Tours in Egypt

Start with the water, because in Egypt the water is a surprise even to people who came for the temples. Stand on a boat off the Sinai coast and look down. The sea goes from pale turquoise to a deep, clean blue within a few strokes, and the reef sits right there beneath you, close enough that you do not need to be a strong swimmer to see it.

That is Sharm El Sheikh and the southern tip of the Sinai peninsula, and it is where we currently have a tour for you. A day on the Red Sea here means a boat out of the marina, a stop at Ras Mohammed National Park where the reefs drop away into colour and movement, and then White Island, a sandbar that seems to float in shallow water. You swim, you eat on board, you lie in the sun. It is an easy day, and a good one after a few heavy days of sightseeing.

The rest of the country pulls in other directions. Cairo is loud, dense and impossible to summarise, with the pyramids of Giza waiting at its edge, the Egyptian Museum, Islamic Cairo's lanes and the Khan el-Khalili market. Head south along the Nile to Luxor, where the temples of Karnak and the Valley of the Kings sit either side of the river. Aswan is slower and softer, a place for felucca sails at dusk and a trip to Abu Simbel. Alexandria faces the Mediterranean with a different mood altogether, salty and a little faded.

We do not yet sell tours to all of these, but you can ask. A local guide can take a request for the pyramids, a Nile route or a walk through old Cairo, and shape it around how you like to travel.