Tour Details
| Duration |
11 Days / 10 Nights
|
|---|---|
| Tour Location |
Cairo / Luxor / Dendera / Abydos / Aswan / Abu Simbel
|
| Tour Type |
Daily Tour
|
| Pickup |
Cairo Airport
|
11-Day Classic Egypt Fly-Cruise: Abu Simbel, Dendera & Abydos
This 11-day classic Egypt tour covers Cairo, Luxor, Dendera, Abydos, Aswan, and Abu Simbel across a fly-and-cruise format: a domestic flight takes you directly to Luxor on Day 3, and the Nile Cruise then travels south through Edfu and Kom Ombo to Aswan. It is the only tour in the portfolio to include Abu Simbel as a guaranteed itinerary day and to combine that with the exclusive temples of Dendera and Abydos.
Day 1 opens in Cairo with an evening Nile Dinner Cruise. Day 2 covers the Giza Pyramids Complex, the Great Pyramids of Khufu, Khafre, and Menkaure, the Great Sphinx, the Valley Temple, and the Grand Egyptian Museum. Day 3 flies to Luxor for Karnak Temple and Luxor Temple. Day 4 crosses to the West Bank for the Valley of the Kings, the Temple of Hatshepsut, and the Colossi of Memnon. Day 5 visits Dendera Temple and Abydos Temple before boarding the Nile Cruise. Day 6 returns to the West Bank for the Valley of the Queens, Habu Temple, and Deir el-Medina. Day 7 sails to Edfu Temple by horse carriage and Kom Ombo Temple with its crocodile museum. Day 8 makes the early-morning road transfer to Abu Simbel to see the rock temples of Ramses II and Queen Nefertari. Day 9 covers the Aswan High Dam, the Unfinished Obelisk, and Philae Temple before the flight back to Cairo. Day 10 explores Islamic Cairo — the National Museum of Egyptian Civilization, Salah El Din Citadel, Al-Refaay Mosque, El Sultan Hassan Mosque, Al-Muizz Street, and Khan El-Khalili Bazaar. Day 11 is the departure. If your interest lies specifically in the classic pharaonic circuit, the classic Egypt tour packages collection covers every variation of this route across different durations.
Why Book This Tour
- The only 11-day fly and cruise with Abu Simbel is guaranteed
- Abu Simbel is included as a confirmed day — never an optional upgrade
- Licensed guide on every touring day from arrival to departure
- Dendera and Abydos — exclusive temples
- Four nights on board, sailing with the current rather than against it
- Four nights in Cairo, two nights in Luxor
- Two domestic flights are included
- Modern air-conditioned vehicles for all ground transport
- Tripidays representative available from arrival to departure
- Itinerary customisable on request
Included
- Airport meet-and-assist on arrival and departure by Tripidays
- 4 nights in a Cairo hotel
- 2 nights in a Luxor hotel
- 4 nights on a Nile Cruise
- Domestic flight: Cairo to Luxor
- Domestic flight: Aswan to Cairo
- Private licensed Egyptologist guide on all touring days
- All transfers by modern private air-conditioned vehicles
- Entrance fees to all attractions in the itinerary
- Meals as specified in the itinerary
- One bottled water during all touring days
- All applicable taxes and service charges
Excluded
- International flights to and from Egypt
- Egypt entry visa
- Travel insurance
- Personal expenses (souvenirs, extra meals, etc.)
- Tips and gratuities for guides and drivers
- Optional Felucca ride or sunset sailing in Aswan
- Optional camel ride at the Giza Plateau
Highlights
Giza Attractions
- Pyramids of Giza
- Sphinx of Giza
- The Valley Temple
- Grand Egyptian Museum
Cairo Attractions
- The National Museum of Egyptian Civilization
- Salah El Din Citadel
- El Refaay Mosque
- El Sultan Hassan Mosque
- Al Muizz Street
- Khan El-Khalili Bazaar
Luxor Attractions
- Karnak Temple
- Luxor Temple
- Valley of the Kings
- Hatshepsut Temple
- Colossi of Memnon
Luxor Attractions
- Valley of the Queens
- Habu Temple
- Deir El Medina
- Dendera Temple
- Abydos Temple
Aswan Attractions
- Edfu Temple
- Kom Ombo Temple
- Abu Simbel Temples
- Aswan High Dam
- Philae Temple
- Unfinished Obelisk
Itinerary
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Your Tripidays representative meets you at Cairo Airport, handles your transfer, and gets you checked in without delay — the rest of Day 1 is yours to decompress before the itinerary begins in earnest.

