Photographing Luxor: from the balloon, at the temples or on the Nile?

If you want the one picture that only exists of Luxor, you fly: the balloon ride over the relics of Luxor costs from €75.65 per person, lasts 3 hours and has 4.8 stars from 1,823 reviews – more feedback than any other balloon ride in Luxor. If instead you want to move freely and choose your own frame, the Karnak Temple and Luxor Temple tour with lunch from €44.70 is the answer. And for evening light from the water, the private sunset felucca sailing trip from €24.93 is enough.

Check prices and dates for the balloon ride over the relics of Luxor

Five tours compared

Tour	Duration	From	Rating	Good for
Balloon ride over the relics of Luxor	3 hours	€75.65	4.8 from 1,823 reviews	Anyone who wants the picture that can only be had from above
Deluxe sunrise ride	3 hours	€55	4.7 from 340 reviews	Anyone who wants to photograph from above and pay little
Karnak Temple and Luxor Temple tour with lunch	4 hours	€44.70	4.5 from 836 reviews	Anyone who wants to move freely among the columns and put people in the picture
Full-day group tour to both banks of the Nile	8 hours	€25.79	4.6 from 2,099 reviews	Anyone who wants to collect as many different subjects as possible in one day
Private sunset felucca sailing trip	2 hours	€24.93	4.9 from 346 reviews	Anyone who wants to photograph the banks from the water in the evening

Three perspectives compete for your camera in Luxor: the view from above out of the balloon basket, the view from below of columns and colossal statues, and the view from the water towards the bank. They do not deliver the same pictures, they do not cost the same, and above all they give you different amounts of time in which you can actually take photographs. That last quantity appears in no offer title.

Total duration is not shooting time

The most important sentence in this article applies to all three perspectives: the number of hours in an offer describes how long you are tied up, not how long you can photograph. Every balloon ride that includes just the ride itself is listed at 3 hours. A single offer puts a figure on the ride itself: the sunrise balloon ride with pick-up (from €75) names a “30- to 45-minute ride”. The remaining hours are spread across pick-up, the drive there, crossing to the West Bank, waiting and the journey back.

Anyone who sees three hours in the calendar and reads three hours of subjects into them is planning past an order of magnitude. On the temple tours the distortion runs the other way: there, usable time is plentiful, it simply rarely falls when the light would be good.

From the air: a single pass

The balloon gives you a perspective you cannot get anywhere on foot: temple precincts, fields and the desert edge in one frame. The balloon ride over the relics of Luxor is with 1,823 reviews at 4.8 stars the most widely reviewed ride in the category, 3 hours, from €75.65. The description names the Colossi of Memnon, the Valley of the Kings and the Temple of Hatshepsut as what there is to see along the way.

What the balloon is not suited for is just as clear. There are no portraits in front of a column, no change of position and no second lap. You travel wherever the wind carries the basket, and the 30 to 45 minutes mentioned are the entire supply. If haze lies over the valley or the basket turns at the wrong moment, that picture will not be handed to you later that morning. Whether flights go up regularly during your travel period is a question of its own; the article on the best time to visit Luxor sets out the seasons.

The price says nothing about the picture

Between the balloon offers there are considerable price differences at identical total duration. The ride over the Valley of the Kings starts at €123.78 with 4.8 stars from 255 reviews, the deluxe sunrise ride at €55 with 4.7 stars from 340 reviews. Both are given as 3 hours. The more expensive offer costs more than twice as much without more time in the air or better visibility being shown for it. What makes up the surcharge is in the option’s service details and nowhere else.

Check availability of the deluxe sunrise ride

I would be just as careful with turns of phrase in the descriptions. The balloon ride with transfers (from €81.66) explicitly promises “breathtaking photos”. This offer has 5 reviews at 4.2 stars. Five responses are not a basis in experience on which to rest a promise about pictures, and a promise about pictures is not one an operator could keep anyway. The deluxe ride also advertises having your camera at the ready. That describes what guests expect, not a feature of the ride. If you want to weigh offers against one another, the comparison of the Luxor balloon offers helps more than the starting price.

