Karnak, the Valley of the Kings and the sunrise balloon, with the ticket traps explained. Three days in the world's biggest open-air museum.
Photo: Holger Uwe Schmitt, CC BY-SA 4.0
Luxor is what is left of Thebes, the capital of Egypt for most of the New Kingdom, when the pharaohs ruled from here and were buried across the river. Karnak grew for about two thousand years. Luxor Temple stands on the corniche with a mosque built on top of its columns. On the west bank, the rock-cut tombs of the Valley of the Kings hold at least 65 tombs and chambers, and the temples of Hatshepsut and Ramesses III stand under the cliffs. A modern town of about 285,000 people lives in between.
It's a small town with an enormous amount in it, and a hard-sell one: calèche drivers, felucca captains and bazaar sellers start on you the moment you step out. Three days is the right length: one for the east bank, one for the main west bank sights, and a third for the quieter temples, the balloon and the museums. Less and you're racing the heat and the tour buses. More only makes sense with the tombs of the nobles or a day trip.
Day one is the east bank: Karnak, the Avenue of Sphinxes and Luxor Temple at night. Day two is the Valley of the Kings, Hatshepsut's temple and Medinet Habu. Day three is a dawn balloon, the Ramesseum, the workers' village and the Valley of the Queens, ending in the two museums. Luxor is the middle of an Egypt trip: most people arrive from Cairo and carry on to Aswan. Every site opens daily, so start on any weekday. The sleeper train from Cairo arrives at 6:10 am, just as Karnak opens.
Every stop from the plan below, colored by day. Pick a day to see its route.
Karnak when it opens, a walk down the Avenue of Sphinxes, the Nile at sunset and Luxor Temple lit up after dark.
The royal tombs when they open, Hatshepsut's temple under the cliffs, then the Colossi and Ramesses III's temple in the afternoon.
Sunrise over the valley in a balloon, the quieter temples and tombs after, then the two museums when they reopen at 5 pm.
Everything today is on the east bank, along a 3 km line between Karnak and the corniche. The trap is the sun: Karnak has no shade, so go at 6 am and keep the Avenue for the cooler afternoon. Luxor Temple is open until 8 pm, so one visit covers daylight and floodlights.
Karnak isn't a temple, it's a city of them. Pharaohs added to it from the Middle Kingdom to the Ptolemies, each trying to outdo the last, and the result is the largest religious complex in Egypt, sacred to Amun, the god of Thebes.
Walk the central axis through the pylons to the Great Hypostyle Hall: 134 columns in 16 rows, twelve of them 21 m tall, on 5,000 square meters. Then find the Hatshepsut obelisk, the second tallest ancient obelisk still standing, and the sacred lake. Enter at 6 am and you'll have the hall to yourself for a while. The ticket includes the Open-Air Museum.
Rest through the midday heat, then head for the center, because the restaurants by Karnak are priced for coach tours. Sofra, on Mohamed Farid street, is a long-running local favorite for home-style Egyptian cooking: ta'ameya, stuffed vegetables, a good molokhia. Check it's open when you go.
For something quicker, any koshari shop does a plate in twenty minutes.
The Avenue of Sphinxes is a 2.7 km road lined with sphinxes that once joined Karnak and Luxor Temple, the route of the Opet festival. It lay under the town for centuries and reopened in 2021 after restoration.
Walk it from Karnak toward the river after 3 pm. It's straight and shadeless, so take water and treat it as a stroll, not a sight. The ministry says you need Karnak and Luxor Temple tickets to use it, so keep both.
Feluccas are the wooden sailboats of the Nile, and an hour on one before sunset is the classic Luxor evening. Sunset is at about 5 pm in November, so be on the corniche by 4 pm.
Expect some pressure and some bargaining. Fix the price, the length of the trip and the number of people before you step in, and pay at the end.
After Karnak, Luxor Temple feels smaller and more intact, right in the middle of town. Its core was built by Amenhotep III, who reigned around 1390-1352 BC, and later kings including Tutankhamun, Horemheb and Ramesses II added to it. It was where the Opet festival ended. It's dedicated to the renewal of kingship, and pharaohs may have been crowned here.
The Mosque of Abu Haggag still stands on the temple's old columns, and a chapel inside was turned into a church under the Romans. The obelisk at the gate has a twin at the Place de la Concorde in Paris. Go for the last hour of daylight and stay for the lights.
Finish with dinner on a rooftop where you can see the temple lit up. The food is simple: grilled meat, mahshi, shawarma. Ask for the menu with prices and check the bill.
Keep it short, because tomorrow starts early. Finish with umm ali and a glass of hibiscus tea.
The west bank is spread out, so hire a driver for the day and be at the Valley of the Kings at 6 am, when it opens and the tombs are cool. The trap is the ticket: the standard Valley ticket covers only three tombs and the famous ones cost extra.
