Egypt & Nile River Cruise for Solo Travelers

Board your overnight flight to Cairo today.

Welcome to Egypt! This evening, enjoy an included dinner at your hotel on your own. 

Meet up with your Tour Director—a trained Egyptologist—and set off on a guided tour of Giza’s pyramid complex, located in Egypt’s third-largest city (and home to some of the world’s most enduring ancient monuments).

• Come face to face with the Great Pyramid of Giza, the only Wonder of the Ancient World to have survived into the modern era. Standing as tall as 480 feet (146 meters) when it was built, the structure continues to amaze with its size and the precision with which it was constructed.
• Visit the enigmatic, 4,500-year-old Great Sphinx—the largest monolithic statue in the world, carved from a single limestone bedrock.
• Transfer to Cairo and enter the Grand Egyptian Museum, said to be the world’s largest museum, and explore its vast collection of ancient artifacts alongside your Egyptologist.
• Enjoy an included lunch at a local restaurant.

Please note: If the Grand Egyptian Museum is not yet open to the public, a visit to Saqqara & the Imhotep Museum will take its place.

Later, gather with your Tour Director and fellow group members at a mixer before enjoying a welcome dinner, served with beer or wine.

Fly to Aswan this morning and enjoy free time for the rest of the day (put your bargaining skills to the test at the Aswan Souk, perhaps?), or add an unforgettable experience aboard a felucca, a traditional Egyptian sailboat. You’ll float down the Nile before dusk, watching the sun slowly melt beneath the horizon and set the sky ablaze.

Enjoy a free morning in Aswan—ask your Tour Director for a recommendation and partner up with one (or more!) of your fellow travelers to go exploring. For a unique adventure, join our optional day trip to Abu Simbel to visit the temples of Ramses II and his wife Nefertari. Originally carved into a mountainside, they were painstakingly relocated to save them from being submerged by the damming of the Nile in the 1960s.

This afternoon, board your cruise ship and enjoy an included lunch, served with beer or wine, while basking in views of the Nile River. Afterward, set off on a sightseeing tour of Aswan led by your Egyptologist.

• Board a boat and visit the island temples at Philae. Watch in awe as columns and imposing facades, emblazoned with hieroglyphics, rise from the water.
• Walk through the colorful local market, where you’ll find perfumes, spices, traditional talismans, and souvenirs.

Sit down for an included dinner, served with beer or wine, aboard the ship this evening.

Please note: On some departures, the sightseeing tour of Aswan may take place on day 4.

Set sail for Edfu and Kom Ombo this morning and disembark your ship for guided tours of some of the best-preserved temples in Egypt. 

• Visit the Temple of Kom Ombo. Noted for its dedication to two deities, Sobek and Horus, it was initially constructed in the Ptolemaic period as two symmetrical temples aligned parallel to one another. They were expanded after the Roman conquest of Egypt, resulting in a single temple that marries Egyptian and Greco-Roman architectural styles. 
• Enjoy an included lunch aboard the ship as you cruise to Edfu.  

Spend a free afternoon in Edfu or add a walk through the Temple of Horus, a classic example of Ptolemaic architecture with massive stone walls and towering pylons. It’s also one of the few temples in Egypt where inscriptions on its walls describe how it was built and used in ancient times. 

Sit down for an included dinner aboard the ship this evening, served with beer or wine. 

Enjoy a morning walking tour through Luxor Temple, located on the banks of the Nile River. With your Egyptologist, you’ll see one of the world’s highest-quality collections of Egyptian artifacts, including a statue recovered from King Tutankhamun’s tomb.

• Enter the painstakingly excavated Temple of Karnak. It’s said that 30 pharaohs presided over the building of the temple over the course of 1,500 years—a sprawling and vast ancient site. You’ll feel a palpable connection to the ancient world as you walk in the footsteps of priests and worshippers who came here over thousands of years.
• Venture off on a walking tour through the complex to see the Precinct of Amun-Re, whose mudbrick walls stretch over more than 1.5 miles in circumference. Gaze over extensive hieroglyphic inscriptions marking moments in history, and end at the Temple of Khonsu—a smaller, more intimate structure dedicated to the god of time and the moon.
• Walk through Luxor Temple, where an avenue of human-headed sphinxes creates a dramatic and awe-inspiring entrance. The temple unfolds with a series of striking architectural elements that include massive columns, colossal statues, and timeworn hieroglyphs.
• View the 13th-century Abu Haggag Mosque early this evening. Built on the site of several churches that stood before it, the mosque is an active place of worship, continuing a spiritual tradition that has lasted for 35 centuries.

This evening, sit down with your fellow solo travelers for an included dinner aboard the ship, served with beer or wine.

Spend the morning relaxing and catching up on sleep, or brave an early start for an optional—but certainly once-in-a-lifetime—hot-air-balloon ride over the Valley of the Kings.

Later, head out to tour the Nile’s West Bank with your Egyptologist. Compared to the lush greenery of the East Bank, it’s rocky and barren—but its terrain holds countless secrets.

• Explore the Valley of the Kings, a series of tombs nestled between rugged limestone mountains in the Theban Hills.
• Enter the Tomb of Tutankhamun, famous for containing the ancient Egyptian treasures a ruler would need in the afterlife, such as clothing, food, chariots, games, and ceremonial items.

Disembark from your cruise this afternoon and fly to Cairo.

Celebrate your trip with your fellow travelers during tonight’s farewell dinner, served with beer or wine.

Transfer to the airport for your flight home. Or, extend your stay and answer the siren call of Alexandria, where echoes of the Great Library, once the hub of learning and wisdom, still resonate in the air. The temptation to uncover mysteries of the past waits around every turn.