14 Days in Egypt: three routes, and how to pace two weeks

Is 14 days enough for Egypt?

More than enough for the classic trip, and the right amount for an ambitious one. The standard route everyone takes first — Cairo, then the Nile between Luxor and Aswan, with Abu Simbel on the end — fits comfortably into eight to ten days. Fourteen days does not mean doing that route twice as thoroughly; it means adding one substantial thing to it, or running the whole thing at a pace that lets you sit still. Both are worth more than stacking a second list of sites on top.

Be honest about what two weeks from Europe actually is. The arrival and departure days go mostly to airports, so fourteen days on a ticket is closer to twelve on the ground and eleven useful ones. That still leaves room for real slack, which is the thing shorter trips never have. A delayed internal flight, a morning too hot to move, a site you want to see twice — two weeks absorbs all of that without losing the Valley of the Kings, which a seven-day trip cannot.

The one failure mode at this length is stacking. Every addition — the Red Sea, the Western Desert, Alexandria, Abu Simbel by road rather than air — costs a travel day, and a fortnight run at a frantic pace is a worse trip than the same fortnight run slowly. The planning problem for two weeks is not fitting more in. It is deciding which single addition earns its travel day, and then leaving the rest out.

Route A — the unhurried classic: Cairo, the Nile and Abu Simbel

This is the classic eight-day route given room to breathe, and for a first trip it is the one most people should take. Nothing exotic is bolted on; instead the days that a short trip compresses get unpacked, so Cairo gets three full days, the Nile gets a proper cruise, and Aswan and Abu Simbel are seen at the right hours rather than squeezed between airports.

Days one to four are Cairo, and they are the part short trips short-change. Day one is arrival and a transfer, with an evening walk along the Nile if you land early. Day two is the Giza plateau at opening — the three pyramids, the Sphinx and the viewpoint on the southern rim where all three line up — with the afternoon left free, because the plateau and the Grand Egyptian Museum should never share an afternoon. Day three gives the museum the half day it needs, its grand staircase of royal statuary climbing towards a window onto the pyramids and the whole Tutankhamun burial held together, then Islamic Cairo on foot in the late afternoon. Day four is the half most itineraries miss: Saqqara and the Step Pyramid, the oldest large stone building anywhere, the painted mastaba tombs around it, and Dahshur another twenty minutes on, where you can climb down into the Red Pyramid. Four nights in Cairo or Giza throughout.

Day five flies south. The road to Luxor is roughly 650 kilometres and the best part of a day; the flight is about an hour and there are several a day, so you fly. You board the cruise before lunch, and Karnak takes the late afternoon, when the light drops between the columns and the coaches have gone back to the boats. Luxor Temple after dark is the thing to do on an arrival evening, floodlit and a fraction of the daytime crowd.

Day six is the west bank, and it starts before it is light, because the tombs have no airflow and hold the heat of every group that has walked through by mid-morning. The Valley of the Kings on the standard three-tomb ticket, Hatshepsut's terraces at Deir el-Bahari, and, if you have the appetite, Medinet Habu, which keeps its colour and sees almost no groups. Day seven is the slow day the short trips cannot afford: a balloon at first light over the west bank, or the Luxor Museum, which is small and well arranged and under-visited, or the long temples at Dendera and Abydos out to the north, two of the best preserved in the country with a fraction of the crowds. The boat sails south in the afternoon.

Days eight and nine wind down through the river temples. Edfu, the best-preserved temple in Egypt, early before the heat; then a long quiet afternoon on deck. Kom Ombo at dusk, right on the riverbank, and on to Aswan for Philae on its island, reached by motorboat and worth timing for low light. Day ten is Aswan at its own pace: the unfinished obelisk in its granite quarry early, before the trench bakes, the felucca out to Elephantine and Kitchener's Island in the late afternoon, and a night on land rather than the usual dash to the airport the morning the boat docks.

