Nine days built around the 2 August 2027 total eclipse at Karnak, with Cairo, a five-star Nile cruise to Philae and a final day at Abu Simbel.
You are met inside Cairo International Airport, walked through the arrival formalities and driven to your hotel in a private air-conditioned vehicle. The rest of the day is free to sleep off the flight or make a first pass at the city.
The Giza Plateau after breakfast: the Great Pyramid of Khufu, the pyramids of Khafre and Menkaure, the Great Sphinx and the Valley Temple below it. The afternoon goes to the Grand Egyptian Museum, the largest archaeological museum in the world and the only place the complete treasure of Tutankhamun is shown together.
A transfer to Cairo Airport and the short flight south. Your Egyptologist takes you straight to the West Bank for two sites most itineraries skip: Medinet Habu, the mortuary temple of Ramses III and one of the best-preserved in Egypt, where the original paint still survives in places; and Deir El-Medina, the walled village where the craftsmen who cut and painted the royal tombs actually lived.
Eclipse day. The morning starts at Karnak, the largest religious complex ever built, where the Great Hypostyle Hall, the obelisks and the sacred lake give you some sense of what two thousand years of continuous royal building looks like. Then the sky does the rest. Totality on 2 August 2027 is among the longest this century, and watching the light drain out of Upper Egypt from among pharaonic stone is not an experience that needs selling. Afterwards you board your Nile cruise.
Breakfast on board, then the Valley of the Kings, where generations of pharaohs were buried in painted tombs cut into the hillside, the Temple of Queen Hatshepsut at Deir El-Bahari, and the Colossi of Memnon. Back for lunch as the boat sails south through the Esna Lock towards Edfu.
The Temple of Horus at Edfu is the most complete temple standing in Egypt — the roof is still on, which changes everything about how it feels inside. You sail on to Kom Ombo for its double temple, split evenly between Sobek the crocodile god and Horus the Elder, then continue towards Aswan over afternoon tea on the sundeck.
The Aswan High Dam first, one of the great engineering projects of modern Egypt, then a motorboat across to Philae Temple, built for Isis and moved block by block to Agilkia Island after the dam was finished. The afternoon is yours on board.
An early breakfast, disembark, and the drive south to Abu Simbel, where Ramses II had two temples cut straight into the cliff for himself and for Nefertari. Both were lifted to higher ground in the UNESCO rescue when Lake Nasser rose. Afterwards you return to Aswan Airport for the flight to Cairo.
Breakfast, check out, and a transfer to Cairo International Airport for your flight home.