Egypt Nile Cruise Packages: Six Journeys, One Private Dahabiya, No Small Print
Compare a few Egypt Nile cruise packages and you will notice something odd. Every one of them is “all-inclusive”. Every one is “luxury”. Very few of them tell you how many people you will be sharing the deck with, or whether the temple tickets are in the price or waiting for you at the gate with a card machine.
We would rather do it the other way round. This page lists every journey we run, what each one costs to start with, how long it takes, where it sails, and precisely which line items sit inside the price. Where a number depends on your dates or your group, we say so instead of publishing an average and hoping you do not notice.
We are Turquoise Dahabiya. We sail one traditional wooden dahabiya — a small sailing boat with a handful of cabins, not a floating hotel with three hundred strangers and a buffet queue. Six packages run on it, from four days to fourteen. Read the tables, then send us your dates.
Egypt Nile cruise packages at a glance
- How many packages: six, running on one private dahabiya
- Lengths: 4, 5, 7, 8, 11 and 14 days
- Prices from: €750 per person for four days, up to €3,500 for fourteen
- Core route: Luxor and Aswan, by way of Esna, Edfu, Kom Ombo and Qena
- Packages reaching Cairo: the 11-day Luxor to Cairo and the 14-day Aswan to Cairo
- Guests on board: a maximum of 16 on the 7-day package, 12 on the 2027 eclipse sailing
- Included: full board, entrance fees to every listed site, archaeologist guide, transfers, soft drinks
- Not included: flights, alcoholic drinks, gratuities, personal expenses
What “Package” Actually Means on Our Boat
Start here, because this is the section that decides whether one price is genuinely cheaper than another or merely printed smaller.
The table below is drawn from our seven-day programme, the one most travellers book. Inclusions vary a little between packages, so confirm yours when you enquire rather than assuming this list travels intact to all six.
| Inside the package price | Paid separately |
|---|---|
| Full board on board — breakfast, lunch and dinner | International and domestic flights |
| An expert archaeologist guide on all sightseeing tours | Alcoholic drinks |
| Entrance fees to every attraction listed in your itinerary | Gratuities |
| All transfers in a modern, air-conditioned deluxe vehicle | Personal expenses |
| Complimentary soft drinks throughout the journey | |
| Onboard activities and evening entertainment |
Two of those left-hand lines carry most of the weight.
The entrance fees. Egypt sells its monuments ticket by ticket. A serious temple week stacks them up fast, and a package that leaves them out is not really a package — it is a deposit. Ours are bundled, so nobody in your party is calculating exchange rates at a ticket window in the afternoon heat.
The archaeologist. One expert guide across your sightseeing, not a different voice at every gate. Over a dozen monuments that is the difference between photographing a wall and reading it.
On the word “all-inclusive”
We use it carefully. Meals are covered, soft drinks are complimentary, tickets and guiding are in the price. Alcoholic drinks and gratuities are not, on any of our packages. If an operator’s all-inclusive claim is broader than that, ask them the same question we have just answered: which four things are excluded?
Our Six Egypt Nile Cruise Packages
Ordered by how most travellers actually shop: the classic Luxor–Aswan weeks first, the long Cairo sailings after, and the fixed-date 2027 eclipse voyage last.
7 Days Elegant Scape
Luxor → Qena → AswanOur most-booked package and the natural answer to “7-day Nile cruise”. Six nights aboard, a northern detour to reach Dendera, then the full temple run south to Philae.
5 Days Serenity Retreat
Luxor / Esna → AswanFour nights afloat — the point at which a boat stops feeling like transport and starts feeling like the holiday. It also leaves enough of a fortnight to spend elsewhere in Egypt.
4 Days Sacred Waters
Aswan → EsnaOur shortest sailing, running north from Aswan. It slots into a wider Egypt itinerary rather than replacing one, which is exactly why travellers choose it.
11 Days Royal Nile Escape
Luxor → CairoEleven days sailing north, finishing in the capital. The stretch between Upper Egypt and Cairo is the part almost nobody sees at ground level, and you cross all of it from the deck.
14 Days Golden Horizons
Aswan → CairoThe longest package we operate, and the only one that begins at the southern end of the country and does not stop until Cairo. Two weeks, one cabin, the whole river.
8 Days · 2027 Egypt Solar Eclipse Cruise
Aswan → Luxor → QenaBuilt around the total solar eclipse over Luxor on 2 August 2027, sailing 28 July to 4 August, with viewing on the Luxor West Bank.
