Egypt has captured the imagination of travellers since ancient time. It's a multilayered history lesson, with relics left by pharaohs, Greeks, Romans, Christians and Arabs alike. Mud-brick villages rub shoulders with modern buildings of steel and glass, the call of the muezzin with the blare of the city traffic. It is also a diver's dream dip or a trek across the sands on a camel. And through everything, the majestic River Nile flows on, Egypt's lifeblood since the dawn of history.

Best time to visit

October to May to avoid the heat.

Essential experiences

Battling tour buses and camel drivers to see the Great Pyramids at Giza; taking a lazy afternoon drift along the Nile in a felucca at Aswan; looking into the eyes of ancient history, Tutankhamen's Mask; feeling very small in Karnak's Great Hypostyle Hall; living out an oriental fantasy; sipping tea and smoking a shisha (waterpipe) with a thousand and one others at Cairo's landmark coffeehouse; diving, snorkelling or trekking the Sinai, where the desert meets the Red Sea.

In a few words, Egypt is

Camels, pyramids, deserts, fezzes, turbans, baksheesh, bushy moustaches, incessant honking, tour guides and tacky King Tut souvenirs.

Did you know?

The Pyramids at Giza get much attention, but Egypt boasts dozens of pyramids. Visit the massive Bent Pyramids at Dahshur and you may have them all to yourself.