Day eleven is Abu Simbel, 280 kilometres south near the Sudanese border. Fly if the budget allows — forty-five minutes against three and a half hours each way by road — or take the early convoy if it does not. The better version still is to have stayed overnight, seeing the four colossal Ramesses in the low afternoon light the facade was cut for, once the coaches have gone. Day twelve flies back to Cairo, with the old Egyptian Museum on Tahrir Square or Khan el-Khalili in the evening. Day thirteen is a final slow Cairo day, or Alexandria on the fast train for the Graeco-Roman layer and a wetter, different climate. Day fourteen is the departure transfer.

Who it suits: first-timers who want the headline sights without feeling they ran a gauntlet to reach them, and anyone who would rather see Giza, Luxor and Aswan properly than collect a longer list badly. It is the route that uses the extra days as mornings and buffer rather than as more stone.

Route B — the Nile and the Red Sea: temples first, then a week horizontal

This is the fortnight most German and Italian travellers book, and with children it is often the only version that really works. Six days of temples is demanding in the heat; a week doing nothing on the coast afterwards turns a hard cultural trip into a holiday, and the geography makes it painless, because Hurghada sits on the coast roughly opposite Luxor and is only about four hours away by road.

The first half is the classic route run briskly rather than slowly, because the decompression is coming. Day one arrives in Cairo. Day two is Giza and the Grand Egyptian Museum. Day three flies to Luxor and boards the cruise, with Karnak in the afternoon. Day four is the west bank — Valley of the Kings and Hatshepsut — before the boat sails. Day five is Edfu and Kom Ombo, two temples with a full day on the water between them. Day six reaches Aswan for Philae and a felucca at sunset, which is the part of Aswan people remember.

Day seven is the transfer that makes the whole shape work: overland from the Nile across the desert to Hurghada, roughly four hours on a good, dull road to Safaga and Qena and then along the coast. No second internal flight, no backtracking to Cairo. Days eight to thirteen are the coast — six nights, seven if you skip the slow Luxor day — and what you do with them is up to you. The reef here is genuinely world class: visibility routinely twenty to thirty metres, warm water most of the year, and the standard Giftun Island boat trip puts shallow, bright, fish-heavy snorkelling within reach of people who have never used a mask. Divers have the offshore pinnacles and the wrecks at Abu Nuhas; everyone else has a beach and a boat. Day fourteen flies home, and the point worth knowing is that Hurghada takes far more direct charter flights from Europe than Luxor, usually cheaper ones, so you fly out from the coast rather than routing back through Cairo.

Two honest caveats on the coast. Much of this shoreline is fringing reef rather than sand, so hotel beaches often end in a reef flat and a drop-off reached by a jetty — good for snorkelling, awkward with small children, and worth checking before you book a room. And the all-inclusive model keeps you inside the gate: a resort twenty kilometres south of town gives you no reason to leave, and people fly home having seen a compound and a boat. After a week of temples that can be exactly right, but if you want any feel for the country, stay nearer the marina and eat outside half the time.

Who it suits: families, couples who want the trip to end on a lounger rather than a 4am convoy, and anyone for whom six days of ruins is the ceiling. It is the least tiring of the three routes and the easiest to book as a single package, which is why it sells in the volume it does.

Route C — Nile and Western Desert: two landscapes, not two temple weeks

The third route is for the returner, or the first-timer who already knows temples are not the only reason to come. Instead of adding a second week of the same, it swaps in an entirely different Egypt: the chalk formations and black volcanic hills of the Western Desert, west of the Nile, and a night camped out under the desert sky. It is the most demanding of the three to organise and the most rewarding if monuments alone do not hold you for a fortnight.

