Yes, if you go privately and you accept that it is a twelve-hour day. No, if the only version available to you is a coach leaving at two in the morning with forty other people. The difference between those two days is enormous, and the price difference is what causes most of the disappointment.
Luxor is about four hours from Hurghada across the Eastern Desert. People ask whether it is worth doing in a day, and the honest answer depends almost entirely on how you do it.
What you can actually see in a day
A realistic private day covers three things properly: the Valley of the Kings, Hatshepsut’s temple at Deir el-Bahari, and Karnak. That is the West Bank in the morning while the rock is still cool, lunch by the river, and the East Bank in the afternoon light.
It does not cover Luxor Temple as well, or the Ramesseum, or Medinet Habu, or Dendera. Anyone selling you five sites plus a papyrus factory plus an alabaster shop in one day is selling you a corridor, not a visit.
The coach version and the private version
On a group excursion you leave between two and three in the morning, because the coach must collect from eight hotels before it heads inland. You travel in a convoy. You arrive with every other coach, you move at the pace of the slowest person in a group of forty, and you will stop at a shop where the guide earns a commission. It costs somewhere between twenty and a hundred and thirty dollars, and at the bottom of that range it is remarkable value for what it is.
Privately, you leave at half past four or five, because the car is collecting only you. You reach the West Bank when the site opens. You spend twenty-five minutes inside a tomb instead of eight. You stop when something is worth stopping for, you eat where you like, and there is no shop. That costs between about a hundred and seventy and three hundred dollars per person depending on the operator and the group size.
The part people underestimate
Eight of the twelve hours are spent in a car. That is the actual product you are buying, and no amount of good guiding changes it.
For most people it is a fair trade, once. For some it is not, and those people are reliably the ones who post afterwards that Luxor was exhausting. They are not wrong. They were told they were getting a day out and they got a day in a vehicle with four hours of temples in the middle.
Who should do it
- Anyone on a Red Sea holiday who would otherwise never see the Nile valley. Luxor is the reason a great many people come to Egypt at all, and a long day is better than not going.
- Reasonably fit adults and older children who can manage heat and steps.
- People who would rather see three things properly than six badly.
Who should not
- Anyone travelling with a child under about eight. It is a hard day for an adult.
- Anyone with limited mobility or a heart or heat condition, unless the plan is rebuilt around it.
- Anyone visiting between June and August who is not prepared for forty-plus degrees at the sites.
- Anyone who would resent the driving. It is genuinely a lot of driving.
Five questions to ask before you book any Luxor excursion
These separate the good day from the bad one, and none of them are rude to ask:
- What time is pickup, and how many hotels do you collect from before mine? Every extra hotel is another thirty minutes of your day.
- Is it private, or how many people are on the vehicle? Not the same question as "is it a small group", which means nothing.
- Are all entrance fees included, and which tombs specifically? The Valley of the Kings ticket covers three tombs. Tutankhamun and Seti I are separate and expensive.
- Is there a shopping stop? A papyrus institute or alabaster workshop is a commission stop dressed as culture, and it costs you an hour.
- Is the guide a licensed Egyptologist? There is a real qualification and it is checkable. A driver who talks is not the same thing.
The alternative almost nobody is offered
Do it over two days with a night in Luxor. The driving is the same, the cost is not much higher once you add a hotel, and the trip becomes a completely different experience: Karnak at opening rather than at three in the afternoon, dinner on the Nile, and the West Bank at first light the next morning without having got up at four.
We run it both ways. If you ask us which we would do, it is the overnight, every time. We say so even though the single day is the easier thing to sell.
Practical notes
- Bring a passport or hotel ID card. There are checkpoints on the desert road.
- The standard Valley of the Kings ticket covers three tombs. Tutankhamun and Seti I cost extra at the gate and are not included by most operators, including us.
- Photography inside the tombs with a mobile phone is free. A proper camera needs a ticket.
- Ask what lunch is. On a cheap excursion it is a buffet at a place feeding six coaches at once.
Our version is a private full day with a licensed Egyptologist, all entrance fees and lunch by the river, and we will tell you honestly if we think the two-day version suits you better.