Travelling To Egypt On A Budget

My partner and I had always wanted to travel to Egypt, we wanted to visit the Pyramids of Giza, the Karnak and Luxor Temples, and we wanted to relax near the red sea and do some diving. The only problem was, well, the Pyramids of Giza were in Cairo, the temples that we wanted to see were in Luxor and the red sea was along the side of Egypt. If we were to stay in Luxor we would have been a good 10 hours away from Cairo, and if we stayed in Cairo we would have been 10 hours away from Luxor and a good 4 hours away from the red sea. So we decided that we would spend one week in Cairo and visit the museums and the Pyramids, one week at the red sea in a beautiful place called El Gouna and then spend one week in Luxor to visit the Temples. We had been to North Africa before and knew that the excursions that the hotel usually charged a fortune for were very tiring and pretty stressful, driving hours on end only to get to visit the attractions for half an hour before being bundled back into a coach. We knew that the only way to enjoy Egypt was to take our time and pay respect to the places that we had always wanted to visit.

We decided that we wanted to spend around £700 each on the hotels and flights and we began phoning the travel agents one morning, we must have phoned all of the ones that came to mind and they all told us that it would be impossible to travel around Egypt for three weeks for that kind of money. In fact they quoted it to being about £2000 each for us to fly to Cairo, then for us to fly to Hurghada to get to El Gouna and then another flight to Luxor and a last flight home to England, plus the hotels and the transfers. It was then that we decided to arrange the holiday ourselves and it worked out brilliantly.

First we went online to Travel Republic and booked our hotels. We booked The Delta Pyramid Hotel in Cairo with amazing views of the Pyramids and it cost us £97 for the weeks stay. That was for the both of us and the hotel was in the heart of Giza only 5 minutes’ drive from the Pyramids of Giza. The second hotel we booked to stay in in El Gouna was called The Arena Inn Hotel, it was surrounded by lagoons that lead out to the red sea and it cost for the two of to stay there for one week an amazing £104, it was a peaceful week and we went out every day on the boats and completely relaxed us after our hectic but enjoyable stay in Cairo. Finally we booked The Pyramisa Hotel in Luxor just down the road from the Karnak and Luxor Temples. It cost again for the two of us a staggering £88 and it was only 20 minutes’ drive to The River Nile. For three weeks stay for the both of us to stay in the hotels it came to only £289 with Travel Republic, most of the travel agents that we had phoned were quoting us that amount of money for only one week. It just proves that cutting out the high street agents and booking online is well worth considering.

Once we had the hotels booked we went online to a site called E-Bookers, the flights were a little confusing to work out at first but it was worth the effort and saved us a fortune, we booked return flights with British Airways from London to Cairo for £292 each and internal flights from Cairo to El Gouna for £95 each with Egypt Air. We also booked a bus ride form El Gouna down to Luxor for £30 each and then again another internal flight from Luxor to Cairo for £76 each, again with Egypt air taking us back to Cairo to make our return flight home. The final total for all the flights and transfers came to an almost unbelievable £493 each. In the end the final total for the flights and hotels came to £1275 for the two of us. We had set ourselves a £700 budget each and we had beaten our budget by nearly £65 each. It was so much better than booking a package holiday and everything went as planned.

When we returned from our amazing holiday, we spoke to another couple in our local pub and they told us that they had spent over £2000 for the two of them for only ten days in Egypt; they were rushed from one historic sight to another and never really got to enjoy or experience any of them as the majority of their time was spent driving around on the coach. When you book your holiday with a travel agent all ways keep in mind that the majority of them are simply booking a holiday for you that you can quite easily book yourself. They are adding a big profit for themselves and cutting these people out will save you a fortune in the long run.