Want more detail before you choose? Read the Luxor to Aswan route in full, compare our view of the best Nile cruise itinerary, look at the Cairo and Nile cruise journeys, or spend five minutes in the gallery — photographs settle more arguments than paragraphs do.
Comparing the Packages Side by Side
Same information, arranged for scanning. Length is the decision that quietly determines every other one, so start with the column you can least easily change: your available days.
| Package | Days | Route | Reaches Cairo? | From (per person) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sacred Waters | 4 | Aswan → Esna | No | €750 |
| Serenity Retreat | 5 | Luxor / Esna → Aswan | No | €1,000 |
| Elegant Scape | 7 | Luxor → Qena → Aswan | No | €1,500 |
| Egypt Solar Eclipse Cruise | 8 (2027) | Aswan → Luxor → Qena | No | €3,300 |
| Royal Nile Escape | 11 | Luxor → Cairo | Yes | €3,000 |
| Golden Horizons | 14 | Aswan → Cairo | Yes | €3,500 |
Four or five days: the river as one chapter
Sacred Waters and Serenity Retreat suit travellers for whom the cruise is one part of a wider plan. Four nights on the five-day package is long enough to stop counting days and start noticing the light on the water — and short enough to leave room for Cairo nights of your own arranging.
Seven days: the complete southern river
Elegant Scape opens in Luxor, sails north to Qena so that Dendera lands in the same week as Kom Ombo, then turns south for the temple run to Philae. Six nights aboard, sixteen guests at most. If you are searching for a seven-day Nile cruise package, this is ours.
Eleven or fourteen days: the Nile as the whole holiday
Royal Nile Escape and Golden Horizons do the thing hardly anybody offers — they treat the river as the spine of the trip rather than a segment inside it, carrying you all the way to Cairo by water. If you have the annual leave, this is the version people are still describing to friends years later.
What Sits on the Route
Egypt’s monuments were built along a river for a reason, and sailing is the only way to meet them roughly in the order their builders intended. Here is what our Luxor–Aswan packages put in front of you.
Karnak and Luxor Temple open the seven-day package. Karnak does not survive the trip into a photograph; the scale only registers when you are underneath the columns with your head tilted back. Luxor Temple, a short way south, reads like a stone press release from a civilisation that wanted the record kept straight. Background reading, if you want it: visiting Karnak and the wider Luxor East Bank.
Dendera, reached on the northern leg to Qena, is why the seven-day package sails the “wrong” way for a day. Dedicated to Hathor, it is among the best-preserved complexes in the country, and those painted ceilings are the reason a certain kind of traveller books a second trip. Nearby, the riverside village of Garagos shows the unstaged Egypt running quietly alongside the monumental one.
Across the water lies the West Bank: the Valley of the Kings, with painted burial chambers cut deep into rock, and Hatshepsut’s terraced temple rising out of the cliff face, built for a woman who ruled as king. It is usually the day the history stops being general and turns personal. More detail in our Luxor West Bank guide.
Sailing south, the river hands you one thing after another: Esna and its lock, which is slow, strange and oddly gripping theatre with daily life playing out on both banks; the cliff tombs of El Kab; the near-complete Temple of Edfu; and the sandstone quarries of El Selsela, which supplied the stone for half the monuments you have already walked through.
Then Kom Ombo, unusual for being split down the middle between Sobek the crocodile and Horus the falcon — two gods, one building, no compromise reached. The camel market at Daraw runs at full volume. And the southern leg finishes at Philae Temple, marooned on its island outside Aswan.
What never appears on a large-ship itinerary are the moorings in between — Imam Island, Bassao Island, Herdiab Island. Remote, silent, and about as good as Nile stargazing gets. If you like reading ahead, try the Egyptian countryside, the attractions along the Nile, or things to do in Aswan. Planning Giza around your sailing? Our page on the Great Sphinx is a reasonable starting point.
What Egypt Nile Cruise Packages Cost — and What “From” Really Means
Our packages start at €750 for the four-day Sacred Waters and rise to €3,500 for the fourteen-day Golden Horizons. Those are starting points per person, not quotes. Three things move them:
- Cabin category. A suite and a standard cabin are not the same number, and pretending otherwise would only annoy you later.
- Party size. Two people and a group of ten do not price identically.
- Travel window. Demand across the season is uneven. That is true of every operator on the river; we just say it out loud.
So rather than publish a “cost per person” figure that would be wrong for most readers, we would rather run the arithmetic on your actual trip. Send us your dates and party size and you will get a real number, with the inclusions listed against it. If you are still weighing formats and budgets, our comparisons of a dahabiya versus a standard Nile cruise and a felucca versus a dahabiya set out what the money is buying in each case.
