Cruise Down The Nile

Taking a cruise down the Nile is probably the fastest, safest and most convenient way for you to see Egypt. Passing most of the spectacular monuments and temples of this huge country while being able to also enjoy the magical riverside with the green and lush valleys that form a big contrast with the Egyptian desert right behind it, is certainly the experience of a lifetime.

For ages people have traveled along the whole length of the river Nile and to these days it is probably the most popular way to see Egypt. It has to be said though that for safety purposes only the upper and lower parts of the Egyptian Nile can be traveled. Middle Egypt has become too dangerous for tourist because of terrorist attacks so if you want to cruise down the Nile you can only go from Cairo up north or from Luxor down south.

Safety is guarded on these cruises though, so do not be shocked to see armed police officers on your boat who are there to guarantee the safety of the thousands of tourists coming to Egypt every month!

Once you have decided that cruising down the Nile is your next travel experience, there are a lot of choices to be made. Probably most important is your budget. You can go on a river Nile cruise for as little as $500 dollars for 3-5 days, most costs included but is this really the kind of trip you want to cut down costs on?

If you just want to cruise down the Nile in order to see as many monuments as possible while traveling relatively comfortable the budget option sure is worth a go. However you get what you pay for so don´t expect to arrive back home well rested!

If you have a little more money to spend and more time off I would certainly recommend a more luxurious river cruise boat. Not just because of the level of comfort, but also because it goes faster if it has to, meaning you will not have to rush when visiting monuments. Because at one point or another, you will be participating in the cruise down the Nile competition of which boat gets to the Esna lock first. This might sound silly but because we had a really slow and cheap boat, we had to rush at Edfu temple to leave before all other boats did to reduce our waiting time at the lock.

Triumph was great when we left first, but during the cruise to the Esna lock, more and more boats started taking us over, with the result that we had to dock and wait for 4 hours at the lock, which then resulted in less time to visit Luxor and having to rush everywhere!

To be honest, I did not know what to expect from this river Nile cruise at all, but it has definitely been way more impressive than I would have thought in more ways than one. Once the reservation was made we only had little time to prepare before taking off to Egypt and somehow I had this romantic idea of cruising down the Nile in a relaxed matter and breathing in some culture at the same time.

Well... cruising down the Nile was relaxing but all the excursions were exhausting. Not only because we had to get up very early (2.30 AM and 5.30 Am were no exceptions!) to get to the monuments on time but also because so much information was given in such a short period that it felt like my brain was getting fried!

The end verdict though is that this trip was well worth the experience and exhaustion, but it would have been so much better had we been able to split up the cruise down the Nile from the Cairo stay. It would have been excellent to be able to cruise down the Nile for 11 or so days and see not more than one monument a day, like the packages offered as "Lake Nasser Cruises" for example.

But like they say, You have not lived for real if you have not been to Egypt!