Egyptian Family Adventure

Tour description

This tour has been specially designed for families who want to combine visits to some of Egypt's most famous and important ancient sites with some more adventurous activities for the children. Group sizes are kept small, with carefully selected guides who will do much more than just explain the history to you. With a camel ride, felucca sailboat cruise, fabulous sightseeing, and snorkelling in the Red Sea, this is a tour the whole family will remember.

We start the tour in Cairo with a visit to the unmissable pyramids and sphinx at Gisa, with a fun camel ride included here. We also tour the famous Egyptian Museum with its mummy room and Tutankhamun exhibition, and explore part of Coptic Cairo with its narrow streets and historic churches.

A journey on the overnight sleeper train brings us to Aswan, Egypt's southernmost city, which lies on the edge of the Nubian desert and on probably the most beautiful stretch of the Nile in Egypt.

Here we visit the beautiful Philae Temple by boat and visit a local school where we include an English/Arabic language lesson for the children in the group with a local class (term times only). We also enjoy a traditional Nubian meal.

An extra option is available to visit Abu Simbel to tour the Sun Temple of Ramses II, which was painstakingly dismantled and rebuilt when the Aswan Dam was built and the lake created.

Next we leave Aswan on board a traditional felucca sailboat and sail north, downriver towards Luxor. Sailing on the Nile on a felucca is a beautifully relaxing way to travel through the country and watch typical Egyptian life on the banks as you drift past. We spend the evening round a campfire with our Nubian crew who prepare all our meals, and we may sing songs and tell stories before drifting to sleep on board. We spend one night on the boat, and sail on the next morning before driving to Luxor and a comfortable hotel next to the river.

A luxury cruise upgrade option is available for those who would like some more comfort instead of the felucca. You sail all the way to Luxor and see all the same sites as well as Edfu temple.

We have selected two half-day tours in Luxor that will be of most interest to the children in the group without being too tiring. First we visit the West Bank of the Nile to see the Pharaohs' tombs in the Valleys of the Kings, and Queen Hatchepsut's temple, while on the East Bank we travel by horse carriage to the huge temple complex at Karnak. You have free time to visit more sites if you wish.

Our sightseeing finished, we head through the desert to the Red Sea and Hurghada, where we enjoy 3 full days relaxing in a 4-star beach resort with its own swimming pools & leisure facilities, private beach, and scuba-diving centre. We include a full day boat trip to some of the nearby islands where you can swim, do some snorkelling, try a scuba-dive, or just relax on the boat.

The tour then finishes with a short flight back to Cairo where we visit the Citadel for great views over Cairo and explore the chaotic Khan-el-Khalili bazaar before enjoying a final taste of Egypt on a Nile dinner cruise with a sufi & belly dancing display.

Options are available to do a luxury cruise instead of the felucca sailboat trip, or to extend the tour with extra days by the Red Sea or in Cairo. We run regular small-group departures during the school holidays and can also run the tour privately for your family on any other dates.

Note: Our Nile Family Adventure is a shorter 9 or 10-day version of this tour, ideal for half-term holidays, and runs alongside this itinerary but returns to Cairo instead of visiting the Red Sea.