Some visitors read a tour page, find the program that already matches what they had in mind, and book it. This page is not for them. It is for the traveler who reached the bottom of our Egypt tour packages, liked most of one and none of another, and wanted to move three things around before agreeing to any of it.
A custom Egypt tour is the same operation as a package, assembled in a different order. The guide is the same licensed Egyptologist, the vehicle is the same private one, the hotels come off the same list, and the monument tickets are bought in advance the same way. What changes is that the route, the pace and the length come out of your answers rather than out of a program written months ago for somebody else. Tailor made Egypt tours and fixed programs are not two grades of service here. They are two routes to the same day on the ground.
Our contact page asks you to send five things: your dates, how many are traveling, roughly how long you want, what you most want to see, and anything we should plan around. Most people send three of them and forget the other two, and then the first reply has to ask instead of answer. The form below is that same request, broken into blocks so nothing gets missed. It takes about four minutes if your dates are already fixed, and less if they are not, because there is an answer on the form for that too.
Nothing here commits you to anything. Fill it in, read what comes back, and decide then. If you would rather not read the preamble at all, go straight to the form.
What happens to your answers
The form does not open a ticket in a queue. It lands with the same people who run the trips on the ground in Egypt, and one of them reads it end to end before anything is written back. There is no automated Egypt trip planner behind it, no template that swaps your name into a paragraph and sends it on. That is a slower way to work and it is the reason the first reply is worth reading.
What comes back is a custom Egypt itinerary, not a request for more information. Days and nights, in order, with the city you sleep in each night named, the sites attached to the day they belong on, and the domestic flights or the sailing dates already checked against the calendar you gave us. Where two things you ticked cannot both fit inside the nights you have, the reply says which one we would cut and why, rather than quietly dropping it and hoping the omission goes unnoticed.
If something in that first draft is wrong, say so and it gets rebuilt. Most trips settle after two or three passes. A few settle on the first, usually when the traveler has been specific about the one thing the trip would be a failure without, which is why that question is on the form.
The three questions people ask before they fill this in
Does the proposal cost anything?
No. You send the form, an itinerary comes back, and you owe nothing for it. There is no charge for a revision either, and no point at which reading a draft turns into a commitment to travel. If the plan we build is not the trip you wanted, you can say so and walk away, and that happens often enough that we plan for it.
Can I change it after we have agreed the shape?
Yes, and most people do. Swapping a museum morning for a slower start, adding a night in Aswan, moving a Red Sea stay from the front of the trip to the end: all of that is normal and none of it needs a new enquiry. The parts that resist change are the ones tied to somebody else's timetable, and those are set out plainly further down this page so you know which they are before you get attached to a version.
What if my dates are not fixed yet?
Then say so on the form. There is an option for knowing only the month, and an option for being entirely flexible and wanting us to say when the trip works best. A flexible enquiry is easier for us to build well, not harder, because the itinerary can be shaped around sailing days and site closures instead of fighting them. Waiting until your dates are certain before you ask is the more common mistake.
Build your trip, block by block
Nine short blocks. Build your own Egypt itinerary by answering what you know and skipping what you do not; only the blocks marked as needed have to be filled in, and none of them ask you for a figure.
What a custom trip cannot change
Most of an Egypt trip bends. A small part of it does not, and knowing which part before you get attached to a version of the plan saves a difficult conversation later. Every operator works inside the same four constraints; not every operator says so on the page where you are being asked to enquire.
Can you customise an Egypt tour completely?
Not completely, and anyone who says otherwise is describing a brochure rather than a country. A personalized Egypt tour is free in its shape, its order, its pace and its length. It is not free in the four places below, and those four are what turn a good plan into a workable one.
- Domestic flight schedules are fixed. The sectors between Cairo, Luxor, Aswan and Abu Simbel run when they run. If a route only has an early departure on the day you need it, the day is built around that departure rather than the other way round. We can move the day. We cannot move the aircraft.
- Cruise boats sail on set embarkation days. A Nile cruise is not a hotel you check into whenever you like. Each boat has its own weekly pattern for the Luxor and Aswan legs, and the length of the sailing follows from the day you board. This is the single most common reason a proposed itinerary shifts by a day or two from the one a traveler sketched at home.
- Abu Simbel road travel runs in convoy. The desert road south of Aswan is driven on a controlled schedule. That fixes the departure time and it fixes how long you get at the temples, so a leisurely Abu Simbel morning is not something a private vehicle can buy.
- Tombs rotate closed for conservation. Which chambers are open in the Valley of the Kings changes through the year, and the decision is not ours or announced far ahead. We build around what is open when you travel and we tell you what has closed rather than substituting quietly.
A fifth constraint is arithmetic rather than rule: distance. Egypt is longer than it reads on a list of place names, and a day spent moving between two of them is a day not spent at either.
If you already have flights
A good share of the people who fill this in have their international flights booked before they speak to anyone about the ground. That is entirely sensible and it makes the planning easier, not harder. Your flight into Egypt and your flight home are yours to arrange; we work with whatever you have chosen.
An itinerary built backwards from fixed air is a different exercise from one built forwards from a wish list. It starts with two hard points, your landing time and your departure time, and works inward. The landing time matters more than people expect. A late arrival means the first morning starts slower, so we would not put the Giza plateau on it. An early one buys a genuine half day, which is often enough for the museum or the old city.
The departure end is where trips get quietly damaged. A homeward flight in the early afternoon means the last night has to be spent in the city you fly out of, which pulls a whole day back down the map. Told this at the planning stage, it costs you nothing. Discovered in week three, it costs a site.
