Travel notes & guides

Forty minutes from the hotel lights, the Milky Way is a physical object. Here is what to look for.

Why it flies at dawn, what you actually see, and whether it is worth the overnight trip.

Three machines, three quite different days, and one of them is much better with children.

Nobody explains the sequence beforehand, which is why people arrive nervous. Here it is.

Which excursions suit which ages, and the two trips to avoid entirely with under-tens.

Where cards work, where they do not, and why small notes matter more than the total.

A resort week and a temple day need different things. The list that covers both.

Nobody expects you to speak Arabic, which is exactly why a few words go a long way.

Four sixty-foot Ramesses, a solar alignment twice a year, and the whole thing cut up and lifted 65 metres.

The last place in the ancient world where the old gods were still worshipped, reached by boat.

Three terraces cut into a cliff, built for a woman whose successor spent years chiselling her name out.

Cairo now has two great museums and a day trip only has room for one.

Founded in 1382 and still working. Where to go, what things cost, and how the haggling actually runs.

Four days, one unpacking, and the monuments come to you. An honest account of the rhythm.

A Roman fortress, a hanging church, a synagogue and a crypt, all within about four hundred metres.

You cannot see Luxor in a day. You can see the right third of it, in the right order.

Bright blue and ochre houses, a language older than Arabic, and a community moved twice by dams.

A walled community in the Eastern Desert, continuously inhabited since the fourth century.

It ended the flood, made a lake the size of a country, and changed the Nile permanently.

You will not learn Egyptian in an afternoon. You can learn to spot a king's name in ten minutes.