This is the first question almost everyone asks, and the reason it is hard to answer is that Egypt's major sites are a long way apart. Cairo to Luxor is about 650 kilometres. Luxor to Aswan is another 200. Nothing about an Egypt itinerary is walkable, and the transfers are what eat the days.
So the useful way to think about it is not "how many days do I need" but "how many places am I willing to move between".
Five days: Cairo and one other place
Five days works, but only if you accept that you are seeing two places and not three. The standard shape is two or three days in Cairo — the Pyramids of Giza, the Sphinx, the Grand Egyptian Museum and one afternoon in Islamic Cairo — and then a flight to Luxor for two days.
What you give up is Aswan, the Nile cruise, and any sense of slowing down. It is a good trip for someone with a fixed window who wants the headline sites. It is not the trip to book if you have a choice.
If five days is genuinely all you have, spend them all in Cairo rather than splitting them. Cairo plus Saqqara and Dahshur is a better five days than a compressed Cairo-and-Luxor dash.
Seven days: the shortest trip that works
Seven days is where Egypt starts to breathe. The standard version is three nights in Cairo, a flight to Luxor, two nights there, then a train or flight to Aswan or a short cruise segment.
The alternative — and the better one for most first visits — is three nights in Cairo and a four-night Nile cruise between Luxor and Aswan. That gets you Karnak, the Valley of the Kings, Edfu, Kom Ombo and Philae without a single road transfer between them, because the boat is the transfer.
Our 7 Day Egypt Tour is built on exactly that shape.
Eight to ten days: the right answer for most people
This is where an Egypt trip stops being a list and becomes a journey. Ten days gives you three or four nights in Cairo, a proper Luxor stop with both banks, a four or five-night Nile cruise, and two nights in Aswan with enough slack to add Abu Simbel.
It also gives you room for the things that make a trip memorable rather than complete — an hour on a felucca at sunset, a morning at Medinet Habu with nobody else in it, an evening walk through Khan el-Khalili.
If you are choosing one length without knowing anything else about the trip, choose this one. Our 10 Day Private Egypt Tour and 8 Day Cairo and Nile Cruise Tour both sit in this band.
Twelve to fourteen days: adding a second Egypt
Past about twelve days you are no longer filling gaps in the classic route — you are adding a different country. The usual choices:
None of these is essential to a first visit. All of them are better than adding a fourth day in Cairo.
- The Red Sea — four or five nights at Hurghada or Marsa Alam, which pairs naturally with Luxor because the drive is only about four hours
- Alexandria — one or two nights on the Mediterranean, a genuinely different climate and a different history, with the Bibliotheca Alexandrina and Qaitbay Citadel
- The Western Desert — two nights camping in the White Desert, which is the biggest change of scene available in Egypt
- Sinai — Saint Catherine's Monastery and the Mount Sinai climb, or diving at Sharm el-Sheikh
The mistake almost everyone makes
It is not being too short. It is being too spread. A ten-day trip with six hotels in it is worse than a seven-day trip with three, because every change of base costs you most of a day in packing, transfers and checking in.
When you are looking at an itinerary, count the hotel changes before you count the sites. Three or four bases in ten days is comfortable. Six is a coach tour with a nicer brochure.
The second most common mistake is under-budgeting Cairo. People give it two days because it is "just the pyramids", and then discover that the pyramids, Saqqara, two enormous museums, the Citadel and medieval Cairo are five days of material.