The ancient Egyptians believed the land of the living lay on the east bank, where the sun rises, and the dead belonged on the west. You cross the same line on the local ferry, which costs foreigners about 20 EGP, while motorboat launches ask 80-100 EGP. Hire your driver on the west side or arrange one the evening before.
For nearly 500 years, from the 18th to the 20th Dynasty, the pharaohs of the New Kingdom were buried in the cliffs behind Thebes instead of in pyramids. It didn't work: almost every tomb was robbed in antiquity. What's left are painted corridors and a hot, dry silence. The valley holds 65 known tombs and chambers, and only a handful are open.
The standard ticket lets you enter three of the open tombs, and the list rotates. Ramesses III, IV, VII and IX often appear on it, and the office posts the open tombs each day. Extras cost more: Ramesses V and VI (about 3.5 EUR, 220 EGP), the Tomb of Ay (about 3 EUR, 200 EGP) and Seti I (about 32 EUR, 2,000 EGP). Ask at the office which tombs are open and pick the ones with paintings.
Howard Carter found KV62 on 4 November 1922. It's small, with paintings only in the burial chamber. The gold that made Tutankhamun famous is in the Grand Egyptian Museum in Cairo now, not here.
The reason to go is the king himself: his mummy still lies in the tomb, in a climate-controlled glass case in the antechamber since 2007. Whether that's worth 700 EGP is your call. It's a quiet, odd moment, but the painted royal tombs are bigger. If money is tight, skip it.
Over the ridge is Deir el-Bahari, where Hatshepsut built her mortuary temple in terraces against a limestone cliff. She ruled as pharaoh in her own right. About two decades after her death, Thutmose III had her images scratched out and her statues destroyed, and you can still see the scars.
Polish archaeologists have been restoring the temple since 1961. It's one of the finest buildings in Egypt, and the plaza has no shade at all, so come straight after the Valley.
On the road back you pass the Colossi of Memnon, two statues of Amenhotep III, about 18 m tall with their bases. They once guarded the gate of his huge mortuary temple, which an earthquake destroyed around 1200 BC.
The Greeks and Romans thought the northern one was Memnon, a mythical king, because after an earthquake in 27 BC it was said to sing at dawn. Visitors left 107 inscriptions on the legs. The singing stopped, but the stop is free, takes twenty minutes and excavations behind it keep turning up statues.
Eat on the west bank rather than crossing the river in the midday heat. Small family restaurants and terraces around the Colossi serve ful medames, ta'ameya, salads and grilled chicken, and some serve mahshi and pigeon. Restaurant Mohammed, a simple family-run place beside the owner's mud-brick house, is the kind to look for.
Check prices before you sit, and rest half an hour in the shade before the afternoon temple.
Medinet Habu is the mortuary temple of Ramesses III, who reigned around 1186-1155 BC. It's about 150 m long, its walls are crowded with reliefs, and it gets a fraction of Karnak's visitors.
Look for the north wall, where Ramesses III fights the Libyans and the Sea Peoples. Later the temple became a Coptic town called Jeme, with thousands of people living inside the walls. Come in the late afternoon, when the light is warm and the courtyards are almost empty.
This is the flexible day. Balloon pickups are before dawn, so skip the flight if you'd rather sleep. The museums close from 1 to 5 pm on the ministry list, the hottest hours, so both fit into your evening.
Luxor is one of the busiest balloon places in the world, with about 11,000 flights a year, and the view at dawn over green fields, the Colossi and the cliffs is the thing people remember. Flights go up around sunrise (about 6 am in mid-November) after an early hotel pickup.
Be honest about the risk. In February 2013 a balloon caught fire near Luxor and 19 people died, the deadliest balloon accident on record. The official report blamed a leaking fuel line. Flights were grounded and rules tightened, and the UK government still tells travellers to speak to their tour company before booking, because some UK operators stopped selling flights when they couldn't verify safety standards. Flights stop from June to August because of the heat.
To choose an operator, ask for its Civil Aviation licence, the pilot's licence and experience, and proof of passenger insurance, and read recent independent reviews. Be wary of a price far below the rest. An operator that cancels in poor wind is being careful. If the answers are vague, skip it: nothing else in this plan depends on the balloon.
After breakfast, the Ramesseum is the mortuary temple of Ramesses II, covering about 10 hectares. The fallen statue of the king in the second court would stand about 19 m tall upright. Ozymandias, in Shelley's poem, is the Greek form of the king's name.
The pylon reliefs show the Battle of Kadesh, around 1274 BC, in which Ramesses claimed a great victory over the Hittites. It's quiet here and an hour is enough.
