Aswan and Abu Simbel: The Logistics Puzzle Worth Solving
When I was planning this itinerary, I wanted to pack in as much sightseeing as we could within 10 days. Abu Simbel was on my list, but combining it with boarding our cruise in Aswan turned out to be a little tricky. After several rounds of back-and-forth email with Waleed’s team, the only workable solution was to fly to Aswan the day before. That’s why we only had half a day to explore the Egyptian Museum, since we had to get to the airport and catch our flight to Aswan. From there, the plan was: stay the night in Aswan, drive to Abu Simbel very early the next morning, and be back in time to board our cruise in Aswan that afternoon. With proper planning, it’s very doable.
Day 3 Afternoon: Flying to Aswan
We flew to Aswan from Cairo. Several airlines cover this route, EgyptAir, Air Cairo, and Nile Air among them, with EgyptAir running the most frequent schedule (often more than a dozen flights a week). It’s a short domestic hop, around 1 hour 20 to 1 hour 30 minutes in the air.
There’s no public bus service from the airport into the city center. Moreover, metered taxis don’t really apply in Aswan. Rather than take the risk with a non-metered taxi, we had Aswan Individual arrange a pickup from the airport straight to our hotel.
About Aswan
Aswan is a city in the south of Egypt, some 680 km south of Cairo, just below the Aswan Dam and Lake Nasser, with a population of around 275,000. It’s the smallest of the three major tourist cities on the Nile (alongside Cairo and Luxor). Being the furthest south of the three, it has a large population of Nubian people, mostly resettled from their homeland in the area flooded by Lake Nasser. Aswan is home to many granite quarries, the source of most of the obelisks seen in Luxor. Aswan was the ancient Egyptians’ gateway to Africa.
We wished we’d had more time in Aswan so we could visit Philae Temple and Kalabsha Temple. Other areas worth visiting include the Unfinished Obelisk, the High Dam, and Kitchener Island, where you can sail using a felucca.
Where to Stay in Aswan
Aswan has two standout luxury hotels: the famous Old Cataract Hotel, mentioned in Agatha Christie’s Death on the Nile, and the Movenpick Hotel, located on Elephantine Island. I really wanted to stay at one of these, but given that we’d only just arrive in Aswan and had to leave very early for Abu Simbel, it seemed like such a waste of a luxury hotel stay. So instead, we stayed at CitiMax Hotel, located downtown on the East Bank, which I can highly recommend if you’re only staying in Aswan for one night on your way to Abu Simbel or a Nile cruise.
Beyond those, Aswan has plenty of budget to mid-range hotels on both the East and West Banks, and which side you pick genuinely changes the character of your stay:
East Bank: This is where the city’s everyday energy is, the markets, the train station, the Corniche, and most of the larger hotels. It’s well connected to the main sights and the most convenient base if you’re only in town briefly or need easy access to transport, as we did. The trade-off is that it’s busier and noisier than the alternative.
West Bank: Quieter and more local, this side is where you’ll find traditional Nubian villages with brightly painted houses, home-cooked meals, and a slower pace of life. It’s a lovely choice if you have an extra day or two to soak in Nubian culture, but it requires a short ferry or boat crossing to reach the East Bank’s restaurants, shops, and transport links, which adds a layer of planning if your schedule is as tight as ours was.
Given our one-night, up-at-4-am situation, East Bank was the right call for us. If we’d had more breathing room in the itinerary, I think we would have chosen a night on the West Bank instead.
For dinner, we walked to Makka Restaurant, which we found through TripAdvisor. It serves delicious local Egyptian food with attentive service from the waitstaff. After an incredible dinner, we retreated to our hotel room to rest for a long day ahead.
Day 4: Abu Simbel
We left our hotel at 4 am sharp, since we needed to check in for our cruise that afternoon. That gave us sufficient time, almost three hours, to spend at Abu Simbel. The hotel also gave us a breakfast box, which we ate on the way to the temple. Make sure to ask your hotel to prepare one for you, since the journey to Abu Simbel is a long drive, and you don’t want to be hungry and sorry.
We traveled to Abu Simbel by private car, arranged through Aswan Individual. The car plus driver cost us $115 for the vehicle, which fit the three of us comfortably. It was a sedan, very comfortable, with air conditioning and seatbelts for the six-hour round trip. We made one stop along the way for a toilet break and to buy hot coffee and tea. The road to Abu Simbel is a single, long stretch with desert on both sides, almost like driving toward nowhere in particular.
A Practical Update If You’re Planning This Now
Private car prices have crept up since our trip; expect to pay somewhere between $100 and $150 for a private car and driver today, depending on the operator and whether a guide is included. One genuinely useful change: the old requirement for foreign-vehicle convoys on this road has been dropped, so you’re no longer locked into the traditional 4 am departure slot. Many travelers now leave a little later, around 6 or 7 am, and still beat the tour buses. If you do book a private car with a foreign driver, note that a road permit is still required (arranged the day before, with a copy of your passport), so make sure whoever you book with has that sorted. Entry to the Abu Simbel temples themselves currently runs around 750–800 EGP for foreign adults, a fee our draft never actually mentioned back in 2019, so factor that in on top of your transport cost.
