cairo

Most visitors rush through Abu Simbel on a grueling day-trip bus convoy from Aswan. We chose a different path. By staying overnight in the desert oasis, we caught a spectacular nighttime laser show on the temple facades and returned at dawn to stand completely alone inside Ramesses II’s three-thousand-year-old mountain sanctuary. Here is why slow travel wins in Upper Egypt.

Our second day in Cairo took us from the centuries-old fortress of Saladin’s Citadel and the magnificent Alabaster Mosque to the incredible Grand Egyptian Museum, ending with a very good steak and wine aboard Le Pacha 1901 on the Nile.

Our first day in Cairo: Khan el-Khalili market, a 1830 coffee house, a tarabishi workshop, the Mosque-Madrasa of Sultan al-Mu’ayyad, and the City of the Dead. All during the celebration of Eid al-Fitr.