Nile Dinner Cruise
You'll board a lit-up vessel as Cairo's skyline slides past on both banks, close enough to feel the city before you've seen a single temple. The evening runs traditional Egyptian music and a folkloric show alongside a full dinner it's the one night on this tour where Egypt comes to you.
Meals
Dinner
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After breakfast, your Egyptologist guide picks you up and drives directly to the plateau — no city traffic once you're there, just the three pyramids appearing ahead of you as the road opens up.

The Great Giza Pyramids
You'll stand at the base of Khufu's pyramid and look straight up a surface that rises 138 metres at an angle that makes your eye lose its footing. Each of the 2.3 million stones was placed without a crane, a wheel, or iron tools — a fact your guide will return to more than once.

The Valley Temple
Your guide walks you through one of the best-preserved Old Kingdom structures on the plateau, where the granite walls still carry the weight and precision of a builder's culture at its peak. This is where purification rites for the pharaoh's body took place before the journey to the pyramid above.

The Sphinx
You'll come around the corner of the enclosure, and the scale of it stops most people mid-step — 73 metres long, carved from a single limestone ridge, wearing the face of a king whose identity still divides Egyptologists. Your guide will show you the Dream Stele standing between its paws, placed there by Thutmose IV 3,400 years ago.

Grand Egyptian Museum
You'll spend the afternoon in the world's largest archaeological museum, purpose-built for a collection that outgrew the old Cairo Museum decades ago. The full treasures of Tutankhamun's tomb are here — 5,000 objects displayed together for the first time since they were excavated in 1922.
Meals
Breakfast and Lunch
-
After breakfast, you check out and transfer to Cairo Airport for the short domestic flight south. Luxor arrives in under an hour; your guide meets you on the other side.

Karnak Temple
Your guide will walk you into the Great Hypostyle Hall, where 134 columns rise so close together the sky almost disappears above you. The complex took more than 2,000 years and 30 successive pharaohs to build — you're standing inside the largest religious structure ever raised on earth.

Luxor Temple
You'll enter through the Avenue of Sphinxes as the late afternoon light hits the pylon faces, and the scale of the entrance statues becomes clear only when people walk past them. Ramses II built the façade, but Alexander the Great added his own sanctuary inside — two conquerors, one temple, 1,500 years apart.
Meals
Breakfast and Lunch
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Your guide picks you up after breakfast and crosses to the West Bank, where the Theban hills hold more royal burials than anywhere else on earth.

Valley of the Kings
You'll descend into tombs that were cut deep into the limestone cliffs, specifically to hide them — none were hidden well enough. Your guide takes you into three chambers where the painted ceilings are still vivid after 3,000 years, including the tomb of Tutankhamun, the smallest royal burial in the valley, and the only one found intact.

Temple of Hatshepsut
You'll approach across a wide forecourt, and the three-tiered structure rises against the cliff face behind it in a way that feels more modern than ancient. Hatshepsut ruled Egypt for 22 years as pharaoh and built this mortuary temple at Deir El-Bahari — her successor spent years trying to erase her name from every wall inside.

Colossi of Memnon
You'll pull up alongside two seated figures that rise 18 metres from the plain with nothing else around them, the last visible remnants of a mortuary temple that was once the largest in Thebes. For centuries, Greek and Roman travellers came at dawn to hear one of the statues emit a sound — a crack in the stone that the ancient world read as the voice of a king.
Meals
Breakfast and Lunch
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After breakfast, you check out of the Luxor hotel and drive north — this is the day that separates this classic Egypt tour from every other Nile itinerary operating in the same price range.

Dendera Temple
You'll step into the hypostyle hall and look up at a ceiling covered in astronomical charts that map the Egyptian zodiac, the lunar calendar, and the movements of planets observed 2,000 years ago. The colours in the inner sanctuary are among the most intact in Egypt — the temple was buried under sand for centuries, which is the only reason they survived.

Abydos Temple
Your guide will take you to the wall that holds the King List — a carved register of 76 pharaohs in sequence, the closest thing ancient Egypt produced to an official dynasty record. If you want a cruise that extends north to the Mediterranean instead, you can add Alexandria to your Egypt cruise journey, the only 11-day Nile itinerary that reaches Egypt's cosmopolitan sea city.
Meals
Breakfast, lunch, and Dinner
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Breakfast is served on board, then a private car takes you back across to the West Bank for a second full day among the Theban monuments — sites that most Nile cruise itineraries skip entirely.

