A sunrise flight over the west bank — temples, tombs, sugar cane fields and the Nile, from a few hundred metres up.
Balloons launch from the Luxor west bank before dawn and drift north over the temples, the tomb valleys and the farmland along the river. Flights last roughly forty-five minutes to an hour in the air.
It is one of the few add-on activities in Egypt that is genuinely worth the early start.
It shows you the thing the ground cannot: the shape of the west bank. From a few hundred metres up you see in one glance how abruptly the green stops and the desert begins, and how the temples sit exactly on that line. The whole logic of ancient Egypt — the living on the black land, the dead in the red — is a single view.
The light is the other half. Balloons go up so that the sun comes over the eastern cliffs while you are already in the air, and the west-bank monuments light up in sequence beneath you.
And there are usually a dozen or more other balloons in the air at the same time, which — whatever you think of the crowd — makes for the photograph.
Ballooning over Luxor has been running commercially since the 1980s and is now one of the busiest balloon sites in the world by flight numbers, with a large fleet lifting from the same fields most mornings of the year.
Flights are regulated by the Egyptian civil aviation authority, and operators must hold current licences. Weather cancellations are common in winter and are a sign of an operator following the rules rather than of a problem.
The industry was suspended and rebuilt after a fatal accident in 2013, with tighter rules on pilot hours, passenger numbers per basket and launch conditions. Operators who talk openly about those rules are the ones to book.
The launch fields sit on farmland north of the ticket offices, which is why the pre-dawn drive ends among sugar cane rather than at an airfield, and why landings happen in whatever field the wind allows.
Year round, but winter has the most cancellations and the clearest air. Flights are always at sunrise.
Opening hours: Sunrise flights only. There are no afternoon departures.
Opening hours and ticket prices may change. Please confirm the latest details before visiting.
The village of the men who cut and painted the royal tombs — the most completely documented community to survive from the ancient world.
The southern valley of the Theban necropolis, where queens and royal children were buried — and where the finest painted tomb in Egypt is cut into the rock.
The mortuary temple of Ramesses III — the best-preserved painted colour of any large temple in Egypt, and almost always empty.
Two enormous seated statues standing in a field — all that is easily visible of what was once the largest temple in Egypt.
Three colonnaded terraces cut into a cliff wall at Deir el-Bahari — the mortuary temple of the woman who ruled Egypt as king.
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Want to include Hot Air Ballooning over Luxor in your Egypt itinerary? Browse our tours or ask for a custom plan.