Five days in Egypt is three days of sightseeing. Six days is four, and eight days is five. On all five of the multi-day packages we sell, the first day is the arrival flight and the last day is the departure flight, and neither one has a guided visit in it.
So the useful question is not how many days you need. It is what each extra day reaches. Counted over our own itineraries the answer is blunt: the sixth day buys the Nile, and the seventh and eighth buy no new site at all.
The five packages, counted
Every named site each itinerary says you visit — temples, tombs, museums, the dam, the bazaar. Prices are per person on our published 2026 rates.
| Package | Days | Sightseeing days | Named sites | Price | Per site |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5 Days Cairo & Luxor | 5 | 3 | 9 | $825 | $92 |
| 6 Days of History: Cairo, Abydos, Dendera, Luxor | 6 | 4 | 11 | $985 | $90 |
| 6 Days Pyramids & Nile Cruise | 6 | 4 | 13 | $1,040 | $80 |
| 8 Days Cairo, Nile Cruise & Hurghada | 8 | 5 | 13 | $1,250 | $96 |
| 8 Days Cairo & Nile Cruise | 8 | 5 | 13 | $1,755 | $135 |
Two of your days are flights
This is the part a round number hides. Day one is arrival, a transfer and a hotel check-in on every one of the five. The last day is breakfast and the airport on every one of the five. A five-day package is three days of guided sightseeing; an eight-day package is five.
That is not padding — you do need the arrival day, and a flight home has to leave from somewhere. But if you are choosing between five days and a week, you are really choosing between three sightseeing days and five.
Five days reaches Cairo and Luxor, and stops
The five-day package puts one day in Cairo and two in Luxor. Nine named sites: the Pyramids of Giza, the Sphinx and Valley Temple, the Egyptian Museum and Khan El Khalili on the Cairo day; Karnak and Luxor Temple on the East Bank; the Valley of the Kings with three tombs, Hatshepsut's temple and the Colossi of Memnon on the West Bank.
What five days does not reach is the river. Aswan, Kom Ombo, Edfu and Philae are not in it, and they cannot be — the stretch between Luxor and Aswan takes nights, not hours.
The sixth day is the one that changes the map
Add one day and the count goes from nine sites to thirteen. The six-day Pyramids and Nile Cruise package keeps the Cairo day, flies to Aswan for Philae, the High Dam and the Unfinished Obelisk, sails to Kom Ombo and Edfu, and does both banks of Luxor in a single day before flying home. Thirteen named sites, four sightseeing days, $1,040 — $80 a site, the cheapest per site of anything on this page.
That is what the extra day actually buys: not one more temple in a city you were already in, but the middle stretch of the river, where four of the thirteen sites are.
At six days you choose the river or the two temples north of Luxor
The other six-day trip, 6 Days of History, spends its extra day driving from Luxor to Abydos and Dendera instead. It reaches eleven sites rather than thirteen, and it is not a smaller version of the cruise package — the two overlap but neither contains the other. The cruise has Aswan, Kom Ombo, Edfu and the Unfinished Obelisk and skips Khan El Khalili. The history trip has Abydos and Dendera and never goes south of Luxor.
Both are six days. They are different trips, and at six days you take one or the other.
Days seven and eight add no new site
This is the count's clearest result, and it is the opposite of what a longer package sounds like it should mean. Both eight-day packages reach thirteen named sites — the same thirteen as each other, and the same number the six-day cruise reaches.
What the two extra days buy is not a site:
- 8 Days Cairo, Nile Cruise and Hurghada drives from Luxor to the Red Sea once the temples are done and spends day seven on an all-inclusive beach, then flies home on day eight. $1,250 — the cheapest eight days here, and $210 more than the six-day cruise for two days at a resort.
- 8 Days Cairo and Nile Cruise spends day seven sailing, with Abu Simbel offered as an option — eight hours by road from Aswan, $140 per person, in neither the package price nor the thirteen — then flies to Cairo for a free day before departure. $1,755, or $135 a site, the most of the five.
Neither of those is a bad trip. A beach after five days of temples is a real thing to want, and so is not rushing. But that is what the extra days are, and more sites is not.
So how many days do you need in Egypt?
- Five days if you want Cairo and Luxor and nothing else: nine sites, three sightseeing days, from $825.
- Six days is where the count jumps. It is the shortest trip here that reaches the Nile between Luxor and Aswan, and at $80 a site the best value on the page.
- Eight days if you want the same thirteen sites at a slower pace, with a beach or with Abu Simbel in reach. Not if you want to see more.
Every package here includes the guide, the entrance tickets, the transport between sites and the transfers. On the cruise packages, what is and is not included on the boat is set out separately, and if you are choosing which way to sail, Luxor to Aswan or Aswan to Luxor prices both directions.
Where these figures come from
The five multi-day packages on our Egypt packages page, read on 22 September 2026: their day counts, their itineraries and their 2026 prices per person. Sites are counted from what each itinerary says you visit — optional extras, the papyrus factory, the felucca ride and lunch stops are not counted, which is why Abu Simbel is named above but not in the thirteen. The per-site column is the price divided by the site count. Two shorter trips are left out: our two-night express cruise, which is a cruise segment rather than a trip to Egypt, and the Christmas cruise, which is one dated departure. The boats are on the Nile cruises page, and every price we publish sits in one comparable unit in the Egypt Travel Price Index.
Written by the Travel To Egypt team, Nazlet Al-Zanati Street, Luxor.