Nile Cruises

We went to Egypt with Odysseys Unlimited which included two cruises. The first was the cruise on Lake Nasser where we visited many archeological sites including the awesome Abu Simbel. Then we also had a Nile cruise. I preferred the first cruise as the Nile cruise was more crowded and the sites we visited were as well. You will, I am guessing, want an English speaking cruise too. We were very pleased with the high level of the guides and the whole experience with Odysseys Unlimited.

We enjoyed a beautiful trip with https://www.nourelnil.com/

The ship was lovely, the guides excellent, the food excellent.

And the ships are smaller than many others we saw.

Do you only want a Nile Cruise, or do you want a guided tour that also includes Cairo and perhaps Alexandria? Usually the Nile Cruises only go between Luxor and Aswan.

If you do a search on this site, you can find several threads within the last couple of years on the subject.

We did a wonderful Egypt trip for 14 days (including travel time) with Gate 1 Travel in January.

We had two Nile Cruises, both three days, one in Lake Nasser and the second from Aswan to Luxor. Also, we did Cairo and that areas as well.

Prior to picking our tour with cruises, I compared about a dozen different firms including Viking.

Gate 1 Travel had by far the lowest price. Our tour was not cheap, we stayed in five star hotels and our cruise ships were very nice.

Odyssey was another firm that had a pretty good price, but it was still higher than our Gate 1 Travel tour. Also, Gate 1 has several choices to pick from.
Since this trip, we did another Gate 1 tour this Summer and it was wonderful as well.

We went with Scenic USA which is actually an Australian company with offices in the US. We have traveled with them before and they are excellent. Every detail of the trip is carefully thought out. They are a small group tour and you stay at high end hotels. On the Nile, you have your own boutique ship with excellent service. You are not on a big cruise ship on the Nile as some companies do. It is very intimate. We loved this tour and added the Jordan trip on to our Egypt tour.

Look at the Youtube channel TIPS FOR TRAVELLERS for great info on his recent Nile Cruise

We toured Egypt with Trafalgar Tours in February, 2019 for 11 nights, which included a 7 night Nile cruise on a small boat (about 200 person capacity, or thereabouts. The boat was not full, the service excellent and the food quite good. We absolutely loved the cruise. It was so peaceful on the river. Each evening we sat on the top deck with a cocktail and relished the scene of people fishing, farming, and taking care of their herds. The Nile is a beautiful river. We had two days in Cairo before flying to Luxor to board the boat, and one full day after the return to Cairo. It was a great tour. We never felt hurried or harried. We also opted for the extra cost flight to Abu Simbel, well worth it for an amazing day!
Have fun!

Everyone that posts on this thread, post what your tour/cruise costs.
Gate 1 Travel 14 day tour including two river cruises, Abu Simbel and a great tour was $3500 per person that included RT airfare from JFK to CAIRO

@geovagriffith Tour prices vary depending on the amount of luxury, passenger numbers, service, etc. The current Scenic USA price for 13 days is about $7,900 per person which includes your round trip airfare and includes all excursions (2 per day) and all but two meals as I recall. The group is about 24? persons. I looked at the current 13 day Gate 1 tour and it looks like the price is about $4,800 per person including rt airfare from New York. Some of the excursions on Gate One are extra but not a lot. I don’t know what the passenger numbers are on that tour. The OP needs to look at the various tours and decide which features of a tour are important to them and what their budget is.

I second geovagriffith in that cost info of any kind would be helpful. We would like to do Viking, but their costs are pretty high.

Our Gate 1 tour cost included all the optional tours except one that nobody took. We did get a discount price on our tour based on an email we received offering us a discount of a few hundred dollars a person.
Once you have a Gate 1 account, you receive emails with discounts offered for tours.

As for having to pay for any meals, we did pay for a few meals, but not many.

As for Viking, its price was almost DOUBLE what we paid for our tour.

