Egypt is long and narrow, and the distances are real. Cairo and Aswan are as far apart as London and Milan. Choosing where to go matters more here than in most countries - and it is the first thing we talk about when you write to us.
Below are the places our journeys reach. Each one leads to the trips that go there.
If the map is not where you want to start, browse instead by the way you want to travel - a boat, a single day, a private family trip - or by the kind of day you want to have.
Where our journeys go
Luxor
Fourteen of our eighteen journeys pass through Luxor, and it is the place we would keep if we could only keep one. Karnak, the Luxor Temple, the Valley of the Kings, Hatshepsut and Medinet Habu are within half an hour of each other, on two banks joined by a ferry that costs almost nothing. Four days there is not too many: Luxor Uncovered is built on that assumption.
Cairo and Giza
Eight journeys start or end in Cairo. The pyramids are the reason most people come, but the Grand Egyptian Museum now holds the complete Tutankhamun collection, and Islamic and Coptic Cairo are the parts visitors most often skip and most often regret skipping. Four days covers all three without hurrying.
Aswan
Nine journeys reach Aswan. It is the calmest of the Egyptian cities on the river, with Philae on its island, the granite quarries, Nubian villages on the west bank and feluccas that still sail because there is wind rather than because it is picturesque. Every Nile sailing we run finishes here, even when the journey then carries on to Cairo or the coast.
Abu Simbel
Two journeys include Abu Simbel. It means a very early start from Aswan, and it is the sight guests most often name afterwards as the one they would have regretted missing. Dahabeya and Abu Simbel and Grand Egypt both go.
Alexandria
Two journeys go north to the Mediterranean: the Qaitbay fort on the foundations of the Pharos, the catacombs of Kom el-Shoqafa, the Bibliotheca Alexandrina. It is a different Egypt - Greek and Roman rather than pharaonic - and worth a day if you have twelve.
Bahariya and the White Desert
One journey goes into the Western Desert, where chalk formations stand alone in open sand and the night is spent in a camp. It needs a permit and a four-wheel drive, and it is not something to add to a short trip.
The distances are real
Cairo and Aswan are as far apart as London and Milan, and the road from the Red Sea to Luxor runs from 218 kilometres out of El Quseir to about 350 out of Marsa Alam. That is why almost every journey longer than a week includes a domestic flight, and why we say honestly when a day trip is too long to be worth it. If you are on the Red Sea and wondering, we wrote the numbers down for El Gouna, Makadi Bay, El Quseir and Marsa Alam.