Valley of the Queens
You'll enter the burial ground where the queens and royal children of the New Kingdom were interred, separated from the pharaohs' valley by a ridge of cliffs. Queen Nefertari's tomb — wife of Ramses II — holds the most celebrated paintings in Egypt; the figures still carry their original pigment after 3,200 years.

Habu Temple
Stand inside the mortuary complex of Ramses III, and you'll find wall carvings that read like a military chronicle — the Sea Peoples' naval battle, recorded in relief across an entire exterior wall, is the only depiction of ancient naval warfare to survive from pharaonic Egypt.

Deir El Medina
Your guide will walk you into the village where the craftsmen who cut and painted the royal tombs lived, worked, and were eventually buried. For travellers who want more, the maximum temple coverage in 11 days - a hotel-based option visits 13 pharaonic sites.
Meals
Breakfast, lunch, and Dinner
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After breakfast on board, you step onto the bank at Edfu, where your guide has arranged a horse carriage for the short ride to the temple entrance — one of the more distinctive arrivals on this itinerary.

Edfu Temple
You'll ride through the town by horse carriage and arrive at a temple so well preserved it looks almost recent — the Ptolemies finished it just 57 BCE, young by Egyptian standards, which is exactly why the roof is intact, and the reliefs are still sharp enough to read without a torch.

Kom Ombo Temple
You'll arrive by river in the late afternoon and walk into the only double temple in Egypt, two complete sanctuaries built side by side, the left dedicated to Sobek, the crocodile god, and the right to Horus the falcon.
Meals
Breakfast, lunch, and Dinner
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The alarm is early, a breakfast box, and a private car waiting before sunrise for the three-hour drive south into Nubia. This is the day that no other tour in this portfolio can claim as a guaranteed included stop.

Abu Simbel Temples
You'll arrive as the light is still low and the four seated colossi of Ramses II face east to catch it — each figure stands 20 metres tall and was carved directly from the sandstone cliff in the 13th century BCE. In 1968, the entire complex was cut into 807 numbered blocks and relocated 65 metres uphill to save it from the rising waters of Lake Nasser — the largest archaeological rescue operation in history, and the reason you can still stand in front of it today. You return to the cruise for lunch and dinner on board as the vessel completes its approach to Aswan.
Meals
Breakfast, lunch, and Dinner
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After breakfast on board, you check out of the cruise and transfer to Aswan's attractions by private car, a full city day before the afternoon flight back to Cairo.

Aswan High Dam
You'll stand on the crest of a structure that holds back 132 cubic kilometres of water and look out over Lake Nasser, which is large enough to be visible from space. Completed in 1970, it ended the annual Nile flood cycle that had defined Egyptian agriculture for 5,000 years — your guide will tell you both what that solved and what it cost.

Unfinished Obelisk
You'll crouch beside a granite shaft still attached to the bedrock of the ancient quarry, abandoned mid-cut after a crack appeared in the stone. Had it been completed, it would have been the largest obelisk Egypt ever raised — at 42 metres and roughly 1,200 tonnes, the engineering problem it presents is still debated.

Philae Temple
Your guide takes you by motorboat across to Agilkia Island, where the Temple of Isis was dismantled stone by stone and rebuilt on higher ground before the Aswan Dam flooded its original island. You'll arrive by water, which is the correct way — the approach from the river is how every worshipper arrived for 700 years.
Meals
Breakfast and Lunch
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After breakfast at the hotel, your guide collects you for a full day across Cairo's Islamic and civilizational landmarks — a deliberate change of register after the pharaonic intensity of the previous nine days.

The National Museum of Egyptian Civilization
You'll move through a collection that spans 7,000 years of continuous Egyptian history, from prehistoric flint tools to 20th-century artefacts, all under one roof in Fustat.

Salah El Din Citadel
Your guide takes you to the medieval fortress that sat above Cairo for 700 years as its military and administrative heart, built by Saladin in 1176 to defend against Crusader campaigns. The view from the ramparts takes in the whole city and, on a clear morning, the Giza plateau beyond it.

Al Rifai Mosque
You'll enter one of Cairo's grandest royal mosques, built in 1912, where the last Egyptian king, Farouk, and the last Shah of Iran are both buried — an unlikely pair sharing a building you can walk through any morning.

El Sultan Hassan Mosque
Stand in the central courtyard and you'll understand why this 14th-century Mamluk complex is considered the high point of Islamic architecture in Egypt — the proportions are calculated to make the space feel larger than its footprint and quieter than the street outside.

Al Muizz Street
Your guide will walk you through the oldest surviving medieval Islamic street in the world, where the facades date from the 10th to the 19th century and the stonework changes style every 50 metres.