At the temples: plenty of subjects, little time to wait

The buildings are the only one of the three perspectives where you move freely: step closer, change the frame, place a person in the picture. The Karnak Temple and Luxor Temple tour with lunch lasts 4 hours, costs from €44.70 and has 4.5 stars from 836 reviews. The full-day group tour to both banks of the Nile is, with 2,099 reviews at 4.6 stars, the most-reviewed tour starting in Luxor, 8 hours, from €25.79.

Check availability of the Karnak Temple and Luxor Temple tour

But that very eight-hour tour shows the catch. It gives you a great many different subjects and almost never the moment in which you can wait for the light. A group moves on to a timetable, and the midday hours, in which a large part of such tours falls, are the hardest time of day for buildings. If you have to choose between the banks, the question of West Bank or East Bank is a better starting point than trying to press both into one day.

The counter-move is a short, private booking. The private sunset tour to Luxor Temple lasts 2 hours, starts at €26.15 and names in its description golden light on columns and statues, a private guide and a door-to-door transfer. At 4 reviews the score of 4.8 is statistically meaningless. The practical advantage remains all the same: private means a stop can be extended without a group waiting. I would have it settled in advance when the visit inside the temple actually begins, because sunset shifts considerably over the year.

On the Nile: one mood, no second attempt

From the water you get the line of the bank, sails and backlight. The private sunset felucca sailing trip is, with 4.9 stars from 346 reviews, the most widely reviewed felucca ride in Luxor, 2 hours, from €24.93. The felucca ride with hotel pick-up is at 4.6 stars from 268 reviews, likewise 2 hours, from €26.65.

The starting price is the lowest of the three perspectives here, but the supply of pictures is narrow. Two hours on a felucca give you, at heart, a single quality of light. If it fails to appear, because it is hazy or because the departure is delayed, there is no repeat the same evening. On top of that comes a point pictures of felucca rides rarely show: a sailing boat heels, it moves, and you have no firm footing.

At night in Karnak: a light spectacle, not a photo workshop

After sunset, the sound and light show at Karnak Temple remains: 2 hours, from €42.98, 4.2 stars from 71 reviews. It is built as a staged production, not as a photo session. The light changes to a script, the audience moves through the site in a set sequence, and whether you may set up a tripod there or how you may use your camera is to be settled with the operator or on site.

That holds more generally. At Egyptian excavation and temple sites there are rules on cameras, tripods and filming, differing by site and by area. I am deliberately naming neither amounts nor a specific rule, because the offer descriptions contain nothing on the subject. Ask the operator before you pack your equipment on an assumption.

Our recommendation

If you have time for exactly one experience, I would fly. The balloon ride over the relics of Luxor from €75.65 delivers the picture that cannot be replaced on foot, and with 1,823 reviews it is the most widely reviewed ride in its category. You do need to read the 3 hours in the calendar correctly, though: that is the total duration, not the time in the air – the only offer that puts a figure on the ride itself names 30 to 45 minutes.

If price is the deciding factor, take the deluxe sunrise ride from €55 – the same 3 hours, 4.7 stars from 340 reviews. If you want to choose your own frame and put people in the picture, the Karnak Temple and Luxor Temple tour with lunch from €44.70 in 4 hours is the better choice. And anyone with only one evening gets, with the private sunset felucca sailing trip from €24.93, the cheapest of the three perspectives – a mood of light you shape yourself, with no second attempt.

The balloon, on the other hand, is nothing for anyone who needs portraits, a change of position or a second attempt. And while the full-day group tour to both banks of the Nile from €25.79 is the most-reviewed tour starting in Luxor, as a day for photography it is the weakest of the five: plenty of subjects, almost no time to wait for the light, and most of that in the midday sun.

With two experiences I would combine the balloon and the temples, not the balloon and the felucca. Basket and sailing boat resemble each other in what they cannot do: in both cases you do not determine where you stand. Only the temple visit adds the perspective in which you move yourself. How to cut a temple day is covered in the combined tour through Karnak and Luxor Temple. A balloon ride in the morning and a felucca in the evening of the same day are doable, but one begins very early and the other ends in the dark – I would split the days and put the temple visit in between.