When you sail the Nile with Nour El Nil, you will experience many great pleasures and numerous small delights. While other tourists rush down the Nile aboard large cruise ships, you will spend your time on sunset desert walks, visiting rare and beautiful temples and relaxing on secluded golden sand beaches.
Day 1: Esna
Esna, located about 33 miles south of Luxor, is where you will board your Dahabiyaa and meet the crew. A thriving merchant town, Esna is best known for the Temple of Khnum, located 9 meters below street level. You will begin your trip with a brief walk to the temple, strolling through merchant filled streets, full of beautiful textiles and other exotic goods. The temple, a magnificent red sandstone structure built during the Ptolemaic period, boasts six rows of lotus-leaf pillars and a Zodiac on the ceiling. Upon returning to the boat, you will be served your first meal, delicious perch from the Nile, in homage to Esna’s original name "Latopolis," in honor of the Lates niloticus (or Nile Perch), the largest of the 52 species which inhabit the river
Day 2: El Kab
El Kab, on the East bank of the Nile about 80 miles south of Luxor, is home to the temple of Nekhbet, as well as a gorgeous necropolis carved into the wall of the mountains beyond the temple. Upon docking, you will embark on a beautiful walk through a small fishermen village, across the railroad tracks to visit the necropolis.
After the tour, you will return to the boat for lunch, across the Nile from a gorgeous house built by a English architect Somers Clark in the XIXth Century. In the afternoon, the boat will arrive at Edfu, home to the very famous temple dedicated to the God Horus. This temple is among the best preserved in all of Egypt. Horse and carriage will take you to and from the temple through the busy city streets. After returning to the boat, you will set sail for the banks of an island to spend the night, swim, and take walks under banana trees.
Day 3: Desert Walk
After breakfast, the trip continues with a desert walk in a valley lined with boulders covered in hieroglyphs and stone-age inscriptions. It is as though the temple is carved horizontally along the sides of the mountain (rather than in depth into the mountain), built to be viewed by those passing by boat alone. As dusk begins, you will walk through desert and mountains, tracing the beginnings of the trail that marks the shortest distance through the desert to Libya (28 days in ancient times). At night, the boat arrives at the foot of floodlit temple of Djebel Silsileh.
Day 4: Djebel Silsileh
Here, the Nile, flowing between two mountains ranges, is at its narrowest. You will be the only ones on the site, as the large Nile cruisers can only pass in the distance. After visiting the temple of Horemheb, you will visit a picturesque café to enjoy tea and hooka. After the rest, you will go on to see the remains of a temple, now only visible through the stones lying on the ground with hieroglyphic carvings that speak of the site that once was.
Day 5: Kom Ombo
After a night on the water under the stars, the morning trip will take you to the town and temple of Kom Ombo. The temple was originally built by Tuthmosis III in honor of Sobek, the crocodile-headed god in the 2nd century BC. However most of the ancient temple is now superceded by the magnificent additions during the Ptolemaic period. Along side the temple stands a room with mummified crocodiles, attesting to the importance the animal played in this region of Egypt. After the temple visit, the boat will sail to a last stop before Aswan, where you will rest under the stars, and enjoy dinner by a desert island.
Day 6: Aswan
Southward bound, the ship passes under the Aswan Bridge and soon reach Aswan with its tombs of the nobles and Elaphantine Island. Here, in the very South of Egypt the cruise comes to an end.
Map of Our Dahabiehs' Course:
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