Khan El-Khalili Bazaar
You'll enter the covered market that has been trading continuously since 1382, where the lanes divide into specialist quarters for gold, spices, papyrus, and copperwork. The last hour of the day is yours to spend here without a schedule.
Meals
Breakfast and Lunch
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After a final breakfast at the hotel, your Tripidays representative handles check-out and transfers you to Cairo International Airport for your onward flight.
Meals
Breakfast and Lunch
* You can let us know if you'd like to customize your tour itinerary to meet your needs. We value your input and aim to accommodate your requirements.
Frequently Asked Questions
This tour includes 4 nights in 5-star Cairo hotels, 2 nights in a 5-star Luxor hotel, 4 nights on a 5-star Nile Cruise from Luxor to Aswan, two domestic flights (Cairo to Luxor and Aswan to Cairo), a private Egyptologist guide throughout, all entrance fees, daily breakfast, and all lunches and dinners on board the cruise. Abu Simbel, Dendera Temple, and Abydos Temple are all included as guaranteed itinerary days.
This is the only 11-day tour in the portfolio that includes Abu Simbel as a guaranteed itinerary day and combines it with the exclusive temples of Dendera and Abydos — no other 11-day package in this range covers all three. The fly-to-Luxor-first format means the cruise runs south with the current, reaching Aswan in a direction no other itinerary here operates.
Abu Simbel sits in southern Nubia, 280 kilometres from Aswan, and the drive there before sunrise puts you at the temples as the morning light hits the four colossi of Ramses II directly — the orientation of the façade was engineered in the 13th century BCE specifically for that effect. The entire complex was relocated 65 metres uphill in 1968 in a UNESCO-led rescue operation involving 807 numbered stone blocks, the largest archaeological salvage project ever carried out.
The cruise boards in Luxor on Day 5 after the Dendera and Abydos excursion and sails south — the opposite direction to most Nile cruise packages, which start in Aswan and travel north. Over four nights, the vessel stops at Habu Temple and the Valley of the Queens (Day 6), Edfu and Kom Ombo (Day 7), and holds position near Aswan while you make the road transfer to Abu Simbel (Day 8). You check out in Aswan on Day 9.
Yes, two domestic flights are included. The first flight from Cairo to Luxor on Day 3 morning, which is what allows the itinerary to begin sightseeing on the East Bank the same afternoon. The second flies Aswan to Cairo on Day 9 after the Aswan city tour.
What to Pack
Tour Locations
Tour Prices
- Solo $4395
- 2 - 4 Pax $2770
- 5 - 8 Pax $2310
- 6 -19 Pax $2185
- Solo $4015
- 2 - 4 Pax $2540
- 5 - 8 Pax $2095
- 9 - 16 Pax $1965
- Solo $4635
- 2 - 4 Pax $2900
- 5 - 8 Pax $2450
- 9 - 16 Pax $2325
- Solo $5255
- 2 - 4 Pax $3220
- 5 - 8 Pax $2760
- 9 - 16 Pax $2635
- Solo $4740
- 2 - 4 Pax $2935
- 5 - 8 Pax $2475
- 9 - 16 Pax $2345
- Solo $4300
- 2 - 4 Pax $2670
- 5 - 8 Pax $2230
- 9 - 16 Pax $2105
- Solo $4945
- 2 - 4 Pax $3045
- 5 - 8 Pax $2590
- 9 - 16 Pax $2475
- Solo $5810
- 2 - 4 Pax $3495
- 5 - 8 Pax $3035
- 9 - 16 Pax $2910
- Solo $6545
- 2 - 4 Pax $3920
- 5 - 8 Pax $3460
- 9 - 16 Pax $3335
- Solo $5395
- 2 - 4 Pax $3290
- 5 - 8 Pax $2840
- 9 - 16 Pax $2725
- Solo $6845
- 2 - 4 Pax $4115
- 5 - 8 Pax $3645
- 9 - 16 Pax $3520
- Solo $7945
- 2 - 4 Pax $4725
- 5 - 8 Pax $4255
- 9 - 16 Pax $4130
- Solo $10785
- 2 - 4 Pax $6130
- 5 - 8 Pax $5645
- 9 - 16 Pax $5520
- Solo $9325
- 2 - 4 Pax $5395
- 5 - 8 Pax $4925
- 9 - 16 Pax $4805
- Solo $12270
- 2 - 4 Pax $6925
- 5 - 8 Pax $6430
- 9 - 16 Pax $6315
- Solo $13580
- 2 - 4 Pax $7670
- 5 - 8 Pax $7165
- 9 - 16 Pax $7040
