wall: forceps, scalpels, dental tools some of the oldest medical illustrations ever found.
Breakfast, lunch, and Dinner
Last day on the cruise. Two visits in Aswan before the ship docks for good. You fly back to Cairo the following morning.
Standing on the dam and looking out at Lake Nasser, one of the largest man-made lakes in the world, gives you a real sense of modern Egypt's ambitions. It took 11 years to build, ended the annual Nile floods that shaped Egyptian civilization for millennia, and forced the relocation of entire Nubian villages and ancient temples. Your guide will walk you through what it costs and what it changed.
This one has a story that will stay with you. The entire temple complex was dismantled block by block in the 1970s and moved to higher ground to save it from the rising waters of Lake Nasser. 40,000 stone blocks were reassembled like a giant puzzle on a new island. Arriving by boat and seeing it rise from the Nile water is genuinely beautiful. It was one of the last places in the ancient world where the old Egyptian religion was still actively practiced.
Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner
Morning checkout from the cruise, transfer to Aswan Airport, and a short domestic flight back to Cairo. The afternoon is free a good chance to rest before the early start for Alexandria the next day.
Breakfast and Lunch
Alexandria to Old Cairo
Alexandria's coastline gives way to Cairo's mosques and churches
Back in Cairo after breakfast. Today, you're exploring Old Cairo, a neighborhood where mosques, Coptic churches, and a synagogue sit within a few minutes' walk of each other. It's one of the most quietly remarkable corners of the city.
Start here for the view. On a clear morning, you can see the Pyramids from the ramparts — the ancient and medieval worlds visible at the same time. The Citadel served as Egypt's seat of government for nearly 700 years, and your guide will walk you through what happened within these walls across that span of time.
One of Egypt's oldest Coptic churches, built above the southern gatehouse of the ancient Roman Babylon Fortress — hence the name. Step inside and slow down. The 110 icons lining the walls include some dating to the 8th century, and the carved wooden pulpit resting on 13 columns is one of the finest pieces of medieval craftsmanship in Cairo.
A short walk from the Hanging Church, this 5th-century church sits over a crypt that tradition holds sheltered the Holy Family during their journey through Egypt. Parts of the crypt flood seasonally from the rising Nile water table, the same water that has been seeping through these foundations since Roman times.
The building is beautiful, but the real story is the Cairo Geniza, a sealed storage room discovered in 1896 containing nearly 300,000 manuscript fragments: medieval Jewish documents, letters, contracts, biblical texts. Scholars are still working through them. Your guide will bring it to life in a way that makes this small synagogue feel like one of the most significant places you've visited on the whole trip.
Breakfast and Lunch
Bawiti to White Desert
From Bawiti's mudbrick to camping beneath white desert
Early drive from Cairo into the Western Desert, about 4 hours southwest on the Bahariya road. The landscape changes gradually and then suddenly: the highway gives way to open gravel plains, the horizon flattens, and the tourist infrastructure of Cairo feels very far away. This is where the off-the-beaten-path Egypt itinerary really earns its name.
Your first stop in the oasis. Bawiti has been continuously inhabited since at least the New Kingdom, and the older quarter still has the feel of a desert settlement that hasn't changed much in centuries — mudbrick lanes, palm groves, the sound of irrigation water.
Discovered in 1996 when a donkey stumbled into a hidden tomb entrance, this necropolis holds over 250 Greco-Roman period mummies, many still wearing gilded cartonnage masks. Archaeologists estimate the full site may contain up to 10,000 burials. You're walking over one of the largest undiscovered archaeological sites in Egypt — most of it is still underground.
Open-air tombs and stone sarcophagi from Alexandria-era settlers who came to the oasis as administrators and merchants. The cultural mixing you saw in Alexandria's catacombs shows up here too: Greek funerary styles combined with Egyptian burial customs, playing out quietly in the middle of the desert.
