2-Day Luxor Tour: Valley of the Kings and Karnak
Two days in the city where the pharaohs built for eternity
Two days in Luxor, both banks, one guide
This is the right trip for you if you have roughly forty-eight hours in Luxor and you want the city done properly instead of skimmed: the East Bank temples on day one, the Theban West Bank on day two, and a hotel night in between so neither day turns into a forced march.
Most visitors try to squeeze Karnak, Luxor Temple, the Valley of the Kings and Hatshepsut into a single day. It can be done. It is also a poor way to see them, because the West Bank is at its best before ten in the morning and the East Bank temples are at their best in late afternoon. No single day gives you both. Splitting the city across two days is not padding, it is how the light works.
Everything here is private. Your Egyptologist, your driver and your air-conditioned vehicle are yours, and the pace follows your questions rather than a coach schedule. Every gate ticket is paid before you arrive, so you are not queuing at four ticket windows.
One thing to be clear about early, because it decides whether this fits your plan at all: the trip begins and ends in Luxor. It does not include the flight or the train from Cairo, and it never includes an international flight.
Trip at a glance
Duration. Two days and one night, with a hotel night in Luxor between them. It works as a stand-alone block inside a longer Egypt trip.
Route. Day one covers the East Bank: the Karnak temple complex, then Luxor Temple, with a local lunch between them. Day two crosses to the West Bank for the Valley of the Kings, the terraced funerary temple of Hatshepsut at Deir el-Bahari, and a photo stop at the Colossi of Memnon. Five sites, all within about thirty minutes of each other by road.
Where it starts and ends. In Luxor. We collect you at your hotel, at Luxor railway station or at Luxor International Airport, and return you to whichever of those you are leaving from. Travelers reach Luxor by three different means and at wildly different hours, so that flexibility matters.
What makes it different. It is genuinely private, so the group is you and whoever you brought. Every entrance fee is prepaid, and we print the real gate prices further down. And we are based in Egypt, so the person answering your WhatsApp is in the same country as your driver.
Who it suits. Travelers on a Cairo to Luxor hop with limited days. People joining or leaving a Nile cruise between Luxor and Aswan who want the West Bank done properly. Anyone whose real reason for coming to Egypt is the tombs rather than the pyramids. It suits older travelers too: private, short driving legs, no pace you did not agree to.
What is included and what is not
Included
- Transfers
- Private air-conditioned vehicle with your own driver, both days
- Pickup and drop-off at your Luxor hotel, railway station or airport
- All road transport between the East Bank and West Bank sites, including the Nile crossing
- Site parking and local access fees along the route
- Accommodation
- 1 night in a 3 or 4 star Luxor hotel, double room, breakfast included
- Meals
- Breakfast at the hotel on day two
- 2 lunches at local restaurants, one on each day
- Bottled water in the vehicle throughout both days
- Guide
- A licensed English-speaking Egyptologist for both full days
- The same guide on day one and day two, so nothing has to be re-explained
- Monument entries, every gate paid in advance
- Karnak temple complex, general entry
- Luxor Temple, general entry
- Valley of the Kings, general ticket covering 3 tombs
- Temple of Hatshepsut at Deir el-Bahari, general entry
- Colossi of Memnon, an open roadside site with no gate fee
- Extras
- A direct WhatsApp line to our Egypt office for the whole trip
- Reshuffling of the day on the spot if heat, a tomb closure or your onward timing makes it sensible
Not included
- International flights to and from Egypt. We do not sell, book, quote or coordinate them at any stage. You buy your own and tell us when you land.
- The domestic flight or the train from Cairo to Luxor. This program excludes internal flights and starts once you are in Luxor. The booking is yours.
- Egypt entry visa. US$30 for a single entry e-Visa, US$65 for multiple entry, applied for at visa2egypt.gov.eg.
- Special-ticket tombs in the Valley of the Kings, including Tutankhamun and Seti I. These sit outside the general ticket. Extra cost, paid at the ticket office on the day.
- Sunrise hot air balloon flight over the West Bank. An optional add-on, quoted separately.
- Drinks with lunch. Water in the vehicle is included; anything ordered at the table is not.
- Tips for your guide and driver. Customary in Egypt, at your discretion, and covered role by role below.
- Travel insurance. We do not sell it and it is not built into the price. Buy your own before you fly.
- Personal spending, including photography permits where a site charges one, souvenirs and laundry.
If something appears on neither list, it is included. There is no small print, and nothing gets added at the desk when you arrive.
Day by day
Day 1: Karnak and Luxor Temple on the East Bank
Your guide and driver collect you in Luxor, from your hotel, the railway station or the airport, and the day starts at Karnak. This is the largest religious complex the ancient world built, and it was not built once: successive pharaohs added to it across roughly two thousand years.
You walk into the Great Hypostyle Hall and its 134 columns, tall enough that the carving near the top was done for a god rather than for you, and your Egyptologist will point out where original paint still survives in the shadows. Then the Sacred Lake, where priests purified themselves before ritual, and the temple of Amun. Karnak rewards a guide more than almost any site in Egypt.
Lunch is at a local restaurant, sit-down and included, with time to eat rather than refuel.
In the afternoon you move to Luxor Temple, three kilometers south and joined to Karnak by the Avenue of Sphinxes. It is smaller and easier to read than Karnak, and it carries a layer most visitors do not expect: a Roman-era chapel and a working mosque built into the fabric of the pharaonic temple, ground that has been continuously sacred for over three thousand years.
The rest of the afternoon is yours, and the Corniche along the Nile is a good walk once the heat drops.
Meals today: lunch. Tonight: your 3 or 4 star hotel in Luxor.