I have priced some tours like one fantastic safari we did in Kenya and Tanzania that was THREE times what our tour cost. We used Good Earth Tours and paid about $4500 pp for a private tour for four persons for a total of 9 days. Gate 1 now has safaris priced close to Good Earth.

I realize that some people get hooked on great tour companies like Tauck or Abercrombe and Finch, but don't realize that Gate 1 offers first class hotels, guides, transport, etc. Why pay 50% more, double or triple for essentially the same quality.

Geovagriffith, I think we all realize that you are a great fan of Gate 1. But not everyone goes for the lowest price as #1 priority.. And even within the same tour company, prices can fluctuate quite a bit depending on dates and flight options. Never mind year to year increases and add ons. I tried to duplicate the costs you mentioned on another thread, and couldn't come close. If someone has an interest in a particular tour, they should be able to easily find the prices on that company's website. And if they are savvy, do a detailed side by side comparison of several tours before making a firm decision. Different tours will fit the travel priorities of different people.

Flummoxed as to how this thread ended up talking about tours, when that is not what the OP was asking.
For Nile cruise, check out Djed. IMHO, a dahabiya is the way to go. Tons of Nile cruise boats, many are big and ugly and take over 100+ passengers. Our dahabiya had 4 people with 8 crew. Also, they guarantee they will sail no matter how many book.

Re our 2019 Egypt tour with Trafalgar, the land only price per person w/o insurance was $2595.00 for the "Wonders of Ancient Egypt" tour, 12 days, 11 nights, most meals included. Abu Simbel was the only optional excursion and involved air fare from Aswan to the site in the desert. I don't recall that price, but it was a few hundred dollars for two, and well worth it. I don 't know if the cruise only part is possible. Trafalgar used Spring Tours for on the ground, and they were great. Our guide was Ramadan Bassyouni and he was one of
the best guides we have encountered in our travels. You may try to contact Spring Tours in Egypt yourself to seek a cruise only visit. Good luck in your search!

We traveled fromn LA to Cairo on Lufthansa, changing planes in Frankfurt, and returning the same route in reverse. We are former fans of Lufthansa, but our flights going and returning were all horrible....hard, miserable seats, poor meal service, and rowdy fellow passengers who were never asked by the attendants to please return to their seats when they were leaning all over others' seats to converse with their friends and almost shouting in your face. The seats, bathrooms and meals were all deplorable, as was our very long and arduous route through Frankfurt airport to transfer. We nearly missed our connection even though we had three hours. Next time I will opt for Turkish Air and a change in Istanbul. When visiting Turkey their planes, service, and the Istanbul airport were all superb, and we just flew regular coach.
And I wouldn't take British Air through Heathrow if you can avoid it. Going to Kenya our bags didn't make it to us for four days. When at a safari camp, you can't go out and buy new underwear or sundries! We made do, but it wasn't easy And they lost our bags again on the return home! What a fiasco British Air was.
Please research your transportation to and from Egypt carefully. Be aware that most flights to Europe (where you will probably transit) usually leave Cairo around midnight or 1:00 a.m.

Another vote here for Djed Egypt and a dahabiya cruise. I have toured with them twice, and am looking for a good excuse to do it again.

All of their tours are custom, and so the pricing depends on what you want to do and what kind of accommodations you want. What we paid was in line with what we had originally budgeted for ~14 days with Road Scholar or Odysseys, but our tour was 19 days, including the dahabiya cruise and lots of other activities. We thought it was an excellent value.

The dahabiya cruise was one of my favorite parts of the trip. My enjoyment of cruises is generally inversely proportional to the size of the vessel. 10 people? I'm happy. 200 people? Eh, maybe. 2000 people? No thanks. A dahabiya, cruising by sail with a maximum of 10 passengers, is my idea of an ideal cruise. I love being able to explore ancient sites without a crush of crowds, and we had most of the cruise stops -- Esna, Edfu and Kom Ombo -- to ourselves. Of course, different people have different travel styles, and that kind of travel might not work for you.