NILE CRUISE – 8 days

Our eight-day cruise aboard the Nile Lily begins at Luxor, where we will visit the Karnak Temple complex and the legendary Valley of the Kings, before setting sail to explore the treasures of the Nile.

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

Esna, located some thirty miles south of Luxor, is home to the miraculously preserved Temple of Khnum, the ram-headed god revered by the Egyptians as the guardian of the source of the Nile. At Edfu, the most complete of all Egypt’s temples, we will admire the vivid reliefs recounting the dramatic struggle for power between Horus and Set.

The Ptolemaic ruins 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 to the crocodile god and his falcon-headed counterpart. After visiting Agilika Island, the idyllic stage for a remarkable series of monuments saved from the flooded island of Philae, we will inspect Aswan High Dam and tour the famous granite quarries.

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.