Deir el-Medina is the village of the people who dug and painted the royal tombs, about 68 houses where craftsmen lived for roughly 400 years. Around 1170 BC, under Ramesses III, they sat down and refused to work until they got their grain rations, possibly the first recorded strike in history.
Walk the foundations of the village and visit the small Ptolemaic temple of Hathor. The workers' own tombs nearby, such as Pashedu (about 2 EUR, 120 EGP, listed separately), are smaller than the royal ones and more personal.
The Valley of the Queens is where queens and princes of the New Kingdom were buried. The star is the tomb of Nefertari, wife of Ramesses II, with some of the best-preserved paintings in Egypt. Be warned: it appears to be closed. A visitor guide updated in September 2026 says it has been closed for restoration since March 2024, with no reopening date. The ministry list prices it at 2,500 EGP (about 40 EUR) when open, and a reopening has been announced before, so ask at the ticket office.
If Nefertari is shut, the valley is only worth an hour if you have time to spare. Other tombs are open on the standard ticket. Otherwise skip it and give the time to the museums.
Cross back for a late lunch. A shawarma from a counter on the east bank's main streets, rolled with garlic sauce and pickles, is the cheapest decent meal in Luxor. To sit down, try a Nile-view place for molokhia with rice and chicken.
Then rest at the hotel until about 4:30, because the museums reopen at 5 pm.
The Luxor Museum, opened in 1975 on the corniche, is small, well lit and uncrowded. It holds a quartzite statue of Amenhotep III, a double statue of the king with the crocodile god Sobek, objects from Tutankhamun's tomb and a reconstructed wall from Akhenaten's temple at Karnak.
The royal mummies of Ahmose I and Ramesses I have been on show since 2004. It's the best place to put faces to the temples you've just walked through.
Along the corniche is the Mummification Museum, opened in 1997. It explains how a mummy was made, with the tools, embalming materials and canopic jars, animal mummies of cats, fish and crocodiles, and the mummy of a high priest of Amun.
It answers the question you'll have had in the Valley: how did they do it? It's small and a calm end to the day.
Luxor has more than three days of sights, and the best extras are close to town.
Small, painted tombs of officials and craftsmen, mostly almost empty. Tickets are by cluster, from about 2 EUR (120 EGP) to 3 EUR (200 EGP), card only from the 2026 season.
Getting there: On the west bank, 5-10 minutes by taxi from the ferry
A ruined temple precinct south of Karnak with its own crescent-shaped sacred lake, away from the crowds. Separate ticket of about 3 EUR (200 EGP).
Getting there: Next to Karnak, about 1 km south of the main entrance
The Temple of Hathor, begun in 54 BCE under Ptolemy Auletes, still has painted ceilings. The famous zodiac relief is a copy, because the original was taken to the Louvre in 1820. A half-day trip with a driver.
Getting there: About 60 km north of Luxor, around an hour by taxi or private car
The temple of Horus at Edfu, built between 237 and 57 BC, is nearly intact. Esna has a smaller temple of Khnum. Both fit on the way to Aswan by car or as Nile cruise stops.
Getting there: Esna is roughly 55 km and Edfu roughly 100 km south of Luxor, on the way to Aswan
Luxor food is simple Egyptian food, cheap, filling and mostly vegetarian by accident. These are the dishes to order.
Egypt's national dish: rice, lentils, pasta and chickpeas under a spicy tomato sauce and crispy fried onions. Cheap, filling, and found everywhere. Mix it all together before you eat.
Where to try it: Any koshari shop on the east bank, the one with the lunchtime queue.
Slow-cooked fava beans mashed with olive oil, lemon and cumin, eaten for breakfast by millions of Egyptians every morning. With bread and an egg it keeps you going until a late lunch.
Where to try it: Small breakfast counters near the markets.
Egyptian falafel made with fava beans instead of chickpeas, which gives it a bright green center. Crisp outside, soft inside, served in bread with salad and tahini.
Where to try it: Street stalls and sandwich shops, often next to the ful counters.
A viscous green soup of jute leaves with garlic and coriander, served over rice with chicken or rabbit. The texture puts some people off, but Egyptians insist you try it.
Where to try it: Home-style restaurants like Sofra, and family-run places on the west bank.
Marinated meat roasted on a vertical spit, shaved into flatbread with tahini, pickles and garlic sauce. The standard cheap meal between sights.
Where to try it: Any busy counter on the east bank's main streets.
Vine leaves, peppers and zucchini stuffed with herbed rice, sometimes with minced meat, a staple of Egyptian family cooking. Upper Egypt is also known for stuffed pigeon.
Where to try it: Family restaurants on both banks. Ask if pigeon is on the menu.
Egypt's best-loved dessert: a hot pudding of puff pastry, milk, nuts and raisins, baked until the top browns. Rich, so share one.
Where to try it: Most restaurants serve it. Eat it hot.
