Abu Simbel Tour From Aswan: 2 Days and a Night Beside the Temples

Check the live wording yourself at travel.state.gov before you commit, because a security situation is not something anyone should print as a permanent fact on a sales page. The advisory is written by region rather than for the country as a whole, so read which areas it names.

What we can tell you is geography. Nothing on this itinerary goes near the Sinai Peninsula, which sits on the far side of the country from Aswan. This program stays in the deep south, on a single well-maintained highway with police checkpoints that carries tour vehicles, buses and local traffic every day. Your driver runs it constantly, and our office is on WhatsApp throughout.

It is not. This program starts and ends in Aswan and contains no flights of any kind. The international flight into Egypt is never something we sell, book, quote or coordinate, and that stays with you or your own agent. The domestic Cairo to Aswan sector, about an hour and a half in the air, is also outside this two-day program, and plenty of travelers take the overnight sleeper train instead. If you want the internal flying handled inside a single price, the 8-day Egypt itinerary and the 10-day itinerary include their domestic sectors as standard.

Abu Simbel has a small airport and short flights from Aswan exist, but they are not part of this program and we do not include them. Those schedules are built around same-day visitors, so they pull you back to Aswan in the early afternoon, which is exactly the night you came here to keep. The drive runs on your timetable rather than an airline's, and a private vehicle stops when you want it to.

US passport holders need one. The Egyptian e-Visa costs 30 USD single entry and 65 USD multiple entry, applied for at visa2egypt.gov.eg, the government portal. Older figures still circulate on travel forums, and embassy pages quote their own consular service, which is a separate product with its own fee. Plan against the e-Visa numbers above.

If you take the visa on arrival at the airport instead, the fee must be paid in US dollars in cash. Carry crisp, unmarked bills, since worn notes and older series are routinely refused. Either way, the visa is yours to arrange and is not in our price.

The ticket is included. The show runs after dark, projected onto the two rock-cut facades, with narration on Ramesses II and Nefertari through multilingual headsets, and it lasts under an hour. Times shift by season and are set by the site, so we confirm the evening's timing with you rather than printing a clock time that would be wrong half the year. It is a produced spectacle rather than a lecture. What makes it worth the evening is standing in front of a 3,200-year-old cliff facade at night with Lake Nasser black behind it.

October through April is the comfortable window down here. Aswan and Abu Simbel are genuinely hot from May to September, regularly above 100 F, and the temple enclosure has almost no shade. Winter days are warm and bright, winter nights cool enough to want a jacket at the show.

February 22 and October 22 are the solar alignment dates, when sunrise light runs the length of the Great Temple and reaches the statues in the sanctuary. Hotel space in Abu Simbel is scarce around them, so ask early and expect peak pricing.

The walking is moderate and mostly flat: a curving path around the artificial hill to the facades, level ground between the two temples, even floors inside. Philae adds a short step on and off the boat and some uneven stone. The High Dam is a viewpoint you walk onto from the vehicle. The harder part is the two three-hour drives, which is exactly why an older traveler is usually better served by this overnight version than by the same ground squeezed into one pre-dawn day trip. Tell us in advance about any mobility limits so we can be honest about each site.

There is no mosque on this itinerary, so nothing here requires a head covering, and you do not need one on the street in Aswan or Abu Simbel either. Light cotton or linen, long and loose rather than short and tight, is cooler than shorts and draws less attention. Shoulders and knees covered is a sensible default for everyone at the temples. Bring closed shoes for sand and stone, a brimmed hat, sunglasses and real sunscreen, plus a light jacket from November to February for the open-air show.

Tipping is normal in Egypt and nothing is ever added to your bill by us. In order of priority: your guide first, then your driver, then smaller amounts for hotel staff and the boatman at Philae. Restroom attendants expect a small note, and there will be one at Abu Simbel. Egyptian pounds work better than dollars for the small stuff, because a 10 or 20 pound note is the right size and a 1 dollar bill is awkward to change. Draw pounds from an ATM in Aswan and keep small notes in a separate pocket.

Do not drink the tap water, and brush your teeth with bottled water too. Bottled water is in the vehicle on both driving days. Skip ice in places you do not know, raw salad, and unpeeled fruit; hot food served hot is the safe end of the spectrum. Two things travelers wish they had packed: tissues and hand sanitizer, because restrooms at Abu Simbel and Philae are functional but not reliably stocked. Bring whatever stomach remedy you use at home rather than hunting for your brand in a pharmacy down here.

Yes, and buy it before you leave. We do not sell insurance, earn nothing from it, and have not built it into this price. The reason matters for Americans specifically: most US health plans and Medicare give you little or no coverage abroad, and there is no reciprocal arrangement of the sort European travelers rely on. Look for medical treatment abroad, medical evacuation and trip cancellation. Evacuation coverage counts for more in the deep south than it would in Cairo, simply because the serious hospitals are further away.

The published rate is per person based on two people sharing, which is the industry standard. On your own you have the room to yourself, so there is a single-room difference, and we quote it as an actual number for your dates rather than burying it in a footnote. The vehicle and the guide are private either way, so a solo traveler still gets a genuinely private trip, and solo travelers, women included, do this route regularly. Ask and we will send the solo figure and the shared figure side by side.

That is how most people use it. Because it opens and closes in Aswan, it drops in cleanly before or after a river sailing or a land itinerary through Upper Egypt. Send us the dates you already hold and we will tell you which end it fits, rather than selling you a program that collides with a boarding time.