Days one to three are a compact Cairo: arrival, then Giza and the Sphinx, then the Grand Egyptian Museum and Islamic Cairo. Day four strikes out southwest, roughly four hours to the oasis of Bahariya, arriving for lunch. Day five is the Black Desert, volcanic hills and the hot springs at sunset. Day six goes into the White Desert proper — Crystal Mountain, then camp among the chalk formations, which is the whole point of the loop and worth the basic facilities. The camping is genuinely basic: mattresses and blankets in the open, food cooked over a fire, no plumbing, and cold enough at night in winter to want a proper jacket. Day seven returns through Farafra or along the escarpment and back to Cairo for the night.

Day eight resets to the Nile: fly to Luxor, Karnak in the late afternoon and Luxor Temple after dark. Day nine is the west bank early — the Valley of the Kings and Hatshepsut — before the heat. Days ten and eleven take the river south, either on a standard cruise or, if the dates and the budget allow, on a small sailing boat between Esna and Aswan, which carries only a handful of cabins and needs booking well ahead: Edfu, then Kom Ombo and on to Aswan. Day twelve is Aswan at its best — Philae, the unfinished obelisk early, and a felucca out to Elephantine in the afternoon. Day thirteen is Abu Simbel, by early flight or convoy, then back north to Cairo. Day fourteen departs.

This route carries the stacking risk more than the other two, because it moves between three separate regions, so be clear-eyed: the desert loop alone is three or four days, most of them with long 4x4 drives, and it is the least suitable of the components for very young children. If that reads as too much ground, the honest fix is to drop Abu Simbel rather than hurry the desert, since the desert is the thing this route exists for.

Who it suits: second-time visitors, photographers who want landscape as well as monument, and active travellers who would rather spend a night in a sleeping bag than a seventh night on a lounger. It is the route with the widest range of scenery and the one that most rewards a traveller who is not ticking sites off.

Which route suits you?

If this is your first trip to Egypt, Route A is the safe and generous choice. It shows you everything the country is famous for and uses the extra days to make each of them bearable — mornings before the coaches, afternoons out of the midday heat, a buffer when a flight slips. You will come home having seen Giza, Luxor, Aswan and Abu Simbel properly, which is more than most fortnights manage because most fortnights try to add instead of slow down.

If you are travelling with children, or simply want the trip to end in rest rather than effort, Route B is the obvious one. Six days of temples is the realistic limit for most families, and a week on the coast afterwards is the difference between a holiday and an ordeal. It is also the easiest to price and book as one package, and the cheapest to fly home from. The trade is that the second week is a beach week that happens to be in Egypt; if that sounds like wasted time to you, it is the wrong route.

If you have been before, or you came for the landscape as much as the history, Route C is the interesting one. It is more work to arrange, less comfortable in places, and it asks you to give up a second polished temple week for dust, chalk and a camp. In return it is the only one of the three that shows you two genuinely different Egypts. Couples and solo travellers who are comfortable with early starts and basic nights get the most from it; families with young children get the least.

Across all three, the single best decision is to resist the fourth addition. A fortnight holds one big extra comfortably — a coast week, a desert loop, a second Cairo region, Abu Simbel done slowly. It does not hold two without turning into a travel schedule, and two weeks run at a ten-day pace beats two weeks run at an eight-day pace every time.

What shapes the price of a 14-day trip

Sightseeing is a small part of the total; the big levers are where you sleep and how you move. On the Nile, the standard of the boat is the first lever — Nile star ratings are local and not equivalent to European hotel stars, and the refurbishment date matters far more than the rating, so two boats at the same nominal grade can be very different trips at very different prices. Cabin choice on the same boat is a lever of its own: an upper deck or a balcony is priced well above a lower-deck cabin. A small sailing boat between Esna and Aswan sits in a different bracket again, and its scarcity pushes the lead time and the price up.

The second lever is the Cairo hotel category, which swings more than anything else on the land side, and the third is whether the guide and vehicle are private or shared. A private trip costs more per person than a fixed group departure — splitting a guide across a dozen people is what makes the group price — but on a two-week trip building the route around your own dates often removes nights and transfers you would otherwise pay for, so the gap is smaller than it first looks.