Semolina cake soaked in syrup and topped with an almond, found in every bakery. Very sweet, so pair it with strong tea.
Where to try it: Bakeries and sweet shops, sold by weight.
Hibiscus tea, deep red and tart, served hot or cold. Hotels hand it out on arrival, and it's good after a day in the sun.
Where to try it: Hotel lobbies, cafés and street stalls.
Egypt's standard lager, light and cold. Most local restaurants don't serve alcohol, so look for a hotel bar or a licensed terrace.
Where to try it: Hotel bars and licensed restaurants. It costs far more than the food.
Luxor is small, so the choice is mostly the east bank for convenience or the west bank for quiet.
Best for: First-timers, restaurants and easy transport
Within walking distance of Luxor Temple, the museums, the ferry, the station and most restaurants. The catch is constant hassle from calèche drivers and touts.
Best for: Early starts at Karnak
Quieter than the center, and you can be at Karnak at 6 am without a taxi. The catch is fewer restaurants at night, so you'll be taking taxis for dinner.
Best for: Quiet, farmland views and balloon mornings
Guesthouses among the fields near the Colossi, with the tombs and temples close by. Peaceful, and the balloons rise over you at dawn. The catch is crossing the river for every museum and most restaurants.
Pinpoint: click each country on the world map - inside the border for full points, the closer the more you earn.
The practical stuff that makes the first day in Luxor easier.
Egypt uses the Egyptian pound (EGP). The Tombs of the Nobles are cashless from the 2026 season, but small restaurants, felucca captains and taxis want cash in small notes. Some ticket offices take cards only, so bring a card that works abroad as well as cash. Prices here are at 62 EGP to the euro and come from the ministry's 2024 list, so expect small rises.
Each site has its own ticket, bought at the gate. The Valley of the Kings ticket covers three tombs; Tutankhamun, Ramesses VI, Ay and Seti I are extra. Students with a valid card pay half. Keep your Karnak and Luxor Temple tickets for the Avenue of Sphinxes.
November is the sweet spot, with highs of about 29°C and nights near 13°C. In June and July highs top 41°C and balloons don't fly. Start at opening time, carry water and wear a hat.
A polite no and a steady walk is usually enough. Agree every price before you get in a carriage, felucca or taxi, and ask the price before accepting a guide at a temple.
The sleeper train (no. 86) leaves Cairo at 19:45 and reaches Luxor at 06:10. A shared two-berth cabin is about 100-110 EUR (110-125 USD) one way, booked through Abela or an agent, usually four to five months ahead. Flights take about an hour: check EgyptAir and Air Cairo.
By train it's roughly 2 to 3.5 hours depending on the service, and seats sell out. By road, stop at Esna and Edfu. A Nile cruise takes three to four nights; check the direction and what's included before you pay. Our Aswan guide picks up from there.
The UK's FCDO advice warns that terrorist attacks are likely in Egypt, including at places visited by foreigners, and that road accidents are common. Check your own government's advice before you go. The tourist police number is 126.
Dress modestly in town and in mosques, with covered shoulders and knees. Ask the ticket office about camera and phone rules at each tomb, because they change.
Yes for the main sights: Karnak, Luxor Temple, the Valley of the Kings, Hatshepsut, Medinet Habu, the Ramesseum and both museums. A fourth day adds the Tombs of the Nobles or Dendera.
The standard ticket (about 12 EUR, 750 EGP) lets you enter three of the open tombs, and the list rotates. Tutankhamun (about 11 EUR, 700 EGP), Ramesses V and VI (about 3.5 EUR), Ay (about 3 EUR) and Seti I (about 32 EUR, 2,000 EGP) need extra tickets. Ask at the office which are open that day.
It has been closed since March 2024, and a visitor guide updated in September 2026 still lists it as closed with no reopening date. The ministry price was 2,500 EGP (about 40 EUR). Ask at the Valley of the Queens ticket office.
Thousands of flights run each year, but the record isn't clean: a 2013 fire killed 19 people. Choose a licensed operator, ask about pilot and insurance, avoid the cheapest offers and expect wind cancellations. The UK government advises speaking to your tour company before booking.
November to March. Highs are around 29°C in November and 23°C in January, with cool nights. June and July are over 41°C, and balloon flights stop from June to August.
By sleeper train (19:45 to 06:10, about 100 EUR one way) or by plane in about an hour. The train saves a hotel night.
By train in 2 to 3.5 hours, by road with stops at Esna and Edfu, or on a Nile cruise of three to four nights. Check the cruise direction, since most three-night sailings run from Aswan to Luxor.
In practice yes. The main problems are touts, price disputes and traffic. Government advice warns of a terrorism risk across Egypt, so check yours before you go.
Find Luxor on the map, learn the flag and check how much you really know about Egypt.
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