Now is the Time fo Egypt...
 

We are still on our trip and it's going to take me a while to get around to my trip report but just incase anyone is considering Egypt I want to let you know it's a great time to come. We are having the most magnificent time. Yesterday we were at Abu Simbel in the afternoon and we had the site to ourselves, truly magical. For five minutes in Cairo we had the Tutenkamun room on our own with only the mask of the boy king and the guard for company!
I hate crowds and mass tourism and given that Egypt is really one of the original tourist destinations with centuries of visitors it's a real treat to find such calm at the sites.

We feel safe and welcome and despite the news the British Foriegn a Office warnings haven't changed. Currently there appears to be more social disruption where we
Ive in California than here in Aswan!

Of course the title was meant to be, "Now is the Time for Egypt"!

My wife was there for a bit over a week in September, and reported the same. Looking forward to your full report.;

Thank you for posting. So glad to hear you are having a great time. Please continue to report!

Thanks for the encouragement and glad to know others have had the same experience. I will be writing a trip report but we are still traveling (now in the UK) and won't be home till mid Jan so it will probably take a while to get around to it. One of the problems with blogging is that I like to tie the TR to my blogpost for those who like the photos/ more detail, but this tends to delay everything. I must confess I've just finished a Burma report from a trip last March, that doesn't sound very promising does it!

In the meantime if anyone has questions or needs itinerary/hotel/ travel agent recommendations etc. I'd be happy to answer.

We had such a wonderful trip, I can't recommend Egypt highly enough and it's a great value right now. So many people thanked us for coming and in particular thanked us for coming at this time.

Speaking of which: have you heard anything about resumption of Lake Nassar cruises (Aswan-Abu Simbel)?

We saw the wonderfully restored boat "Sudan" ploughing the Nile, I think that it was previously doing the route you mentioned on Lake Nassar. I asked about the Lake Nassar cruises and was told that it's all about finding enough people to take them. Currently there are hundreds of cruise boats docked and the cruises that are going are nowhere near full. Hopefully it will get better over the Christmas and New Year period.

I would imagine that the Lake Nassar cruises appeal to a subset of those going to Egypt, people making a return journey, those with an interest in Nubia and or those with more time. Given that this is a smaller group to start it all depends on demand.
It's a great time to consider a Dahabiya cruise and you could end up with one to yourself as we did!

Did you travel on your own, or with a guide? If so, do you mind sharing who you used?

We travelled on a private trip and had guides and transport arranged in advance.i highly recommend the agency Djed Egypt. The owner was very responsive right from the beginning and he went out of his way to make sure we had a good trip. Part of the reason I used them is that they have three of their own Dahabiyas and they guarantee their departures. We found this to be an advantage in both quality and price. Also because they own a restaurant in Luxor there was an emphasis on the food on the boat and we ate very well.

Also I found them flexible, for example I wanted to make a trip out to the animal charity ACE in Luxor and they added it with no problem. In Alex the guide mentioned the Royal Jewellery Museum had just reopened and so we changed the program around.


Obviously you can travel without prearranging guides and drivers but it's very comfortable to do it this way. It's is really worth contacting a local agency because they are much cheaper, have the most uptodate information and (if you get a good agency) and they facilitate a great experience.

We try to use local agents wherever we travel and I have to say I was shocked when I looked at the comparable prices through a US agency. Hope this helps!

Thank you for the info on the company you used. It's so encouraging to read that you felt so safe during your visit and I will definitely reach out to Djed about our trip to Egypt. Can't wait to read your trip report!

Gabriella,
Glad it was helpful, now the pressure is on for the trip report!

I'm currently finishing up some post on Bali and Malaysia on my blog but I wrote one post on trip planning for our Egypt jaunt before we left and it has just posted,

http://somuchmoretosee.blogspot.com/...-to-egypt.html

As you can see I don't blog in real time, so it's all an endless game of catch up, especially at this time of year!

Thinking about cruise ships coming back into the Nile (Uniworld). Wonder how this would compare to a privately-arranged tour.

We enjoyed the private trip but I'm sure you will like Egypt either way. We tend to like smaller boutique hotels and experiences so this worked well for us. I wouldn't imagine a high end private trip organized through a local agent would cost more than a trip organized through a larger Foriegn provider such as Uniworld.

Did you obtain your Visa's at the Cairo airport or before your arrival? We've heard that getting them at the airport in Cairo is pretty standard.

Getting a visa at the airport is indeed standard. I'm a Brit and my husband is an American and we found it very straight forward. When you arrive there is a counter where you pay the $25 fee and they place the stick in visa in your passport. We've encountered the similar visa-on-demand system in Sri
Lanka and Bali recently. There is no need to worry about it or to send in for a visa ahead of time, remember the Egyptians are pleased to see tourists and have set up a simple easy system to encourage them.