Then there is the route itself. Route B adds a week of hotel or resort nights on the coast, usually sold all-inclusive, which fixes your spend once you arrive but buys local spirits and local beer unless you pay to upgrade, and the cheaper buffets repeat by about day four. Route C adds a desert operator, a 4x4 and a guide for several days, which is not cheap but replaces a week of resort nights rather than adding to them. Route A adds the least in hard cost and the most in comfort: its extra spend is simply more nights in Cairo and Aswan and, if you fly Abu Simbel rather than drive it, one short domestic fare.

Season moves all of it. The same route in high summer costs noticeably less than at Christmas and New Year, when the better boats and the good guides fill months ahead and cannot be made bigger. Our own two-week routes are quoted by enquiry rather than sold at a fixed checkout price, precisely because these levers move so much between one traveller and the next; we would rather build the number around your dates than print one that is wrong for most people.

When to do this trip

October to April is the comfortable window for the whole country, and the shoulders of it — October, November, March and April — are the sweet spot for a route that mixes the Nile with the coast, because the sea is warm enough to swim and the temples are not yet punishing. Luxor and Aswan are the hottest points on any of these routes: summer afternoons there routinely reach the low forties, and from June to August sightseeing shrinks to early mornings, which is a real trade rather than an impossibility, and one reflected in sharply lower prices.

The halves of Route B pull in slightly different directions, and the shoulders are where they overlap best. Midsummer works for the Red Sea, where the water is at its warmest and the coastal wind makes the heat bearable, but it does not work for six days of Upper Egyptian temples. Winter is the reverse: ideal for the Nile, a little cool for lounging on the coast, where January days sit around the low twenties and evenings want a jacket. April, October and November serve both halves at once.

Route C has a harder edge to it. The Western Desert is an October-to-April proposition only — summer daytime temperatures out there make the long 4x4 drives and the camping genuinely unpleasant — and desert nights in December and January approach freezing, which catches out people who packed for a hot country. Abu Simbel has its own calendar: the twice-yearly sun alignment on the inner sanctuary falls around 22 February and 22 October, which draws crowds and a pre-dawn queue, so unless the alignment is why you are going, avoid those specific mornings. Our month-by-month guide at /when-to-go/ has the detail for a given departure.

How to pace 14 days

Fly the long internal hops, and do not drive what you can fly. Cairo to Luxor is about an hour in the air against the best part of a day on the road, and the overnight sleeper train is the only driving alternative worth considering — take it for the saved hotel night and the economics, not the comfort, because the cabins are basic and sleep is patchy. The one long road transfer that does earn its place is Luxor to Hurghada on Route B, four hours across the desert that save you a flight back through Cairo.

Sail upstream if you can. The Nile flows north, so Luxor to Aswan is the slower, more relaxed direction, normally a night longer than the same stretch coming down, and it finishes in Aswan, which is the calmest city on the route and a far better place to end than Luxor, where the selling is relentless. Ending in Aswan also means Abu Simbel is reached without retracing your steps, because Aswan has the airport and the convoy for it.

Build the day around the heat, not the map. The usable hours at the Nile sites are early morning and late afternoon; the middle of the day is for the boat, the hotel or the museum. Two major sites in a day is realistic, four is a fantasy that ends with everyone tired and no one looking at anything, and in Cairo the constraint is traffic rather than distance — Giza to downtown can take forty-five minutes or twice that, so pair sites by which side of the river they are on and put the long transfers first.

Spend the extra days of a fortnight on slack, not sites. Leave a night in Cairo at the end if the final internal flight is tight, so a delay does not cost you the flight home. Keep one morning somewhere with nothing in it — an Aswan felucca, a second slow pass through the museum, a balloon you can rebook if the wind cancels the first attempt. The thing that makes two weeks better than one is not the longer list. It is the permission to stop.