Paste both times into the last box on the form, in the airline's own wording if that is easiest. Domestic sectors inside Egypt are ours to book and they get slotted around the times you already hold.
How long you actually need
The nights question in block 4 stops more people than any other, so here is the short version. Count usable days rather than nights on an invoice. The arrival day is not a touring day, the departure day is usually half a day at most, and the first full day runs on adjusted sleep. A trip that reads as eight days is often six of real touring, and planning to that number from the start is the difference between a full trip and a rushed one.
Under five nights, pick one base and do it properly. Cairo alone is a complete trip: Giza, Saqqara, a museum and the old city, without a single internal flight. Luxor alone is the other version of that, and it has more standing monuments than anywhere else in the country. What does not work in this window is Cairo plus the Nile valley, which turns the trip into transit.
Around seven nights is the shortest length that covers the classic route without forcing the pace: Cairo, then the river between Luxor and Aswan. Eight to ten is where Abu Simbel stops being a squeeze, and where there is enough slack that a closed tomb or a moved flight is an adjustment rather than a lost site. Twelve or more is for adding a different kind of place, usually the Red Sea at the end, rather than more temples.
If you want the long version before you answer the form, read how many days you need in Egypt. If your window is genuinely short, Egypt in four days sets out what a compressed trip can and cannot hold. Either one is a better way to plan a trip to Egypt than guessing at a number and hoping it fits.
Traveling with children, as a couple, or solo
The party question in block 2 changes more of the itinerary than the places question does. The same list of sites turns into three genuinely different trips depending on who is walking around them.
With children, the constraint is heat and duration rather than interest. Children are usually more taken with Egypt than the adults expect and less able to sustain a five-hour temple morning, so the days get shorter, the starts get earlier, and the afternoons open up. A cruise does a lot of that work by itself, because the boat gives the middle of the day somewhere to go. We have written both parts of this up: traveling in Egypt with children and, specifically, what a Nile cruise is like with children aboard.
As a couple, the change is usually in where the nights go rather than in the sites. Fewer, longer stops, an upper-deck cabin that is worth the difference, dinner somewhere chosen rather than allocated, and at least one day with nothing on it. Say so in the last box and it gets built that way.
Traveling alone works well here and it is more common than people assume. A solo traveler on a private program gets the guide's full attention, which is the single biggest upgrade available on any Egypt trip. The room arrangement is the only part that needs its own answer, and there is an option for it in block 2.
When to go, and what that changes
Every month of the year works in Egypt. What changes is the daily rhythm, and that is a planning question rather than a good-or-bad one.
In the cooler months the days run long and full, the sites are busier at the famous hours, and the Red Sea end of a trip is pleasant rather than remarkable. In the hot months the middle of the day disappears; touring moves to the early morning and the late afternoon, and an itinerary that would be comfortable in winter needs an extra night to hold the same content. That is the honest version of the seasonal question, and it is the reason the form asks for a month rather than assuming one.
If you are still choosing, the best time to visit Egypt goes month by month. If you already have a month and want to know what the crowds and the pacing look like inside it, read how high and low season differ. And if you tick the flexible option on the form, we will tell you which weeks in your range we would pick and why.
Frequently asked questions
Can we mix a cruise with hotel nights?
That is what most custom trips look like. A typical shape is a few nights in a Cairo hotel, a sailing leg between Luxor and Aswan, and hotel nights again at whichever end the trip finishes on. The one thing to get right is the direction of the sailing, because it decides which city you are standing in when the trip ends and therefore where your homeward flight leaves from.
Do you book the domestic flights?
Yes. The sectors inside Egypt, between Cairo, Luxor, Aswan and Abu Simbel, are ticketed by us and written into the itinerary, so the timings are known before you agree to the plan. Your international flights into and out of Egypt stay with you to arrange.
Is the guide always a licensed Egyptologist?
On every guided day, yes. University-trained and licensed by the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, with you at the site rather than waiting at the gate. Where a day has no guiding in it, a free day on the Red Sea for instance, the itinerary says so plainly instead of implying a guide who is not there.
Can I travel solo?
Yes, and a bespoke Egypt tour is arguably at its best with one traveler, because the whole day moves at your pace. Block 2 has a single-room option, and the proposal will make clear how the room arrangement affects it.
Can you take a group of twelve?
Yes. The form takes parties of up to forty adults, and twelve is a straightforward size: one vehicle, one guide, one set of hotel rooms. Larger parties need the room split answered early, because it drives everything else. Put the group's shape in the last box and it gets planned around properly.
What if I want to add the Red Sea?
Add it at the end rather than the middle. A few nights at Hurghada, El Gouna, Sahl Hasheesh, Sharm el-Sheikh, Dahab or Marsa Alam after the monument circuit is the natural place for it, and it absorbs the fatigue of a long run of early starts. Dropped into the middle, it splits the antiquities into two halves and costs a traveling day at each join.
What if I need to change dates after we have agreed the plan?
Tell us and the itinerary is rebuilt around the new dates. A personalised Egypt trip is not frozen the moment it is written; the parts that move are the sailing leg and the domestic sectors, and those get re-checked against the new window before anything else is confirmed.
If you would rather just talk
Nine blocks is a lot of form, and some people would rather ask two questions first and see who answers. That is fine, and it is the same team either way.
Message us on WhatsApp on 201032295513, or use the contact page if you prefer to write. If the conversation turns into a real plan, we will send you back to this form, because the answers here are what an itinerary gets built from and a chat thread is a poor place to keep them.