Afrinkong
The Nile and the Desert
A green ribbon a few kilometres wide, and sand for a thousand kilometres either side of it.
Photo AXP Photography / Pexels
EGYPT · Tourism
Five Thousand Years
The oldest continuous tourism in the world, and still the reason most people first think of Africa — the Giza plateau, the Valley of the Kings, Abu Simbel, and the Red Sea reefs on the other coast.
North AfricaRegion
27Tourism experiences
The Nile, and five thousand yearsKnown for
01
Featured destinations
Where the country actually takes you.
Sinai
Mount Sinai and Saint Catherine's, and granite peaks over two thousand metres above the Red Sea.
Photo Ali Abdelshafy / Pexels
WaterfallsThe First Cataract
The Nile's cataracts at Aswan — rapids rather than falls, and the reason the boats stopped here.
Photo Diego F. Parra / Pexels
The Nile Itself
Feluccas under sail at Aswan, and a river that has been the country's main road for millennia.
Photo Zihang Feng / Pexels
The Red Sea
Some of the clearest reef diving on earth, an hour's flight from the pyramids.
Photo Vika Glitter / Pexels
The Fayoum
Not forest — the Fayoum's palm and olive, and the acacia of Wadi el-Rayan.
Photo zaid mohammed / Pexels
02
Wildlife & safari
What lives here, and how you see it without disturbing it.
Wildlife
Birds of the Delta
Two million migrating birds use the Delta and the Red Sea coast as a flyway each year.
Photo Tito Zzzz / Pexels
The Western Desert
Not big game — desert fox, gazelle and the silence of the Great Sand Sea.
Photo George Wang / Pexels
Eco TourismReef and Oasis
Reef protection on the Red Sea, and oasis agriculture that has managed water for millennia.
Photo Vika Glitter / Pexels
03
Culture & heritage
The part of a country you cannot photograph from a vehicle.
Culture
Coptic, Islamic, Pharaonic
Three layers still in daily use, sometimes in the same street in old Cairo.
Nubians and Bedouin
Nubian villages above Aswan and Bedouin communities in the Sinai and the Western Desert.
Photo David Paul / Pexels
Ful, Koshary and Bread
Breakfast is ful and bread; lunch is koshary; both are older than most cuisines.
Photo Tito Zzzz / Pexels
Moulids and Ramadan
The moulid processions, and Cairo at iftar when the whole city eats at once.
Photo Alsyed Alsadny / Pexels
Papyrus, Glass and Cotton
Hand-blown glass in Cairo, Egyptian cotton, and papyrus made the way it always was.
Photo Eslam Magdy / Pexels
The Valley of the Kings
Sixty-odd tombs cut into a single dry valley, most of them painted floor to ceiling.
Photo AXP Photography / Pexels
Karnak, Luxor, Abu Simbel
Karnak took two thousand years to build; Abu Simbel was moved sixty metres to save it.
Photo AXP Photography / Pexels
04
Cities & everyday life
Where people actually live between the landmarks.
Cairo and Alexandria
Twenty million people on the Nile, and a Mediterranean city that remembers being Greek.
Mamluk Cairo
The mosques, sabils and madrasas of the medieval city, largely still standing.
Photo Mohamed Hamed / Pexels
The Corniche at Dusk
Families out along the river, tea on the pavement, and the traffic finally slowing.
Photo Faiz Majid / Pexels
Family & CommunityStraightforward with Children
Short internal flights, boats instead of buses, and a story at every stop.
Photo AXP Photography / Pexels
05
Adventure & outdoors
For travellers who would rather walk it than watch it.
Adventure
Desert Crossings
Diving the Red Sea, walking the Sinai with Bedouin guides, and crossing the sand sea by vehicle.
Photo Bunyamin Cicek / Pexels
Dive, Sail, Ride
Reef diving at Marsa Alam, feluccas at Aswan, and camels in the Western Desert.
Photo Vika Glitter / Pexels
Dahabiyas and Desert Camps
Small sailing dahabiyas instead of the big cruisers, and camps in the White Desert.
Photo Maël BALLAND / Pexels
06
Travel inspiration
The frames people come home with.
The Light at Six
Desert light at either end of the day is the whole reason to be up early here.
Photo AXP Photography / Pexels
Hidden GemsSiwa
Eight hundred kilometres west, a Berber-speaking oasis with its own language and salt lakes.
Why Visit This Country
The Oldest Journey
People have been travelling to see this country for two and a half thousand years.
The Oldest Journey
People have been travelling to see this country for two and a half thousand years.
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