Why You Need to Visit Egypt This Year (2024)

We started our first morning the way we would every day thereafter, with an early morning swim followed by a rolling breakfast of crèpes and fried eggs, as each couple emerged from their cabin. The trick to swimming in the Nile, we learned by watching Eleanore as she slipped out of her galabeya and worn Chanel quilted flats and headed barefoot down the path, is to walk opposite the river flow and kick with the current back to the boat. Later that morning, though never in haste, we made our way on foot from the boat along the east bank of the Nile to the former capital of Upper Egypt, El Kab. Once again, we had it to ourselves. The highlight of the region is the tombs, some of which date to New Kingdom period (1550–1069 B.C.). The depictions are well preserved, most notably those belonging to Ahmose, aka “Captain-General of Sailors” under Pharaoh Ahmose I. More interesting, perhaps, than the detailed accounts of daily life and battle scenes is the ubiquitous “Luigi was here” script-style graffiti left behind by Italian and British tourists from the 18th and 19th centuries.

Averaging one major excursion a day of cradle-of-civilization-grade sites, it turns out, is the perfect cadence. After lounging in a hammock, reading, drawing, playing scrabble and backgammon, followed by a multi-course but never heavy lunch, you are then ready to have your mind blown by the Temple of Horus at Edfu. Because the very act of gliding along the mythical river feels purposeful, a near religious rite of time travel and cultural immersion. That my 15- and 12-year-old sons never once said they were bored, even though they were the only kids aboard, is a testament to Nour el Nil’s masterful pacing.

If ever there were a reification of the “getting there is half the fun” adage, it is this experience, and doubly so when you realize the best way to get to the Greco-Roman temple at Edfu is by horse-drawn carriage. In their breezy style, staff members instructed us to get into to a black 19th-century-style carriage in pairs and to negotiate a certain round trip rate upfront. Catching a glimpse of my longhaired 15-year-old with the guileless grin of his former five-year-old self, as our rickety carriage lurched forward, was worth the trip alone. At full gallop, it felt like the wheels might fly off. It’s only on foreign soil that a parent forgoes her cardinal seatbelt-sunblock-helmet rule and stands the chance to model a kind of pluck that our otherwise frictionless American lives never allow.

Thanks to the desert sand that covered the temple after the cult was banned, the Temple of Horus at Edfu, built between 237 and 57 B.C., is one of the best-preserved ancient structures in Egypt. Dedicated to the falcon god, the vengeful son of Isis and Osiris, the settlement itself was established as a cult center and cemetery site around 3000 B.C.

“You know, none of the other boats can stop here,” Eleanore said of our next stop, Gebel Silsileh, a rocky gorge between Kom Ombo and Edfu, the narrowest point along the Nile, where sandstone cliffs jut from the water’s edge. Not by coincidence, we arrived at the magic hour, with just enough daylight to walk up through the small tourist-free village and make our way through a mile or so of sand dunes. Some of the photos we took that day at sunset, the sun disappearing behind the peaked dunes, were so on-the-nose postcard perfect they almost look fake. The next morning, we walked through the sandstone quarries, where the ancient Egyptians cut stone for some of the most important New Kingdom temples in Luxor, and toured the small shrines built by Merenptah, Ramses II and Seti I during the New Kingdom. The immutability of the landscape tricks you: You can almost picture these slabs of sandstone floating up the river to Karnak.