7-Day Egypt Hidden Gems Tour from Cairo to Abu Simbel

The morning opens in Islamic Cairo: the Khan el-Khalili bazaar, Al-Azhar Mosque, the Mamluk corridor of the Street of the Tentmakers, and the Citadel of Saladin rising above the minarets.

In the afternoon, continue to Garbage City, Manshiyat Naser, where the Coptic Zabaleen sort and recycle the city's waste, then climb to the Monastery of St Simon, the cave-church amphitheatre carved into the Mokattam cliff.

Spend the morning in Old Cairo, the city that predates the Arab conquest, visiting the Hanging Church above the Roman fort gate, the Ben Ezra Synagogue, and the Coptic Museum's collection spanning fifteen centuries of Christian Egypt.

In the evening, board the overnight sleeper train for the 700-kilometre run south through the Nile Valley. Dinner and a bunk are included, and you arrive in Luxor at dawn.

Luxor is ancient Thebes. Spend the day on the west bank, the land of the dead, exploring the Valley of the Kings, including the tomb of Seti I, the longest and deepest, and the painted cosmology of Ramesses VI.

Continue to Hatshepsut's mortuary temple at Deir el-Bahari and, for those with energy, the Colossi of Memnon and the Ramesseum, whose toppled colossus inspired Shelley's Ozymandias.

The Karnak complex is not a temple but a city of temples, the largest religious building ever constructed, with its Great Hypostyle Hall alone holding 134 columns that reach 23 metres.

The afternoon is for the Nile itself: take a felucca south through the agricultural landscape, or travel by private vehicle along the west bank with a stop at the Temple of Horus at Edfu, arriving in Aswan by evening.

Aswan is where Egypt becomes Nubia, where granite breaks through the Nile in cataracts and the light changes.

Take a morning felucca to a Nubian village on the west bank, with its cobalt-and-yellow painted houses and a hospitality distinct from the commercial north. Then visit the island Temple of Philae, dedicated to Isis and reassembled on higher ground after the High Dam, followed by the dam itself, whose reservoir is one of the largest man-made lakes on Earth.

The drive from Aswan to Abu Simbel covers 280 kilometres of near-empty desert road along Lake Nasser, one of the great Egyptian drives.

At the shore stand the two rock-cut temples of Ramesses II: the Great Temple, whose four colossi have watched the approach to Nubia since 1265 BC, and the smaller Temple of Hathor for his queen Nefertari, with some of the most intimate painted reliefs of any royal monument in Egypt.

Spend a final morning in Aswan at the Unfinished Obelisk in the northern granite quarry, a 42-metre monolith abandoned mid-cutting when a crack appeared.

It still lies exactly as the quarrymen left it 3,500 years ago, with the tool marks still fresh - a monument to failure, and one of the most humanising objects in the country - before your onward flight from Aswan or via Cairo.