Egypt Travel Guides
Everything you need to know before and during your trip — practical guides written by Egypt travel specialists.
Planning Your Trip
Egypt Travel Guide
Everything you need to plan a trip to Egypt — visa requirements, the best time to go, getting around, top destinations, culture and practical essentials.
Best Time to Visit Egypt
Egypt's best travel season is October to April, when Nile Valley temperatures are mild and monuments are comfortable to explore. Here is what to expect season by season and destination by destination.
Getting Around Egypt
How to travel between Egypt's cities and sites — domestic flights, the sleeper train, Nile cruises, the Cairo Metro, taxis and private transfers explained.
The Ideal 10-Day Egypt Itinerary
A field-tested 10-day Egypt route — Cairo and Giza, a flight south, Luxor's two banks, a three-night Nile cruise to Aswan and Abu Simbel — with the pacing mistakes to avoid.
What to Pack for Egypt
The Egypt packing list that actually matches the trip: what the desert, the monuments, the mosques and the Nile each demand — by season, with the five things everyone forgets.
What to read, and in what order
Most of the anxiety around planning a trip to Egypt comes from a small number of practical unknowns — the visa, the heat, the money, whether it is safe, and how long any of it takes. None is complicated once answered. These guides exist so that the questions are settled before you start choosing itineraries, because the shape of a journey follows from the answers rather than the other way round.
Start with when
Timing decides more about an Egyptian journey than any other single choice. It sets what you pay, how crowded the Valley of the Kings is at nine in the morning, whether Upper Egypt is comfortable in the middle of the day, and whether the Red Sea is warm. October to April is the straightforward answer; the interesting answers are the shoulders — late October, early March — where the weather is the same and the crowds and prices are not.
Then settle entry and money
Whether you need a visa, and which kind, depends entirely on your passport, and getting it wrong is the one planning error that can end a trip at the airport. Money is simpler than people fear: cards work in hotels and better restaurants, cash is needed everywhere else, and tipping is a genuine part of Egyptian life rather than an imposition — budget for it deliberately and it stops being awkward.
Then work out how long it takes
Egypt is longer than it looks on a map, and the difference between flying and driving between cities is the difference between an eight-day itinerary and a ten-day one. Read the transport guide before deciding how many places to include; almost everyone's first draft has one city too many in it.
The rest is texture
What to pack, what to eat, what the etiquette is at a mosque, how to photograph a tomb without a permit problem — none of these will change your itinerary, but all of them change how the days feel. They are worth an hour of reading before you fly and are the parts travellers most often say they wished they had known.
Planning questions
When is the best time to visit Egypt?
October to April, when daytime temperatures inland are comfortable. Within that, late October and early March are the sweet spot: the same weather as the December–February peak with noticeably fewer people and lower prices. May to September is hot in Upper Egypt but perfectly workable at dawn and dusk, and it is the best time for the Red Sea.
Do I need a visa for Egypt?
It depends entirely on your passport. Most European, North American and Asia-Pacific nationals can buy a visa on arrival or apply for an e-Visa online; most Gulf (GCC) nationals do not need one; some nationalities must obtain the e-Visa in advance. The authority is the official Egyptian government portal at visa2egypt.gov.eg, and we confirm the rule for your passport when we plan the trip.
How much should I tip in Egypt?
Tipping — baksheesh — is a normal and expected part of daily life rather than an extra. Plan for it: small notes for the person who opens a door or carries a bag, more for your driver and guide at the end of a journey. Treating it as a budgeted, cheerful part of the trip rather than a series of surprises changes the experience entirely.
Is Egypt safe for tourists?
The tourist regions — Cairo, Giza, Luxor, Aswan, Alexandria and the Red Sea coast — are well policed and routinely visited by millions of people a year without incident. The practical nuisances are persistent touts at the major sites and heavy Cairo traffic, both of which a private guide and driver remove almost entirely. Check your own government's current travel advice before booking.
How far in advance should I book a trip to Egypt?
Three months is comfortable for most of the year. Six months if you are travelling over Christmas, New Year or Easter, or if a specific Nile boat or hotel room matters — there are very few dahabiyas and they are taken early.
What every Kemet journey is
Every operator in Egypt uses the word luxury. These are the specifics behind ours — the things you can check, before you pay for anything.
A licensed Egyptologist, not a guide
Every journey is led by a guide licensed by the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism with a degree in Egyptology. They are with you at the monuments, not waiting in the car park — and they are yours for the day, answering your questions rather than reciting to forty people.
Your party only
No shared coaches. No fixed departure dates. No strangers on your itinerary. If you are two people, the vehicle, the guide and the pace belong to two people.
Built around you, then written down
We design the itinerary from your interests and your dates — not from a catalogue page. You receive it in writing before anything is paid, and it changes as often as you want it to until it is right.
One price, itemised
The quote lists what is included and what is not, line by line, before you commit. Your Egyptologist, private air-conditioned transfers and lunch on touring days are inside the price on every journey, and entrance fees are inside it on every multi-day one. Where something sits outside — monument tickets on a day tour, for instance — it is named on the page you are reading, at the rate the ticket office charges, not discovered at the end.
Reachable while you travel
You have a direct line to the people who planned your journey for the whole time you are in Egypt — not a call centre, and not a number that stops answering after the deposit clears.
Time protected, not filled
A day with four sites crammed into it is a cheaper day to sell and a worse day to live. We plan around light, heat and crowds — the Valley of the Kings at opening, the Egyptian Museum when the coaches have gone — and we leave the afternoon alone.
On price, plainly
Kemet sits at the upper end of the Egyptian market and we are comfortable saying so. A private Egyptologist for a week costs what it costs; so does a car that is yours alone and a room that faces the river rather than the car park. What we will not do is quote low, then recover the difference through optional extras, shopping stops and an itinerary that quietly turns into a group. Every price on this site is a per-person starting point for a private journey, and the written quote that follows is the price you pay.