Africa
Get a Personal Pick →Egypt
45 destinations
City Abu Simbel
"Twice a year, dawn crawls sixty metres through solid rock to light a pharaoh's face."
City Abydos
"Temple paint vivid after thirty-three centuries, concealing an underground granite chamber that still puzzles archaeologists."
Wilderness Ain Umm al-Dabadib
"Roman aqueducts tunnelling beneath deep desert to water farmland the Sahara has since taken back."
City Al-Bagawat
"Domed desert chapels with fourth-century biblical murals, among the oldest Christian art on Earth."
City Alexandria
"Salt-weathered Mediterranean balconies above a seafront where Cleopatra's palace lies submerged offshore."
Water Aswan
"Feluccas gliding past granite islands where the Nile runs quietest and Nubian colour blazes."
Wilderness Bahariya Oasis
"Hot springs steaming in palm groves where golden mummies were unearthed beneath a donkey path."
Mountain Beni Hasan
"Rock-cut tombs high on a cliff face, their four-thousand-year-old wrestlers still mid-grapple on the walls."
Mountain Coloured Canyon
"Sandstone walls rippling in rust, ochre, and violet, narrow enough to touch both sides."
Water Dahab
"Desert mountains plunging into reef walls where freedive ropes disappear into blue-black nothing."
City Dahshur
"Two experimental pyramids alone in empty desert — one bent, one red, hardly a visitor."
City Dakhla Oasis
"Medieval mud-brick lanes and carved lintels marooned in the deep desert for eight centuries."
Mountain Deir Abu Hinnis
"Roman-era limestone quarries with workers' graffiti and a hidden early Christian chapel inside."
City Dendera
"Two-thousand-year-old paint still vivid on ceilings where the goddess Hathor smiles from every column."
Wilderness Djara Cave
"Stalactites hanging in a desert cave where someone painted giraffes when the Sahara was green."
City El Alamein
"White headstones in rows facing the Mediterranean, the silence of a battlefield that changed a war."
City Esna
"A Ptolemaic temple buried nine metres below a modern town, its zodiac ceiling still overhead."
Wilderness Farafra Oasis
"Egypt's tiniest oasis, where one man painted every wall and built a desert museum from mud."
Water Gebel el-Silsila
"The Nile squeezes through sandstone quarry cliffs where pharaohs carved temples from the living rock."
City Giza
"Camel shadows stretch across sand where the last ancient wonder meets the Sahara's edge."
Water Hamata
"Spinner dolphins corkscrewing around the dawn boats, the southernmost Red Sea reefs untouched below."
Water Kom Ombo
"A temple split between crocodile god and falcon, mummified crocs filling the gallery beside it."
City Luxor
"Dawn light flooding Karnak's hypostyle hall through columns carved before Rome existed."
Water Marsa Alam
"Dugongs grazing on seagrass in shallows so clear you watch from the surface, desert silent behind."
Wilderness Medinet Madi
"A Middle Kingdom temple lost in the Fayoum desert, its sphinx-lined processional road swallowed by sand."
City Meidum
"A pyramid that peeled apart, exposing its stone skeleton like an anatomical diagram of pharaonic ambition."
Mountain Monastery of St. Anthony
"Earth's oldest inhabited monastery, wedged into a Red Sea mountain canyon since the fourth century."
Mountain Mons Claudianus
"Granite columns for the Pantheon, abandoned mid-cut in a silent desert canyon eighteen centuries ago."
Mountain Mons Porphyrites
"The Roman Empire's only source of imperial purple stone, quarries still scarring red mountains."
City Nubian Villages
"Houses painted impossible blue and yellow, a language older than Arabic spoken on every corner."
Water Pharaoh's Island
"Crusader-contested fortress on a Gulf of Aqaba island, four countries visible from its ramparts."
Water Philae Temple
"A temple rescued from rising waters, reassembled stone by stone on an island in the Nile."
Water Ras Abu Galum
"Camel trail ending at a Bedouin beach where the reef starts a metre from your mat."
Water Ras Mohammed
"The Sinai desert drops into the Red Sea here, mangroves clinging to the last ledge."
City Rosetta
"Ottoman mansions with mashrabiya screens leaning over lanes where the key to hieroglyphs was found."
City Saqqara
"The world's first monumental stone building, still standing on a desert plateau littered with unopened tombs."
Wilderness Siwa Oasis
"Salt lakes shimmering where the Great Sand Sea begins and Alexander once sought the Oracle."
Mountain St. Catherine
"Granite peaks where Moses may have stood, a burning bush still growing behind monastery walls."
City Tanis
"A delta capital whose royal gold rivalled Tutankhamun's, and almost nobody has heard of it."
City Tuna el-Gebel
"Catacombs stuffed with mummified ibises and baboons, sacred animals of a forgotten god."
Water Wadi al-Gemal
"Red desert wadis spilling into turquoise sea, Ababda nomads herding camels on empty shore."
Water Wadi el-Seboua
"A sphinx-lined avenue rising from Lake Nasser's shore to Ramesses II's relocated Nubian temple."
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Legendary Destinations
Little-known places, unlike anywhere else, that leave you awestruck and full of stories.
3 destinations
Legendary Destination
A king built a capital. Those who followed tried to erase it.
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Legendary Destination
The whales stayed behind when the sea became desert.
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Legendary Destination
The wind has carved pale mushrooms. None grew from a seed.
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