The honest counterweight
A large five-star cruise ship gives you a swimming pool, a much bigger public deck and departures on a fixed weekly grid. If those three sit at the top of your list, a big vessel may genuinely be the better booking, and we would rather say so than sell you the wrong holiday. What our packages offer instead is a small, quiet, private boat that moors where the crowds cannot follow. Our take on the wider market is in the best river cruise in Egypt.
When to Sail, and Why Availability Closes Early
Broadly, Egypt’s cooler months — roughly October through April — are the most comfortable for long days on your feet at temples and inside tombs. Summer is a great deal hotter, and heat matters more than first-time visitors expect when you are climbing uneven stone at midday.
Which creates a practical problem worth understanding before you start comparing dates. We operate one boat with a small number of cabins. Availability does not behave the way it does across a fleet — it closes, and then it is closed. The advice is unglamorous but it works: send us two or three possible date ranges rather than one, and enquire earlier than feels necessary. There is more seasonal detail in our guide to the best time to go to Egypt for a Nile cruise, and if the cold months are your window, our notes on a winter cruise in Egypt and a Christmas Nile cruise cover the ground.
One date sits outside the normal calendar entirely. The Egypt Solar Eclipse Cruise is built around the total solar eclipse over Luxor on 2 August 2027, sailing 28 July to 4 August, with viewing on the Luxor West Bank and a limit of twelve guests. That itinerary cannot move, because the moon is not open to negotiation.
Life on Board, and What to Put in the Bag
Days on a dahabiya run to a simple shape: sightseeing while it is cool, sailing while it is hot, long evenings on deck with the engine off. Meals are served on board, soft drinks are complimentary, and there are onboard activities and evening entertainment once the day’s temples are behind you. You can inspect the rooms yourself in our suites and standard rooms, or read how an ordinary day unfolds on life on board.
On packing, we will not invent a rulebook. Sensible general advice for anyone travelling this stretch of river:
- Shoes you can genuinely walk on uneven stone in
- Clothing that covers shoulders and knees for temples and villages
- Sun protection you will actually reapply
- A warm layer for evenings on deck once the sun drops
- A small torch for tomb interiors
- Your travel documents, kept somewhere you are not searching for them at a ticket gate
Our Nile cruise tips page goes further, and we send practical guidance to guests before departure.
On safety we take the same line. We are not going to make sweeping claims on a web page about conditions that can change; check your own government’s current travel advice, read our notes on travelling in Egypt, and ask us directly about the route and dates you are considering. You will get a straight answer.
Which Package Suits Which Traveller
- Couples and honeymooners. Private sailing, quiet moorings, dinner on deck and nobody running a quiz night. See our Egypt honeymoon itinerary.
- Families. A lock crossing, a camel market and tombs cut into a cliff hold children’s attention in a way a museum circuit rarely manages. Cabin configuration is the real planning question, so send us your children’s ages. More on family cruising.
- Small groups and private charters. With sixteen the ceiling on the seven-day package, a family or a group of friends can take the whole boat and set the pace of the week themselves.
- Solo travellers. Small-boat sociability without the obligation — join the table or take your book to the far end of the deck. See cruising solo.
- First-time visitors. Every headline site on the southern river sits on the seven-day route, plus places most first-timers never hear of until they are moored beside them. Our week in Egypt guide is a useful starting point.
- Returning travellers. If you have already done the standard circuit, the village stops, island nights and the northern leg to Dendera are the reason to come back. Start with our off the beaten path itinerary.
Egypt Nile Cruise Packages: Your Questions, Answered
Pick a Length, Then Let Us Do the Arithmetic
To recap: six Egypt Nile cruise packages on one private dahabiya, from four days to fourteen, starting at €750 per person. Full board throughout, an archaeologist at the temples, entrance fees covered on every listed site, transfers in air-conditioned vehicles, soft drinks included, and no more than sixteen people sharing the deck with you on our flagship week.
What a web page cannot tell you is what your trip looks like — which package fits your dates, which cabin suits your party, what is still open in the season you are aiming at, and what the real number comes to once we have costed your group properly.
So ask us. Fill in the enquiry form with your travel dates, your party size and the length of sailing you have in mind. Our team will come back with confirmed details, current availability and an honest view on which of our Egypt Nile cruise packages fits the trip you are planning.
The river has been running for a while. The form takes about a minute.
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