Geography and environment

The river and the thin green line

Herodotus called Egypt the gift of the Nile and nobody has improved on it. The river runs the length of the country from the Sudanese border to the Mediterranean, and the overwhelming majority of Egypt's population lives in the narrow valley and the delta — a few percent of the national territory. Fly over it and the arithmetic is obvious: a green ribbon a few kilometers wide, sand to the horizon on both sides.

This is why Egyptian travel runs north–south rather than in a loop, why a Nile cruise between Luxor and Aswan is a sensible way to move rather than a gimmick, and why Cairo to Luxor is a short flight rather than a drive you would want to make. Our Classic Egypt journey follows exactly that shape: Cairo, a flight to Luxor, then the Nile cruise to Aswan.

The five Egypts

The Delta — the fan of farmland north of Cairo where the Nile splits and reaches the Mediterranean. Dense, green, agricultural, and barely visited.

The Nile Valley — Cairo south to Aswan. Nearly everything people come to see: Giza, Saqqara, Luxor, Karnak, the Valley of the Kings, Edfu, Kom Ombo, Philae.

The Western Desert — the Egyptian Sahara, reaching to the Libyan border, with oases scattered through it. Note that the US State Department currently advises against all travel to the Western Desert, and we do not operate there.

The Eastern Desert and Red Sea coast — mountains dropping to the sea, and the reefs at Hurghada, El Gouna and Marsa Alam.

Sinai — the peninsula between the two gulfs. The south, around Sharm el-Sheikh, Dahab and St. Catherine's, is where visitors go. The north and center are a Level 4 "Do Not Travel" area and we do not go there either.

Climate, briefly

Desert: hot, dry, and almost rainless. Cairo gets a couple of centimeters of rain in a year, most of it in winter; Aswan can go years between meaningful showers. Summer is severe in Upper Egypt and merely hot on the coast. Winter days are mild and winter nights in the desert are genuinely cold, which catches people out.

Humidity is low inland and higher on both coasts, which is why 35°C in Luxor and 35°C in Alexandria feel like different temperatures. See best time to visit for what this means month by month.

The reefs, and not wrecking them

The Red Sea holds some of the most accessible coral reef anywhere, with several hundred coral species and a reef system that survives higher water temperatures than most. It is also under real pressure from coastal development, boat traffic and the sheer number of people in the water.

The rules are simple and we hold our suppliers to them: do not touch or stand on coral, do not chase or handle marine life including turtles, do not feed fish, do not buy coral or shells, and use reef-safe sunscreen. Good operators brief this properly and anchor on moorings rather than on the reef. If a boat is casual about it, that tells you what else they are casual about.