7 Day Egypt Tour: Solo Journey Beyond the Crowds

You are on the plateau early, before the coaches come out from the city and while the light is still low. Your guide works outward from the Great Pyramid. The differences between the three only become obvious once you are standing among them rather than looking from the road. The Sphinx follows, approached along the causeway, which is the line it was carved to be seen from. The afternoon belongs to the Grand Egyptian Museum, where the Tutankhamun material is shown as a single assemblage rather than split between buildings. Travelling alone, you decide how long to spend in each gallery, and in a museum this size that is not a small thing.

South of Giza the crowds thin quickly, and Dahshur is usually close to empty. You can go down inside the Red Pyramid, along a passage that is low, steep and warm, which is easier to do at your own pace than at a group's. The Bent Pyramid stands a short drive further on, still carrying much of its original casing at the base, and it is the clearest evidence anywhere of what these monuments looked like finished. Saqqara comes after lunch, where the Step Pyramid is the oldest of them all and still reads as an experiment rather than a settled form. The day ends at Ibn Tulun, whose courtyard is the quietest large space in Cairo.

A short morning flight puts you in Luxor before the heat builds. You cross to the west bank in the afternoon for the Valley of the Kings, where the general ticket admits you to a set number of tombs and your guide chooses them by what is open and least crowded that day. Seti I and Tutankhamun carry their own tickets, and whether they are worth it is a conversation to have on the spot rather than in advance. Deir el-Medina closes the day: the village where the men who cut those tombs lived, with their own small tombs on the slope above it, painted for themselves rather than for a king, and it is the one site of the week where the scale drops to something human.

Dendera is a drive north along the river, and the road is part of the point, because it runs through farmland rather than desert. The temple of Hathor is among the most complete in Egypt, and the reason to come is overhead. Its ceiling was cleaned of centuries of soot only recently, and the blues and golds that came out from under it are close to what was first painted there. You can climb to the roof chapels and go down into a crypt reached by a narrow stair. Few coaches make the trip, so the hypostyle hall is usually yours to stand in.

You fly to Aswan and reach Philae by boat, which is the only way onto the island. The temple was cut up and moved here when the High Dam raised the water. The island it was built on is now under the lake. Isis was still worshipped at Philae after the rest of Egypt had turned Christian, which is why the carving runs so late and why crosses are cut over some of it. The afternoon goes to a Nubian village, where the houses are painted, the doorways are low and bright, and the language spoken at home is not Arabic. It is the one afternoon of the week where you are a guest rather than a visitor.

A morning flight returns you to Cairo. If your onward departure is late enough there is room for one more stop on the way, and your planner will have asked in advance which you would rather it was. Otherwise the transfer runs straight to the terminal, with the same assistance through check in that you had on arrival. You will have moved between Cairo, Luxor and Aswan in six nights, and the flights are the reason a week this short does not feel rushed.