NILE CRUISE with Kate Adie

Our host for this eight-day tour is Kate Adie, OBE, who became a household name through her work as Chief Correspondent for BBC News, and the long-running radio programme, From Our Own Correspondent.

Kate has reported on conflicts from the invasion of Iraq to four years of war in the Balkans and both Gulf Wars, as well as the Herald of Free Enterprise disaster. In 1980, she reported live when the SAS stormed the Iranian Embassy, has twice been named Reporter of the Year by the Royal Television Society and has also served as a trustee of the Imperial War Museum and a judge for the Whitbread, Orange and Costa literary prizes. She was awarded the OBE in 1993.

Visits will be guided by a local Egyptologist while on the cruise Kate shall give talks about her fascinating experiences as a close-to-the-action journalist.

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.