Orientoura is a small, owner-run tour operator based in Bonn, Germany. At the moment we work in one country only: Egypt.
There is a difference between seeing a place and understanding it. Most Egypt itineraries are built around the first. Eleven sites in seven days, a coach, a microphone, and a photograph of each one. It works, in its way. You come home having seen a great deal.
We build for the second. Fewer places, more time in each, and someone with you who can explain what you are looking at and why it mattered to the people who built it. That is the whole idea, and the reason the company exists.
Who runs this
Dr. Sherif Azab-Els founded Orientoura and leads the journeys himself. He is an Egyptologist. He grew up in Egypt and has lived in Germany since 2009, and he works in German, English, French and Arabic.
That combination is the reason the guiding is different. He does not deliver history as a list of dynasties and dates. He connects what is carved on a wall to how people in the village next to it live now, which is usually the part travellers remember a year later.
When you write to us, he is the one who answers. Not a booking desk, and not a form letter. It usually takes less than a day.
How we work
Small. A maximum of twelve travellers on a group departure, and most of what we sell is private: your family, your guide, your car. No convoys, no loudspeakers, no schedule built around a coach park.
Slow. We would rather do four things properly than nine badly. That means arriving at Karnak when it opens instead of at eleven with everyone else, and building in the hour on a sandbank that nobody puts in a brochure.
On the water where it makes sense. Between Luxor and Aswan we use a dahabeya, a small wooden sailing boat with a handful of cabins, rather than a floating hotel with three hundred beds. It is slower. It moors in places the large ships cannot reach. It is also the single thing guests write to us about most often afterwards.
Who does what in Egypt
Worth being plain about, because most operators are not. Orientoura plans every journey from Germany and is the company you have a contract with. The day-to-day running in Egypt (transfers, local guides, boats, hotel logistics) is handled by two teams we have worked with for years: Nile Travel Machine and El Sultan Travel. Both are Egyptian, and both know the country from the inside rather than from a catalogue.
If something goes wrong on the ground, you call us and we deal with it. The arrangement behind the scenes is not your problem, but you should know it exists.
What you are actually buying
A multi-day Orientoura journey is a package holiday under German law. That is not a marketing line, it is a legal status, and it comes with protections that are worth understanding:
- One contract with one company for the whole trip, rather than a chain of separate suppliers.
- Statutory insolvency protection. You receive a certificate (Sicherungsschein) with your booking confirmation, and we are not permitted to take payment before you hold it.
- The traveller rights of §§ 651a ff. of the German Civil Code, including price protection and the right to cancel free of charge if unavoidable extraordinary circumstances affect your destination.
- A named person responsible for the trip. In practice, the one in the photograph above.
The full terms are on the Terms & Conditions page. They are longer than they are exciting, but they are worth ten minutes before you book anything with anyone.
What we are not
Probably more useful than another list of things we are good at.
- We are not a general travel agency. Egypt only, for now. If you want Jordan or Morocco in the same booking, we are the wrong company.
- We are not the cheapest. A licensed Egyptologist for one family and a boat with six cabins cost more per person than a seat on a coach. If price is the deciding factor, you will find Luxor day trips for a third of ours, and they will get you there.
- We are not big. In high season there are dates we simply cannot take. We would rather say so than hand you to someone we do not know.
- We cannot make every site accessible. Tombs have steep ramps, temples have uneven ground, and traditional boats were not designed for wheelchairs. Tell us what you need and we will tell you honestly what is possible and what is not.
Where we are
Orientoura
Owner: Dr. Sherif Azab-Els
Pregelstraße 14
53127 Bonn
Germany
info@orientoura.de
+49 228 24017771
We also publish in German at orientoura.de.
From sightseeing to insight. It is on the logo because it is the actual brief, not because it scanned well.
Write to us — a question about one journey, or the shape of something you want to build from scratch. Either is fine.