Four small shrines in a single chapel complex, built in the 26th Dynasty and unusually well-preserved — the painted relief carvings inside still hold much of their original color. Your guide will explain the local deities worshipped here and why an oasis 300 kilometers from the Nile had its own distinct religious traditions.
This is one of the best-decorated private tombs in the Western Desert. Bannentiu was a wealthy merchant of the 26th Dynasty, and his family spared no expense. The painted walls show scenes from the Book of the Dead alongside images of his actual life, trading journeys, family gatherings, and offerings to the gods. It feels personal in a way that royal tombs often don't.
Breakfast and Lunch
Full day in a 4x4, off-road through two landscapes that feel completely unlike anywhere else in Egypt. This is the true highlight of the desert experience, and part of what makes itineraries within Egypt Oasis Tours so unique for adventurous travelers.
Volcanic cones and hills dusted in dark basalt rise sharply from a flat gravel plain. From a distance, it looks almost industrial; up close, the texture and color of the rock are surprisingly varied. Your driver knows the best vantage points.
Nothing quite prepares you for the White Desert. Wind erosion over thousands of years has carved the chalk and limestone into shapes that genuinely look like abstract sculptures, mushrooms, arches, towers, and figures. At sunset, the formations go pink and orange, and the light turns surreal. It's one of the stranger and more beautiful places in Africa, and most travelers who visit it say it's the image from Egypt that stays with them longest.
Breakfast and Lunch
Final breakfast at the hotel. Your driver transfers you to Cairo International Airport for departure. The 12-day Egypt Bahariya oasis tour ends here three deserts, one river, one Mediterranean coast, and more history than most people see in a lifetime of travel.
Breakfast
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This 12-day Egypt Bahariya Oasis tour includes 11 nights of accommodation (Cairo, Alexandria, a 5-star Nile Cruise, and desert camping), a private Egyptologist guide, domestic flights, all entrance fees, daily breakfast, full-board cruise meals, desert meals, and private transfers. International flights and visas are not included.
This tour stands out by combining three unique regions in one itinerary: a full Nile Cruise (Luxor to Aswan), Alexandria’s Mediterranean coast, and a Bahariya Oasis desert safari (White & Black Desert). Most 12-day Egypt tours only cover Cairo and the Nile—this one adds both without missing the key highlights.
Yes. Days 10 and 11 are dedicated entirely to Bahariya Oasis and the Western Desert. Day 10 covers the ancient village of Bawiti, the Valley of the Golden Mummies, the Greek-Roman Cemetery, Ain El-Maftella Temple, and the Banatiu Tomb.
Yes. Day 8 is full in Alexandria, covering Pompey's Pillar, the Citadel of Qaitbay, the Catacombs of Kom El Shoqafa, and the Bibliotheca Alexandrina. You stay overnight in Alexandria before returning to Cairo on Day 9. The drive from Cairo to Alexandria takes approximately 2.5 to 3 hours on the desert highway.
The Nile Cruise runs from Luxor to Aswan over four nights. Temple visits include Karnak Temple and Luxor Temple on embarkation day, the Valley of the Kings, Hatshepsut Temple, and the Colossi of Memnon on the West Bank, followed by the Temple of Horus at Edfu, the Temple of Kom Ombo, and the Philae Temple in Aswan on the final cruise day.
Prices shown include your hotel stay by default. Switch off to see tour-only pricing if you're arranging your own accommodation.
Xmas window: 21 Dec – 7 Jan / Easter window: 29 Mar – 11 Apr
Xmas window: 21 Dec – 7 Jan / Easter window: 29 Mar – 11 Apr
Xmas window: 21 Dec – 7 Jan / Easter window: 29 Mar – 11 Apr
Xmas window: 21 Dec – 7 Jan / Easter window: 29 Mar – 11 Apr
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All things you should know before visiting Egypt & Beyond
Tripidays Egypt Tours has been offering an exceptional range of Egypt tours, vacation packages, Nile cruises, day trips, and shore excursions tailored to meet the diverse interests of travelers worldwide for over 45 years.
