Eight fully private days: three nights in Cairo and four on a five-star boat from Luxor to Aswan, with your own Egyptologist, vehicle and transfers.
A representative meets you at Cairo International Airport and walks you through the arrival formalities, then a private transfer to your hotel. The rest of the day is yours to rest and adjust.
Your private Egyptologist takes you to the Great Pyramids of Giza for the Great Pyramid of Khufu and the pyramids of Chephren and Mykerinus, and then the Sphinx. A short camel ride out into the desert is included, and the view back towards the pyramids from there is the one worth having. The afternoon goes to the Egyptian Museum and its thousands of pharaonic objects, with an Egyptian lunch at a local restaurant in between.
Breakfast, then a transfer to Cairo Airport and a flight to Luxor, where you are met and taken straight to the boat. The afternoon covers Karnak Temple, which was the religious centre of ancient Egypt and is still the largest complex of its kind anywhere, and then Luxor Temple, which is at its best lit at dusk. Dinner back on board.
Breakfast on board, then across to the West Bank for the Valley of the Kings, where Tutankhamun and many others were buried with everything they expected to need. The Temple of Hatshepsut follows, cut into the cliffs in terraces, and then the Colossi of Memnon, which once guarded a temple complex now entirely gone. The boat sails for Edfu afterwards.
A horse-drawn carriage through Edfu to the Temple of Horus, one of the best-preserved ancient buildings in Egypt, where the columns and the stone reliefs are all still in place. Sailing on to Kom Ombo, the only double temple in the country, built for Sobek the crocodile god and Horus the Elder; the museum of mummified crocodiles beside it is worth the ten minutes.
The High Dam after breakfast, the structure that finally brought the river's flooding under control. Then a short boat ride out to the Temple of Philae, built for Isis and saved from the rising water by UNESCO, which moved it stone by stone to the island it stands on now. Lunch back on board, and the afternoon free either on deck or in Aswan.
You disembark after breakfast and transfer to Aswan Airport for the flight north. In Cairo you are taken to your hotel for a last quiet evening.
A final Egyptian breakfast and check-out, then a private transfer to Cairo International Airport for your flight home.