The Agatha dahabiya sails six days from Esna to Aswan, stopping at El Kab, Gebel el-Silsileh, Edfu and Kom Ombo, with swimming off the boat and village walks.
You board the Agatha at Esna, about 33 miles south of Luxor, and the crew meets you. Before the boat sails there is a guided walk through the town, which is known for its markets and its handwoven textiles, and then the Temple of Khnum — 9 metres below the modern street level, with its columns and carving remarkably intact for exactly that reason.
A quiet morning on the water, then El Kab, once the capital of Upper Egypt. You walk up through a fishermen's village to the Temple of Nekhbet and the tombs cut into the cliffs beside it. Later the boat reaches Edfu, and a horse-drawn carriage takes you through the town to the Temple of Horus, the most complete Greco-Roman temple in Egypt. Afterwards, on to a quiet Nile island for the evening.
A day given to the river itself. Breakfast on deck as the Agatha sails on south, then a stop at a secluded island in the afternoon for a swim or a walk along the shore. Towards sunset there is an optional hike into a desert valley lined with prehistoric stone inscriptions and pharaonic hieroglyphs, on a route that once ran west towards Libya. The night is spent moored beneath the floodlit walls of Gebel el-Silsileh.
You wake where the Nile narrows sharply between desert cliffs. Large cruise ships cannot dock here at all, so an early visit means having the place to yourself: the sandstone quarries that supplied the stone for many of the great temples, and the Temple of Horemheb among them. Lunch on board afterwards, then more sailing to a good stretch of riverbank to swim and sit.
On to Kom Ombo, a twin temple set high on a bend of the river. It is Ptolemaic, and unusual in being built for two gods at once — Sobek the crocodile deity and Haroeris the falcon-headed god — with matching halves for each. The Crocodile Museum next door displays dozens of mummified crocodiles taken from the water below it. Back aboard for a last night under the stars.
A last morning with the desert landscape closing in around the river. Breakfast as the boat comes up to the Aswan Bridge, and then you disembark and are transferred to your hotel or onward connection.