NILE CRUISE – 10 days

The centre-piece of our ten-day tour will be a whole day’s exploration of Luxor, where the Karnak Temple complex is dominated by the monumental columns of the grand hypostyle hall, one of ancient Egypt’s most prodigious achievements. Equally mesmerising is the legendary Valley of the Kings, the spectacular resting place of Horemheb, Seti I and Ramses III.

Our cruise aboard the Nile Lily, an old-fashioned, two-masted sailing yacht, begins at Aswan, where Agilika Island is the idyllic stage for a remarkable series of Ptolemaic monuments saved from the flooded island of Philae.

Between Aswan and Luxor we will navigate the Nile at a leisurely pace (using a small tug only where necessary), mooring each evening on the banks of the Nile beside a village or in the open countryside.

Kitchener Island, transformed into a botanist’s paradise by Lord Horatio Kitchener in the late 19th century, makes a particularly rewarding visit, as does the 10th century fortress monastery of St Simeon.

The Ptolemaic remains of Kom Ombo, standing sentinel on a bend in the Nile, provide the most striking of settings for the temples of Sobek and Haroeris, dedicated respectively to the crocodile god and the falcon-headed god. At Edfu, the most complete temple in Egypt, we will admire the vivid reliefs narrating the dramatic struggle for power between Horus and Set, whilst at Esna we will wonder at the miraculously preserved Temple of Khnum, the ram-headed deity revered as the guardian of the source of the Nile.

A detailed investigation of Luxor and its environs now follows, from the great necropolis of the Valley of the Kings to the sandstone Colossi of Memnon; from the temples, sphinxes and monumental gateways of Karnak to Amon, the world’s largest columned temple.

As an optional extra, participants might choose to take an early-morning flight to Abu Simbel, where the Great Temple of Ramses II on the shores of Lake Nasser is rightly acclaimed as one of the world’s most splendid architectural ensembles.