Five days on a five-star boat from Luxor to Aswan, covering Karnak, the Valley of the Kings, Hatshepsut, Edfu, Kom Ombo, the High Dam and Philae.
You are met on arrival and taken to the boat, where lunch is served once you have settled into your cabin. The afternoon is spent on the East Bank at Karnak, walking through halls that successive pharaohs spent centuries enlarging, and then at Luxor Temple in the heart of the modern town.
Across the river after breakfast into the Theban necropolis. The Valley of the Kings comes first, where the tombs of pharaohs including the Ramesside kings run deep into the rock with their painted walls still holding colour. The Temple of Hatshepsut follows, terraced into the cliff face, and the Colossi of Memnon stand alone in the fields beyond it. The boat sails for Esna afterwards.
A horse-drawn carriage takes you up to the Temple of Horus at Edfu, among the best-preserved anywhere in Egypt, where the pylons, processional halls and inscriptions telling the Horus story are all still standing. The boat then sails to Kom Ombo and its double temple, shared between Sobek and Horus the Elder.
The city tour begins at the High Dam, the structure that permanently altered the Nile's behaviour, then the Unfinished Obelisk lying abandoned in its granite quarry, and finally a boat across to Philae — an island temple built for Isis and, by common agreement, one of the most beautiful settings in the country. Nubian culture features too, distinct from the rest of Egypt in language, music and architecture.
Breakfast on board before you leave the boat. There is the option of one more monument: the excursion south to Abu Simbel, where the colossal figures of Ramses II and Queen Nefertari sit against the cliff above Lake Nasser.
Optional: Excursion to Abu Simbel