Luxor

Karnak is not a temple, it is 200 acres of temples built and rebuilt over 1,500 years, and the Hypostyle Hall alone has 134 columns the size of factory chimneys. Tickets are around 600 EGP for foreign adults. Be at the gate for the 6 am opening: you get an hour with the light raking through the columns, almost nobody in your photographs, and you miss the 40 C afternoon entirely. Walk the whole processional axis down to the sacred lake, then double back through the eastern courts, which most tour groups skip. Two and a half hours is a proper visit; ninety minutes is a rush.

The standard ticket, about 600 EGP, gets you into three tombs of your choosing from the open rotation, and the best ones are sold separately. Seti I is the masterpiece and the most expensive by a wide margin; Tutankhamun is small and famous; Nefertari, over in the Valley of the Queens, is the finest painted tomb in Egypt. If you buy one extra, make it Seti I. Of the standard three, Ramses VI, Ramses III and Merenptah have the best-preserved colour. Go at 6 am, because the valley is a stone bowl and by 10 it holds heat like an oven. Photography inside costs a separate ticket.

The public ferry from Luxor Corniche to the West Bank costs 5 to 10 EGP, runs constantly from early morning until late, and takes eight minutes. It is the local boat, not the tourist one, and it drops you where the bikes and taxis wait. A bicycle is 100 to 150 EGP a day and the West Bank is flat, which makes the ride between Hatshepsut, the Colossi of Memnon and Medinet Habu genuinely lovely before 9 am and genuinely punishing after 11. For the full circuit including the Valley of the Kings, a taxi for the morning is 600 to 900 EGP and worth every pound in summer.

Luxor food splits into two worlds: hotel buffets and the small places behind the souq. Sofra, in a restored house in the Bayadeya district, is the reliable middle — tagines, mezze and a rooftop, around 250 to 400 EGP a head. Cheaper and more local, the kebab and kofta grills on Television Street will feed you for 120 to 200. The souq off Sharia al-Mahatta has the fruit, and the sugarcane juice stands charge 10 to 15 EGP a glass, which in July is the best money you will spend all day. Alcohol is limited outside the hotels, so plan around that rather than against it.

November to February is the season: 22 to 27 C by day, cold enough at dawn for a jacket, and light that photographers plan trips around. March and October are warm but manageable. May to September runs 40 to 45 C and the monuments become a test of endurance rather than a pleasure, so if you come then, everything happens between 6 and 10 am. Hot-air balloons fly at first light almost every morning year-round, weather permitting, at roughly 2,000 to 3,500 EGP per person. They cancel for wind, and a cancelled flight is a good sign about the operator, not a bad one.

The genuine risk in Luxor is heat, not crime. Carry two litres of water per person for a morning on the West Bank, wear a hat, and treat any headache or nausea as a reason to stop immediately and get into shade. Hassle around Luxor Temple and the ferry landing is persistent but harmless, and a firm no while continuing to walk ends it. The caleche horses are the ethical problem — many are underfed and overworked, and the ride is not worth it. If you want to be driven somewhere, take a taxi. Tourist police are on 126, ambulance on 123, and both answer.