Five days on Lake Nasser from Aswan to Abu Simbel, past Nubian monuments most visitors never see, including Kalabsha, Wadi El Seboua, Amada and Derr.
Your representative meets you on arrival in Aswan and takes you to the boat. After lunch on board, the touring starts at the High Dam, which is what created the lake you are about to sail. Then across to Agilkia Island for the Temple of Philae, built for Isis, and finally the Unfinished Obelisk lying in the granite quarries where it cracked.
Kalabsha Temple first, moved from its original site and unusual for showing Roman emperors alongside the Egyptian gods. Then Beit El Wali, a small rock-cut temple built by Ramses II whose wall carvings have kept their colour remarkably well. Back on board for lunch, and the boat crosses the Tropic of Cancer on the way south to Wadi El Seboua.
Ashore after breakfast for Wadi El Seboua, which takes its name from the avenue of sphinxes leading up to its New Kingdom temples. The Temple of Dakka and the Temple of Maharraqa follow, both of them moved here during the UNESCO rescue. Lunch on board as the boat sails on to Amada.
Ashore for Amada Temple, the Temple of Derr and the Tomb of Pennut — small sites with unusually well-preserved inscriptions, and quiet in a way nothing in Luxor is. Later the boat passes Kasr Ibrim, the only monument here still standing where it was built, which you view from the sundeck because landing is not permitted. You reach Abu Simbel in the evening.
Optional: The Sound and Light Show at Abu Simbel in the evening
Breakfast, then the Abu Simbel Temples themselves — cut into solid rock for Ramses II and Queen Nefertari, and lifted whole to higher ground in the 20th century in what remains one of the most extraordinary engineering operations ever carried out on an ancient monument. Afterwards a transfer to Abu Simbel Airport or to your hotel.