pinniped

I'm honing in on an Egyptian trip for later this year. Two of us traveling: one using a North America to Middle East J award and me either doing award or paid segments, depending on the value.

With the one J award, I believe we get one stopover. I've found availability and dates, but I'm wondering logistically how people would recommend arranging the trip.

I believe I should book my end destination as LXR, using the stopover in CAI. There is a fairly seamless itinerary that would lead us MCI-ORD-FRA-CAI-LXR, arriving in LXR by 5PM or so in about one day of travel. Then we'd do the stopover in CAI on the way back, then taking the 5:30AM LH flight back to FRA to catch our UA flight home.

Other than the thought of a 5:30AM flight , this seems to flow well with the other connections - nothing too long, nothing excessively tight.

Our goal in Egypt is to see the main ancient sites, but also have a couple days in modern Cairo at some point. A couple days' worth of a Nile cruise is a possibility - we honestly haven't really planned anything on the ground yet because piecing together all of these award and upgrade seats on three *A carriers has been hard enough.

So my question is: is using LXR as the end destination and CAI as the stopover an optimal approach? Or is there another internal destination besides LXR we should consider? Finally, any advantage to doing Cairo at the end vs. the beginning of our trip. (I suspect most tourists do it first.)

Our ideal trip would be small groups or private tours with the possible exception of a Nile cruise. If that matters...

Thanks!

MrHalliday

Thanx much, Pinniped,
I am following your research closely
as I develop a similar plan for parents.

Using DL miles for business class to Cairo.
Availability OK for 120K each.

I don't think Skyteam partners will get us to Luxor,
but it may be the train one way in any case.

The only problem I had was in finding your thread,
as I keep searching first in AFRICA,
but found that Egypt is actually in the MIDDLE EAST.

pinniped

Does Air France or KLM fly out of LXR? You might be able to do an open-jaw and not have to trek back up to CAI. Since MS (EgyptAir) is a *A airline, you'd probably have to buy that segment.

Most people I've spoken to have said to fly EgyptAir between your various internal stops: apparently the train can be quite time-consuming.

We finally got our flights booked: flying first to LXR for a week and then CAI for four nights. Contemplating whether to go further south - Aswan, Abu Simbel, etc. - and how to do it. Possibly a 4-day cruise and a paid flight back to LXR. I've heard mixed opinions on cruises - some say you can see more by booking custom land excursions and not spending time on a boat.

Since we're on *A awards, we are allowed to tweak that middle MS LXR-CAI flight if we want to. I haven't yet figured out if that's the right mix of days in the south vs. days in Cairo. Part of me wants to flip it to 6 and 5 and do a five-night Marriott or SPG award in Cairo.

I'm sure we will do a few nights at the Sheraton Luxor. It's a Category 1 (!) that gets acceptable reviews from the FT crowd.

Giddyup123

i am currently working a similar itinerary . here is some of what i have found, hope it will help.

1. the egypt domestic flights should be quite cheap. but it is best to purchase tickets through a travel agent there instead of the egypt air website. the prices could be as much as 75% less.

2. there are sleeper trains that run from cairo - lux - aswan. if you do an overnight, the time in transit is moot. they look kinda nice and do get good reviews. see www.sleepingtrains.com

3. Aswan. Although I have not finished my researched on this city. most tours to abu simbel leave at 3am for overland tours. air egypt has a flight and tour as well (not sure what time it leaves), if you select the former, you cannot sync with the overnight train.

IMO if you have to see abu simbel, and i cannot imagine not seeing this personally, you almost have to dedicate 6 days to the upper nile region. but, it is also my understanding that the maximum time you have at the site is 2 hours, due to crazy govt. regulations, this might be a deal braker for some.

4. Aswan. We just found this company via the net and i have my agent in cairo checking it out, but looks like a nice ride if you plan on doing a short nile falucca curise. www.gloryofnubia.com

MatthewLAX

Since it won't cost any extra miles, I would pick one other country to visit, say DXB, and make CAI your stopover. Domestic flights and trains are reasonable in Egypt.

If you have time, use the award ticket to visit a place in the vicinity you probably will never travel back to.

If you do pick DXB, you can travel on SQ between CAI-DXB, albeit on an older aircraft.

But that's just me and my insatiable urge to visit every country on the map.

pinniped

I considered the DXB idea but we only have about 12 days for this trip, so I think we're going to focus on Egypt. My wife and I also want to do a Middle East trip in the future where we'll hit a few other countries.

Part of the challenge was that I also had an expiring voucher on UA for about $700, plus I have two SWU's left and this is my last TATL trip for the year. So in order to utilize all of that, we decided to route through FRA.

I bought a paid W fare to FRA and then used a 55k Europe-Middle East award onward. In addition to a second U.S. - Middle East award for 115k following the exact itin. (I checked paid fares to DXB and KWI - they were very high, over double the $795 R/T fare to FRA.)

The trade-off is that I give up flexibility on the itin from here to FRA. It would have been nice to be able to watch for a last-minute Starnet un-block and jump on LH metal across the pond. But I can live with that in order to use the voucher and SWU's.

The more we've talked, the more we agree that we are definitely going down to Abu Simbel. From what I understand, that's pretty easy/affordable from LXR.

ClimbGuy

I was at abu simbel about a month ago. If you are interested in ancient stuff you MUST go. There is no regulation about how long you want to stay, however when I was there it is very host at 2 hours should be enough time.

I took a public bus from the terminal and then had to walk about 10-15 minutes to get to the temple complex. I didn't want to leave at 3am, so I left at 8 or 830. I just bought my ticket before the bus left and it was mostly empty.

I spent 3 weeks in egypt and did about everything but the the west. Let me know if you have other questions.

pinniped

OK, I see there are flights to Abu Simbel. Expensive through Orbitz, but I have noted Giddyup's post that they are likely cheaper once in Egypt.

It looks like there's only one EgyptAir flight per day in and out of ABS (to/from ASW). Perhaps that's where people are getting the two hours from? It arrives at 10:40AM and departs at 12:40PM. That doesn't really leave two hours at the site, even if the airstrip is right there...

Maybe the way to go is fly one way and take a bus the other... Then there's also the cruise idea, which I had earlier dismissed but am now sort of considering again...knowing that we want to hit Luxor, Aswan, and Abu Simbel.

IAN-UK

The time can be consumed overnight, and in comfort - so rail is an efficient way to travel, avoiding one night in a hotel.

Aswan is the final stop on the train (an hour or so after Luxor), and is a trading city with far more going for it than tourism dominated Luxor.

Further plus points for Aswan:

• the Nile is much more spectacular here,
• easy access to tours to Abu Simbel