Nile Cruise between Luxor and Aswan

The Classic Three To Seven Night Sailing Between Luxor And Aswan, Stopping At Esna, Edfu And Kom Ombo, On Anything From A 150 Cabin Floating Hotel To A Wooden Dahabiya Under Sail The Way Visitors Have Travelled Upper Egypt Since Thomas Cook, And Still The Most Comfortable Way To See It · Luxor, Luxor

The sail between Luxor and Aswan is two hundred and ten kilometres of river with four temples on it, and it has been the standard way to see Upper Egypt since Thomas Cook put steamers on the Nile in the 1870s. The modern version is a three to seven night cruise on one of several hundred boats: a floating hotel with a sun deck and a pool, calling at Esna, Edfu and Kom Ombo, passing through the Esna lock, and mooring alongside other boats so that you sometimes walk through three neighbouring lounges to reach the bank. The alternative is a dahabiya, a wooden sailing boat with six or ten cabins that goes where the wind allows, stops at villages the big boats cannot reach, and costs considerably more. Either way the appeal is the same and it is real: the valley is green and narrow, the desert begins abruptly at the edge of the cultivation, and the temples arrive at walking distance from your cabin. Star ratings here are local and mean very little, so choose the boat on recent reports rather than on the brochure.

Boarding from the cruise quays on the Luxor corniche or at Aswan, sailing the 210 km between them through the Esna lock, Luxor, Luxor, Egypt

Cruises run year round, with the heaviest schedules from October to April and reduced sailings in high summer. Most itineraries are three or four nights northbound from Aswan or southbound from Luxor, with seven-night versions turning around; boats generally sail in the morning and early afternoon and moor overnight. Shore excursions are timed by the fleet rather than by the temples' hours, which is why Edfu and Kom Ombo swing between crowded and deserted. Boats often moor at Luxor for a day or more at each end of an itinerary, so a four-night cruise may include only two sailing days - worth checking against the brochure. The Esna lock can hold a queue of boats for hours. Lake Nasser cruises south of Aswan are an entirely separate product.

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