Egypt tour, rivers & reefs
| country: | Egypt |
| location: | Red Sea, Nile Cruises, Luxor |
| trip type: | A small group adventure |
| departures: | Departs every Thursday, throughout the year |
| price: | From £340 (11 days) excluding flights, local payment US $150. We can arrange flights from the UK |
| offers: | 11th September departure from £782 including flights from Heathrow when you quote 'rt.com' |
the amazing things you'll be doing
This tour offers a relaxing but comprehensive tour of Egypt. We see all the treasures of the Ancient Egyptians like the Pyramids of Giza, the temples along the Nile River and the tombs of the Pharaohs in Luxor, but we also have time to relax, both on board our private Nile cruise boat and at the Red Sea coast.
day-by-day itinerary
| Day 1: | Cairo: Arrival day. No meals. |
| Day 2: | Cairo - Aswan: A guided visit to the great Pyramids & Sphinx at Giza. Overnight train to Aswan. (B) |
| Day 3: | Aswan: Arrive and transfer to M/S Melodie, our private Nile cruise boat. The day is free to explore Aswan. Perhaps take a felucca ride around the islands of the Nile or haggle for souvenirs in the bazaars. (BLD) |
| Day 4: | Aswan - Kom Ombo - Edfu: Optional morning excursion to Abu Simbel before we start cruising up the Nile towards Luxor. We stop en route at Kom Ombo where we visit the riverside temple before continuing to Edfu. (BLD) |
| Day 5: | Edfu - Luxor: In the morning we have a chance to visit the Temple of Horus at Edfu before we continue sailing to Luxor. (BLD) |
| Day 6: | Luxor: Free morning in Luxor. In the afternoon we take horse-drawn carriages to Karnak Temple and have a guided tour around this magnificent complex. (B) |
| Day 7: | Luxor: An early start for our donkey ride to the Valley of the Kings. Return past the Colossi of Memnon. In the afternoon we drive to Hurghada. (B) |
| Day 8-9: | Hurghada: Two full days to enjoy the Red Sea. You can take a snorkelling trip to explore the colourful underwater life or kick back and chill out on the beach. (B) |
| Day 10: | Hurghada - Cairo: Morning drive back to Cairo. Free afternoon. (B) |
small group adventure holiday
Typically you will be sharing your experiences with between 4-20 like minded travellers (depending on the trip, operator and how many others are booked on the trip) and you'll have a group leader with you. Whether you are travelling alone or with friends its good value, and a great way to meet new people! While itineraries are pre-planned there is some flexibility and you'll have plenty of privacy. This trip will appeal to travellers of all ages who enjoy meeting new people as well as seeing new places.highly commended
This tourism business was Highly Commended in our 2007 Virgin Holidays Responsible Tourism Awards - the largest awards of their kind in the world, and organised by responsibletravel.com in association with The Times, World Travel Market and Geographical Magazine, of the Royal Geographical Society.Since 2004, the Awards has recognised individuals, companies and organisations in travel making a big commitment to the culture and economies of local communities and helping to conserve biodiversity.
how this holiday makes a difference
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All of our tour leaders are trained in accordance with responsible travel policies and will brief our groups about this issue at the start of the tour. We stay in smaller locally owned and operated hotels and avoid the large multi-national chains which grossly over-consume local resources such as water and electricity. Our Nile boat is locally owned and much smaller than most others on the river; this means it creates much less water disturbance and causes less erosion to the farming land along the banks. You will be on traditional transportation for much of the tour (including camels, donkeys and trains) which helps to reduce the carbon emissions from your journey.
At the Red Sea coast we work with environmentally certified dive schools (members of HEPCA organisation). Our tour leaders are very pro-active and will advise travellers on how best to minimise their impact on the Red Sea and prevent damage to the coral. As a company we are commited to travel with responsibility and we actively support two local projects in Eqypt - one a children's home in Luxor and the other a heritage exhibition preserving knowledge and history of the Qurnawi community - as well as many other projects around the world. For the Qurna Discovery project we pay £2,500 per year which covers their rent and allows the exhibition to be visited free of charge by all visitors - local and foreign thereby ensuring maximum publicity with locals as well who probably would not pay to go to see it. With the Sunshine project in January we collected £25 from our clients - the level varies every month of course depending on what our clients choose to donate. We match this £ for £ (therefore in January it became £50 to the charity) Based on this average there would be about £600 per year donated plus whatever is donated through collection boxes placed in the hotels we use/local donation etc. Many tour leaders take members of their tour to visit the home and the children although this of course depends on circumstances at the time both for the tour and the activities scheduled at the home. |
Tourism can be good and bad for destinations & local people. We carefully screen every holiday against our criteria for responsible travel. 'Look behind the brochure' to find how each holiday makes a difference (see left). We don't claim to be perfect - there is no global accreditation - but we've led the way since 2001 and screened 1000's of holidays. We invite every traveller to write a review about their experiences and responsible tourism. This valuable feedback is sent to the people who run the holidays. We keep a very close eye on it and take off holidays that don't live up to our standards. |