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Egypt is the gift of the Nile — and the river is still the best way to understand it. From the temples of Luxor to the islands of Aswan, our Nile journeys follow the water south.
For thousands of years, life in Egypt has clung to this thin green ribbon through the desert. Follow it and the country unfolds in order: the mighty temples of Karnak and Luxor, the tombs of the Theban west bank, and further south the calmer, Nubian-flavoured world of Aswan, with Philae temple rising from the water.
Between the great sites, the river slows you down in the best way. A felucca sail at Aswan — no engine, just canvas and the wind — is the afternoon travelers remember most. We build our Nile trips around both: the monuments by morning, the river by evening.
The river that made Egypt
The ancient Greeks called Egypt “the gift of the Nile.” For thousands of years the river’s flood laid down the black soil that fed the whole country — and almost everyone still lives within sight of the water.
Under sail
The felucca is the traditional wooden sailboat of the Nile, unchanged in shape for centuries. Around Aswan the river is at its most beautiful — islands, granite outcrops and desert coming right down to the water — and an afternoon under sail is the oldest, quietest way to see it.
Ancient Thebes
Luxor sits on the site of ancient Thebes, the New Kingdom capital. The river splits it in two: the living east bank with its temples, and the west bank of royal tombs where the sun was seen to die each evening. River life still runs past it all day long.
The capital
By the time it reaches Cairo the Nile is broad and busy, threading between the island of Zamalek and a skyline of some twenty million people. A little further north it fans out into the great Delta and empties into the Mediterranean.
Along the banks
The pleasure of the Nile is as much the journey as the sites — the stretches of green fields, the birdlife, and the way the light changes on the water from dawn to dusk.
Gallery
Luxor
A changed river
For millennia the Nile flooded every summer and renewed Egypt’s fields. The Aswan High Dam, completed in 1970, ended that annual flood for good — creating Lake Nasser, generating power and controlling the water, but also changing a rhythm the country had lived by since the pharaohs.
From
$110.00 /person
1 day
1 day
1 day