Egypt

Cairo International Airport is 25km from the city center. The Egyptian Museum in Tahrir Square is the world's greatest collection of ancient Egyptian antiquities — including the entire Tutankhamun treasury (the golden funeral mask, the gilded sarcophaguses, the alabaster canopic jars, the golden throne). The collection is overwhelming in its scale: 120,000 objects in a building designed for 35,000. The Royal Mummies Room has 27 perfectly preserved New Kingdom pharaohs lying in their cases, including Ramesses II (the likeliest candidate for the Exodus pharaoh) and Queen Hatshepsut. Khan el-Khalili bazaar in the Islamic Quarter is Cairo at its most atmospheric — the covered market complex around the 14th-century Khan caravanserai has spice shops, gold and silver jewelers, perfumers, antique dealers, and the famous El Fishawy café (open continuously since 1797).

The Giza Plateau, 10km west of central Cairo on the edge of the Sahara Desert, contains the three Great Pyramids (Khufu, Khafre, Menkaure) and the Great Sphinx. The Pyramid of Khufu is the largest of the three and the only surviving Wonder of the Ancient World — built around 2560 BC from 2.3 million limestone blocks, each weighing 2-15 tons, to a height of 146 meters. The interior chambers can be entered (limited tickets, physically demanding) for the profound experience of crawling through the ascending passage to the Grand Gallery and King's Chamber at the pyramid's center. The Great Sphinx, carved from a single limestone outcrop and 73 meters long, faces the rising sun in an alignment that creates extraordinary effects at dawn. A sunrise visit to the Giza Plateau, arriving before it opens at 8am via a private guide who can arrange early access, is the most moving and least crowded experience.

Fly from Cairo to Luxor (1 hour) and transfer directly to Karnak Temple Complex — the largest religious building ever constructed, built over 2,000 years from approximately 2055 BC to 100 AD by successive pharaohs competing to add halls, obelisks, and sanctuaries. The Great Hypostyle Hall — a forest of 134 sandstone columns, each 23 meters tall and covered in carved reliefs, in a hall the size of a football field — is one of the most overwhelming rooms ever built. The evening Sound and Light Show at Karnak uses colored illumination and narration to move visitors through the temple precinct in darkness — a theatrical experience that makes the scale of the complex even more dramatic. Check into your Nile-facing hotel in Luxor for the beginning of the Upper Egypt circuit.

The Valley of the Kings on the West Bank of Luxor is the royal necropolis of the New Kingdom pharaohs — 64 tombs cut into the limestone cliffs between 1550 and 1069 BC, decorated with paintings of extraordinary quality from the Book of the Dead and the Amduat (the realm of the underworld). Standard tickets include three tombs; tickets for the Tomb of Seti I (the most magnificent, with astronomical ceiling paintings of extraordinary detail) and the Tomb of Tutankhamun require additional purchase. The Mortuary Temple of Hatshepsut (Deir el-Bahari) — the female pharaoh who ruled as king for 22 years — is one of Egypt's most architecturally elegant monuments. The Colossi of Memnon, two 18-meter quartzite statues of Amenhotep III beside the road to the Valley, are traditionally the West Bank's most photographed monuments at sunrise. Evening: Luxor Temple — lit at night on the Corniche, one of Egypt's most beautiful temple illuminations.

Begin the Nile journey south to Aswan by felucca (traditional wooden sailboat) or aboard a luxury Nile cruise ship. The Nile between Luxor and Aswan passes through the oldest agricultural landscape on earth — the narrow ribbon of green cultivation on either bank (the Black Land of ancient Egypt) surrounded immediately by the ochre desert (the Red Land). Felucca travel is slow, timeless, and extraordinary: you sleep on the boat's padded deck under the stars, cook simple meals on board, and watch the riverbanks scroll past at walking pace. The Temple of Edfu — the best-preserved temple in Egypt, built by the Ptolemies between 237 and 57 BC in honor of the falcon god Horus — is accessible from a riverside stop. The pylon gateway (an enormous trapezoidal tower) is the most dramatic entrance in Egyptian architecture. The Inner Sanctuary still contains the granite naos (shrine) in which the cult statue of Horus was kept.

Aswan is Egypt's most beautiful and most relaxed city — on the First Cataract of the Nile where the flat Egyptian floodplain gives way to pink granite outcrops, Nubian culture, and a river of extraordinary beauty. The Philae Temple complex was dismantled and relocated stone by stone in the 1970s from its original island (flooded by Lake Nasser) to the higher island of Agilkia in a UNESCO rescue operation. The temple of Isis, reflected in the Nile water and approached by boat through the granite rocks, is one of Egypt's most romantic settings. The Aswan High Dam (completed 1970) created Lake Nasser — the world's largest artificial reservoir, 500km long. Take a felucca to the Island of Elephantine for the Nubian Museum and the extraordinary amber-gold sunset over the Nile and the Saharan dunes of the West Bank.

Wake at 3am for the convoy drive or fly 300km south through the Sahara to Abu Simbel — the most spectacular temple in Egypt, carved entirely from the cliff face by Ramesses II in 1264 BC. Two rock-cut temples on the west bank of Lake Nasser: the Great Temple of Ramesses II (four 20-meter seated colossi of the pharaoh guarding the entrance, interior walls carved with the Battle of Kadesh) and the smaller temple of his wife Nefertari. Both temples were UNESCO-rescued and relocated to avoid flooding by Lake Nasser in the 1960s — the engineering feat of moving entire temples, cut from the rock and reassembled, is as extraordinary as the temples themselves. The alignment of the Great Temple is such that on Ramesses' birthday (February 22) and coronation day (October 22), the dawn sun penetrates the entire temple to illuminate the sanctuary's four figures — except Ptah, god of darkness, who remains in shadow. Return to Aswan for international departure via Cairo.