Nile Valley Tours & Trips

Top operators in Nile Valley

Our travelers consistently give high marks to three tour companies in Egypt: Timeless Tours, Expat Egypt and also Vacations to Go Travel. Peter from Timeless Tours gets mentioned often in feedback for really knowing his stuff and going the extra mile to take care of people. If you're traveling solo - especially as a woman - Beyond the Nile tours has built up a solid reputation for creating a secure, welcoming environment. Just keep in mind that some of the budget-friendly options don't include all entrance fees and tips in the upfront price, so it's worth checking what extra costs you might need to budget for. The experiences in Egypt tend to stick with people long after they return home. Our customers particularly love drifting down the Nile on a traditional felucca boat, floating over Luxor's ancient temples in hot air balloons at sunrise and exploring the royal tombs in the Valley of the Kings. The guides do a great job bringing Egypt's history to life while making sure everyone stays comfortable and taken care of during their trip. The key seems to be the quality of the guides - they're knowledgeable without being overly academic, friendly without being pushy and really good at handling all the practical details that make a trip run smoothly. We get lots of feedback about how they help travelers navigate local customs, know the best photo spots and even recommend reliable places for everything from snacks to souvenirs.

• Timeless Tours

  
  4.5 (3,052 reviews)

  "one of the worst tours. we booked a tour to save ourselves time and inconvenience of payments during the trip, throughout this trip we were just spending more. you might think you got a good deal as it’s initially low, we actually went way over our budget for this trip as there were many add ons. The only good thing was that the hotels were really comfortable! The tour guide Mina had exceptional history knowledge but he was very pushy when things didn’t go his way. I feel like we were never given enough time at certain places to walk around and we were constantly taken to stores that were not in the itinerary and that were highly priced (all those could be bought at half the price and less they charged at these stores. All the additional activities this company offered were exceptionally expensive! I paid 60 dollars for the hot air balloon through Viator while the others in the group paid around 145 dollars. We were taken to restaurants where it was highly priced. We were convinced otherwise to do certain things which were only to benefit the company than to help the customers. I would not recommend this tour as it’s more to make money than to satisfy customers and give everyone a good experience of their country! You’re basically paying only for hotels, food and transport, all the activities are not added in this tour so budget carefully.

  Bad - by Mayuri M.

  Tours

  10 tours

  Age range

  12 to 75 years old

  Adventure type

  Explorer

  Response time

  10h

  Response rate

  96%

  Average price

  $210

  Timeless Tours is an expert in:

  • Explorer
  • In-depth Cultural
• Holiday In Egypt

  
  5.0 (737 reviews)

  "Maybe we were unlucky, but I wouldn’t recommend this tour to anyone and regret going. The holiday ended up costing over twice the initially advertised price as there were a lot of hidden extras, including paying extra for a double room over a triple room. The tour was chaotically organised with people arriving and leaving at different times which meant the group never really felt like it gelled together and the poor tour guide had to keep repeating himself, which meant that the guided tours at different sites felt very repetitive and our learning of the culture didn’t really advance. The tour was also exclusively focused on ancient Egypt. I don’t feel like we saw, experienced or learned anything about current Egypt, beyond the usual tourist hassles. Before the tour we all had to meet the boss independently in an isolated location, which felt dodgy and unsafe for a single woman arriving in a foreign country alone. It also meant we didn’t get introduced to other people on the tour. We were pressured into getting a SIM card which I couldn’t get to work but being online was essential. Organisation was often quite last minute and done through various WhatsApp groups and emails. It costs a lot to be online in Egypt so that was an extra expense and meant that you couldn’t really switch off from work and technology as you had to keep getting online. We were pressured into upgrading for a flight we didn’t want to take (I try to keep my carbon footprint as low as possible), because apparently “everyone else is flying and not taking the overnight train”. It turned out we were all told this and a lot of us felt pressured into paying extra for a flight we didn’t want, but it wasn’t true that everyone else was flying and some people did take the train and arrived in Aswan to have a full day there. The rest of us has to get up early to have the hideous experience of flying (standing in queues, going through security, waiting in lines, on the runway etc) and the flight caused us to waste most of the second day of our holiday waiting around when we could have taken the overnight train and had a much more relaxed and enjoyable day exploring Aswan as the train arrived much before the plane. We were told the flight would be at 7:30 but it was actually at 9:45. We paid extra to go on an excursion to Abu Simbel which involved getting up at 3am and travelling for 9 hours, but we only got 30 minutes to explore the site which was not enough time to make it inside the temple so we spent a lot of money (over twice the average going rate) to not see the thing we paid for. This was partly because the tour bus had 2 tour groups on it and one group refused to keep to the time the rest of us were following but even if it weren’t for this, there wasn’t enough time to explore the temples. We were not given much time to explore the other sites and were often hurried through so we could be taken to tourist shops afterwards to be sold to (for example we were rushed though Luxor Temple so we could go to perfume and gold shops). The tour involved a lot of early starts and hanging around waiting for people, buses and crowds. Overall the experience was anything but relaxing. It was also really only a 5-day tour rather than the advertised 8. Everything was very hectic and some legs of the tour involved being put on public transport. All the sites were mobbed with tourists, which made visiting them deeply unpleasant and, at times, it felt very unsafe. It is only a matter of time before people are squashed to death in one of the temples due to the crush of tourists all clambering over each other to take selfies at certain points. A lot of the crush could be reduced by introducing a one-way system and banning photography - or limiting or timing tickets. I wouldn’t recommend the excursions. The desert safari was so embarrassingly awful that I spent the whole day wishing I’d stayed in bed instead. I would strongly advise avoiding it and all the extra trips as they were disappointing, expensive and the tour is exhausting enough without getting up at 3am on a daily basis. Considering tourism is such a major part of the Egyptian economy, the Egyptians are remarkably bad at hospitality. It felt like everyone was trying to rip you off the whole time and everything seemed to cost 2 or 3 times what it would in London, which didn’t seem right. I appreciate we were almost exclusively in tourist sites, but everything was surprisingly expensive. Even when we went to a 5 star hotel with listed prices, miscellaneous taxes were added to the bill so it cost 30% extra.

  Bad - by Jane B.

  Tours

  11 tours

  Age range

  2 to 80 years old

  Adventure type

  River Cruise

  Response time

  5h

  Response rate

  100%

  Average price

  $287

  Holiday In Egypt is an expert in:

  • River Cruise
  • Explorer
  • Active
• A.B Worldwide Voyages ltd.

  
  5.0 (195 reviews)

  "I really don’t know where to start because from the very moment I arrived to the very moment I left this was an incredibly brilliant well executed extremely enjoyable educational and one of the best vacations that I’ve ever had in my life. Egypt and the Nile are fabulous places to visit the country is 100% secure the military and the police are very careful the people are beautiful beyond beautiful they are Really in need of others to come to Egypt tourism is down because of the war with Israel and Hamas so for that reason they need more tourists

  Excellent - by ralph c.

  Tours

  5 tours

  Age range

  1 to 85 years old

  Adventure type

  Explorer

  Response time

  6h

  Response rate

  100%

  Average price

  $459

  A.B Worldwide Voyages ltd. is an expert in:

  • Explorer
  • In-depth Cultural