How to Get to Abu Simbel
Abu Simbel is located in the Nubia region of southern Egypt, right on the western shore of Lake Nasser and only about 20 km from the Sudanese border, making it one of the hottest and most remote inhabited corners of the country. It sits roughly 280 km south of Aswan by road.
By Road from Aswan
You can travel to Abu Simbel at any time between sunrise and sunset. By road, it takes approximately three hours to get there and three hours back. Most people travel very early in the morning to avoid the heat.
If you’re not part of a packaged tour, your options for traveling by road are:
- Go by private car, which is the most convenient option.
- Go by the mini-bus arranged by budget or mid-range hotels, which is convenient if you’re staying at one of those. Ask your hotel in advance if they offer this service.
- Take the public bus from Aswan to Abu Simbel, though it isn’t reliable for a day trip, since the bus leaves Aswan at 8 am, reaches Abu Simbel at 1 pm, and departs again for Aswan at 2 pm, leaving very little time at the site.
Flying to Abu Simbel
Aswan Airport is approximately 16 km from the city center. There are several daily flights operated by EgyptAir and other carriers between Aswan and Abu Simbel. As of 2026, expect to pay considerably more than the 2,000–2,500 EGP range we quoted back in 2019; one-way fares now commonly run from roughly $70 to over $100 depending on how far ahead you book, reflecting both currency shifts and general fare inflation. A flight gets you there in approximately 45 minutes, and you can typically spend about two hours at the temples before heading back. There are a few hotels in Abu Simbel if you’d rather stay overnight, though most people treat it as a day trip, since there isn’t much else to do there beyond the temples.
Nile Cruise to Lake Nasser
This is the most scenic, and also the most expensive, way to reach Abu Simbel from Aswan. Most Lake Nasser cruises start from Aswan on Monday and take four days to reach Abu Simbel, returning from Abu Simbel on Friday over three days back to Aswan. One-way booking is also possible, returning either by air or road from Abu Simbel. Prices typically start from around 4,000 EGP per person for a one-way journey, depending on the class of luxury, though be aware that these cruises can occasionally be cancelled at the last moment if bookings are insufficient.
About Abu Simbel Temple
As we walked from where our car dropped us, we could see the temple from a distance, and we were in awe. Overlooking the emerald waters of Lake Nasser, it’s huge and majestic. There are two ancient pharaonic rock temples at Abu Simbel: the Temple of Ramesses, beloved by Amun, and the Temple of Hathor and Nefertari. These temples are magnificent examples of ancient Egyptian art, and they draw the largest number of tourists annually in Egypt, second only to the Pyramids of Giza.
Construction of the Abu Simbel temples began around 1264 BC, during the reign of Pharaoh Ramesses II (Ramesses the Great), and continued for 20 years. Ramesses II commissioned the temples as a lasting monument to himself and his queen Nefertari, following his claimed triumph at the Battle of Kadesh. The complex was finally completed around 1244 BC, during the 24th year of his long reign.
The Temple of Ramesses rises an astonishing 20 metres into the North African sky and was built in honour of Ramesses II, as well as Egypt’s three chief state deities of the time: Amun, Ra-Horakhty, and Ptah.
Abu Simbel originally sat on the west bank of the Nile, between the first and second cataracts. The temple survived through ancient times, only to be threatened by modern progress: because the site would soon be flooded by the rising waters created by the new High Dam at Aswan, it was decided in the early 1960s that the temples had to be moved. They were dismantled and relocated in 1968 to a desert plateau 64 metres (about 200 feet) above and 180 metres (600 feet) west of their original site, which is now submerged.
Moving the temples was a massive undertaking. Workers cut the structures into pieces weighing between 3 and 20 tons each and reassembled them precisely as they had stood before. The relocation took almost five years, involved around 3,000 workers, and cost about $42 million in 1960s money. It was, by most accounts, a resounding success, so seamless that visitors at the time could barely tell the temples had been moved at all.
We spent three hours exploring Abu Simbel before making our way back to Aswan to board our Nile cruise.
Closing Thoughts: Onward to the Nile
By the time we got back to Aswan that afternoon, dusty, sun-drenched, and thoroughly satisfied, it genuinely felt like we’d earned the cruise waiting for us at the dock. Looking back, the early wake-up call, the six hours of desert road, and the whole logistical juggling act with Waleed’s team to make Abu Simbel and the cruise fit into the same 24 hours were absolutely worth it. Some places make you work a little for the payoff, and Abu Simbel is one of them.
From here, our story shifts gears entirely, from planes, cars, and desert roads to the slow, unhurried rhythm of the Nile itself. Boarding that afternoon marked the start of a completely different pace of travel, and that’s exactly where the next post picks up.
