Egypt Solar Eclipse Tour – 7 Days

Welcome to Egypt. On arrival at Cairo International Airport our representative meets you just after passport control, assists with the formalities and accompanies you to a private air-conditioned car for the transfer to your hotel. The rest of the day is free to settle in and rest before your adventure begins.

• Meals: —
• Overnight: Cairo

After breakfast you meet your private Egyptologist and drive to the Giza plateau, where the Pyramids of Giza and the Great Sphinx have stood guard for more than four thousand years. There is plenty of time for photographs and an optional camel ride across the sands.

Continue to the Grand Egyptian Museum, the vast new museum beside the pyramids where the complete treasures of Tutankhamun are displayed together for the first time. Lunch is served before you return to your hotel.

• Meals: Breakfast, Lunch
• Overnight: Cairo

This morning you fly south to Luxor, the site of ancient Thebes. With your guide you explore the immense Karnak Temple, its great hall crowded with towering columns, and the graceful Luxor Temple in the heart of the city.

In the late afternoon you board your five-star cruiser and settle in for your first night on the river, ready for the eclipse to come.

• Meals: Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner
• Overnight: on board the cruise

Today is the reason for your journey. On 2 August 2027 the moon's shadow sweeps across Upper Egypt, and Luxor lies almost on the centre line of one of the longest total solar eclipses of the century — more than six minutes of total darkness. After an early breakfast your guide settles you at a prepared viewing spot with safe eclipse glasses to watch the partial phase slowly narrow the sun.

As totality arrives the sky turns to twilight, the temperature drops and the sun's shimmering corona blazes above the temples of Thebes — a sight few travellers ever witness. Once daylight returns you cross to the West Bank to descend into the painted royal tombs of the Valley of the Kings.

• Meals: Breakfast, Lunch
• Overnight: Luxor

As the ship sails south a horse-drawn carriage carries you from the dock to the Temple of Horus at Edfu, among the best preserved in all of Egypt. Cruising on, you reach the unusual double temple of Kom Ombo, shared between the crocodile god Sobek and Horus the Elder, best seen as the sun sets over the river.

• Meals: Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner
• Overnight: on board the cruise

Discover Aswan, Egypt's gentle southern city. Visit the High Dam, the engineering feat that reshaped modern Egypt, take a short motorboat ride to the island temple of Philae dedicated to the goddess Isis, and see the giant Unfinished Obelisk still lying in its ancient granite quarry. In the afternoon you transfer to the airport for the short flight back to Cairo.

• Meals: Breakfast, Lunch
• Overnight: Cairo

After a final breakfast you check out and transfer to Cairo International Airport for your onward flight, carrying home the memory of the day the sky went dark over the land of the pharaohs.

• Meals: Breakfast
• Overnight: —