Day 2: the Valley of the Kings, Hatshepsut and the Colossi of Memnon
Breakfast at the hotel, then an early start, and the early start is the entire point. The West Bank is a desert valley with almost no shade, and the gap between arriving at eight and arriving at eleven is the gap between a good morning and an endurance test.
You cross the Nile into the Valley of the Kings, where sixty-odd royal tombs were cut into the rock over five centuries of the New Kingdom. Your general ticket covers three, chosen from those open that day; closures rotate to manage humidity and wear, so which three depends on the morning. Your guide picks the best combination available, usually one long descending corridor tomb and one with its ceiling intact, painted with stars and the sky goddess Nut. That color is not restoration. It is three thousand years old and it still reads.
Next is Deir el-Bahari and the funerary temple of Hatshepsut, the woman who ruled Egypt as pharaoh: three colonnaded terraces cut back into a semicircular cliff, so the mountain does half the architecture. Your guide will show you where her successor tried to erase her name from her own walls.
On the way back you stop at the Colossi of Memnon, two seated quartzite giants standing alone in a field, all that is easily visible of what was once the largest funerary temple on the West Bank.
Lunch follows, then we return you to your hotel or take you straight to the airport, the railway station or your cruise boat. Tell us your onward timing when you book and we build the morning around it.
Meals today: breakfast and lunch. Tonight: the program ends at your drop-off, so tonight is wherever your onward plan takes you.
What the entrance tickets are worth
Egypt charges per site, at the gate, and the fees are published by the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities. Most operators bury this inside a package price. Here is the arithmetic for this itinerary, per person, at 2026 official rates.
Gate fees already paid on your behalf
Official 2026 rates, per person. You pay nothing at the ticket office.
| Karnak temple complex | 600 EGP |
| Luxor Temple | 500 EGP |
| Valley of the Kings, general ticket, 3 tombs | 750 EGP |
| Temple of Hatshepsut, Deir el-Bahari | 440 EGP |
| Colossi of Memnon | No gate fee |
| Total already paid for you | 2,290 EGP |
Roughly US$46 per person at 1 USD = 49.79 EGP, the rate used when these figures were checked on 6 August 2026. The Egyptian pound moves, so treat the dollar figure as an approximation and the EGP figures as the real ones. Rates published by the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities on egymonuments.com and subject to change.
Note that the 750 EGP Valley of the Kings ticket is one general ticket covering three tombs, not three separate tickets, and the tombs outside it carry their own fee at the office. The Colossi of Memnon cost nothing, which is why you should look twice at any itinerary listing them as a paid inclusion.
How much this trip costs
From US$288 per person
Per person in double occupancy. Every monument entry on the itinerary is inside that number, along with the hotel night, both lunches, the private vehicle and the Egyptologist for both days.
All gate tickets includedPrivate, not a group departureNothing to pay today
What moves the price up or down
Hotel category. The starting figure assumes a solid 3 star property. Moving to 4 star, or to a Nile-view hotel on the Corniche, changes the number, and on a two-day trip it is the biggest single variable.
Season. From roughly November through February the city is busy and hotel rates rise with demand. High summer is cheaper, quieter and considerably hotter.
Room occupancy. The price is per person sharing a double. Traveling solo means a single room supplement, which varies by hotel and season and which we quote openly rather than hide. Three sharing usually brings the per-person figure down.
Group size. The vehicle and guide are dedicated to you, so the fixed cost splits across however many of you there are. Two people pay more each than four do.
Add-ons you choose. The sunrise balloon, the special-ticket tombs, or extending into an Aswan and Luxor land itinerary sit on top and are quoted individually.
Nothing is payable today. Send the dates and the number of travelers, we send a written quote the same day, and you hold the booking with a deposit while the balance is settled in Egypt.
Frequently asked questions
Is two days actually enough for Luxor?
Is Luxor safe for American travelers right now?
How do I get to Luxor, and can you book that for me?
What does the Egypt visa cost on a US passport?
Which tombs will I actually see in the Valley of the Kings?
How much should I tip, and in what currency?
Can I drink the water, and how do I avoid getting sick?
What should I wear, particularly as a woman?
Do I need travel insurance for this?
Should I bring US dollars or Egyptian pounds?
When is the best time of year, and how hot does it get?
Can I add a hot air balloon, or extend into a Nile cruise?
Why book with an Egypt-based operator
Two kinds of company sell you a Luxor tour: one in your country that forwards the work to a company in Egypt, and the company in Egypt. We are the second.
The guide and the driver are ours. Not subcontracted on the morning, not assigned by whoever has a spare vehicle. Your Egyptologist is licensed, and the same person is with you across both days, which is why day two of this trip is usually better than day one. By the second morning your guide knows what interests you and adjusts to it.
There is no layer taking a cut in the middle. That is a large part of why the gate fee table above can be printed openly: when you are the operator rather than the reseller, you can show your working.
The WhatsApp number reaches Egypt. Message 201032295513 and you are talking to the office that controls your driver, your guide and your hotel booking, in the same time zone as your trip. If a tomb closes or your Cairo flight slips, that is a conversation, not a change request routed through a call center on another continent.
We are honest about what we are not.What we do instead is simple: you never pay the full amount in advance. You hold your dates with a deposit and settle the balance here, once you have met your guide and seen the vehicle.
We do not invent reviews or fake a rating on this page. Twelve travelers have left us public reviews on Facebook and Instagram and they average five stars, but those reviews are about the agency and about our guide Shady Said, not about this two-day program. So you will not find a star rating bolted onto this tour. You can read the reviews we do have and judge them yourself.