Sun Boat III
Every journey along the Nile is, in a sense, a journey back in time, through thousands of years’ worth of extravagantly rich history. The particular look and style of Sun Boat III adds another layer of less remote but no less delightful nostalgia to the process, styled as it is to recall the Golden Age of travel in the 1920s and 30s – the period when visitors, their curiosity piqued by news of extraordinary archaeological finds, began to explore Egypt. Much as you’re doing today.
Ruby-red sunsets over groves of palms and endless amber desert
A day-by-day, expert-guided introduction to 5,000 years’ worth of history
Sunbathing at Cleopatra’s Oasis, pre-dinner drinks chez Howard Carter
The opportunity to circumnavigate Philae under sail aboard a felucca
Setting
The River Nile wends its way more than 4,000 miles from Lake Victoria to the Mediterranean Sea. Yet it’s the 130-mile section between Aswan and Luxor in southern Egypt that exerts the most powerful hold on the collective imagination. Here are many of the largest, most elaborate and intriguing structures built in ancient times, including the massive Temple of Karnak, the Valley of the Kings, the Temple of Kom Ombo and the Greco-Egyptian shrine to Isis at Philae. The river and landscape themselves possess an elemental beauty; expect ruby-red sunsets over groves of palms and endless amber desert.
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Luxor
The capital of Ancient Egypt at the height of its glory and today not only a jumping-off point to many must-see landmarks – including Luxor and Karnak temples, the Valley of the Kings and the Temple of Hatshepsut – but also home to an astonishing collection of antiquities in the exemplary Luxor Museum.
Aswan
The gateway to southern Egypt since 2,000BC and still delivering astonishing finds – in recent years archaeologists have uncovered a bust of the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius, a sphinx and 35 mummies in a tomb dating back to the Ptolemaic Dynasty.
The Valley of the Kings
The resting place of more than 60 pharaohs – including Tutankhamun – whose subterranean tombs are stocked with treasures and adorned with intricate hieroglyphics.
Philae Temple
A ravishingly beautiful Greco-Egyptian shrine to Isis, extraordinary in its own right and made even more famous when it was relocated in the late 1970s from its original site to higher ground on nearby Agilika Island when rising Nile waters threatened to submerge it.
Kom Ombo Temple
Remarkable for many reasons, not least its dramatic position, its perfectly symmetrical design and dedication not to one but two gods, the crocodile-headed Sobek and falcon-headed Horus. The mummified reptiles in the Crocodile Museum are surprisingly moving.
Felucca Sailing
An outing aboard one of these gracious traditional sailboats, nonchalantly piloted by a skipper with a bare foot on the tiller, is a quintessential Nile experience.
