Giza, White Desert & Luxor

Breakfast at the hotel, then out to Giza. You begin at the Great Pyramid of Khufu, the only ancient wonder still standing, and work along to Khafre and Menkaure, with time at the panorama point where all three line up for a photograph. The Sphinx comes last, crouched at the end of Khafre's causeway. The afternoon goes to the Grand Egyptian Museum, where the entire Tutankhamun collection is on display in two purpose-built galleries. Both today's stops are private, so you set the pace.

Overnight: Cairo
Included visits: Great Pyramid, Khafre and Menkaure pyramids, Sphinx, Grand Egyptian Museum
Meals: Breakfast
Optional experiences: Entry inside one of the pyramids; camel or horse ride across the plateau; Saqqara and Memphis as a half-day add-on
Important notes: The GEM runs timed entry and needs two hours minimum. Almost no shade at Giza — hat and water.

You leave Cairo early for the drive southwest to Bahariya Oasis, roughly four hours across flat desert road. Lunch is at the oasis, and you switch to a 4x4 with a local desert driver. The Black Desert comes first, its low hills capped in dark volcanic rock, and then you push on into the White Desert National Park, where wind and sand have cut the chalk plateau into free-standing towers and mushroom shapes. Your driver sets up camp before dark. Dinner is cooked over a fire, Bedouin style, and once it burns down the sky is as clear as it gets anywhere in Egypt.

Overnight: Bedouin-style desert camp
Included visits: Black Desert, White Desert National Park, Crystal Mountain and the El Agabat valley en route
Meals: Breakfast, lunch, dinner
Important notes: The camp is basic and comfortable — mattresses, blankets and shared open-air facilities, no electricity beyond lanterns. Desert nights are genuinely cold from November through February; bring a fleece and long trousers whatever the daytime forecast says. Pack a small overnight bag and leave your main luggage in Cairo.

You will probably wake before anyone calls you — the light comes up fast and the formations change color as it does. Breakfast is at the camp, then a last drive through the park before rejoining the tarmac at Bahariya for the road back to the capital. Lunch is en route. You arrive in Cairo in the late afternoon with the evening free.

Overnight: Cairo
Included visits: None
Meals: Breakfast, lunch
Important notes: A long day in the vehicle. The desert is dusty — anything with a lens is worth keeping in a bag.

After breakfast you visit Coptic Cairo, the old Christian quarter inside the walls of the Roman fortress of Babylon. The Hanging Church is suspended over a gate tower, and the Ben Ezra Synagogue and the Church of St Sergius stand within a few minutes' walk of it. From there you move on to Khan el-Khalili, laid out in the fourteenth century and still worked by coppersmiths, perfume sellers and lantern makers; allow time for tea at one of the older cafés. In the evening you transfer to Giza railway station for the sleeper train south, with dinner served in your cabin.

Overnight: Sleeper train
Included visits: Hanging Church, Ben Ezra Synagogue, Church of St Sergius, Khan el-Khalili
Meals: Breakfast, dinner
Important notes: Cabins are compact and the train runs overnight. Modest dress is expected at the religious sites — shoulders and knees covered.

The train arrives in Luxor in the morning and your guide meets you on the platform. After checking into your hotel you head for Karnak, a site enlarged by successive pharaohs across two thousand years, where the Hypostyle Hall's 134 sandstone columns still carry traces of their original paint high up where the light doesn't reach. Luxor Temple follows, on the corniche a few kilometers south, connected to Karnak by an avenue of sphinxes that has now been fully excavated along its length.

Overnight: Luxor
Included visits: Karnak Temple, Luxor Temple
Meals: Breakfast
Optional experiences: Luxor Temple again after dark, when it is lit; a felucca hour on the river
Important notes: Karnak is large and largely unshaded. Mornings are the sensible time for it.

Breakfast at the hotel, then across the river. Three tombs in the Valley of the Kings, cut deep into the limestone with their painted ceilings intact; Hatshepsut's mortuary temple, terraced against the cliff at Deir el-Bahari and unlike anything else in Egypt architecturally; and the two seated Colossi of Memnon on the way back, all that is left of Amenhotep III's own temple. Free time in Luxor follows before your evening transfer to the station for the sleeper train to Cairo, with dinner in your cabin.

Overnight: Sleeper train
Included visits: Valley of the Kings, Temple of Hatshepsut, Colossi of Memnon
Meals: Breakfast, dinner
Optional experiences: Dawn hot-air balloon over the West Bank, before the tour begins; the tombs of Tutankhamun and Seti I, ticketed separately
Important notes: Uneven ground and warm, still air inside the tombs. Closed shoes make a real difference.

Breakfast is served on the train before it reaches Cairo in the morning. Your representative meets you at the station and drives you straight to the airport for your flight home. If your departure is late in the day, a day-use room or a few hours of city sightseeing can be arranged in advance rather than waiting at the terminal.

Included visits: None
Meals: Breakfast
Important notes: Allow three hours before an international departure. Ask us in advance about a day room if your flight is an evening one.