from $8,225* per person	12 Days	Year-round
Luxury accommodations		Exertion level: 4
Operator: Geographic Expeditions		18 people max

Egypt and the Nile: the two are inextricably linked. Almost 2,500 years ago, Herodotus, looking back even then on 25 centuries of recorded history, wrote, “Egypt is an acquired country, the gift of the river.” The ancient Egyptians took advantage of their bountiful gift by building a civilization almost alien in its grandeur, ennobling the Nile’s banks with stunning monuments to their overweening sense of destiny. Even before the days of Herodotus, Egypt and its lifegiving river were lodestones of the imagination, as they were to the great 19th-century traveler H. M. Stanley, who wrote, “To those who wish to be wise, to be healthful, to borrow real pleasure from a serious life, I would say, come and see the Nile.”

After good looks at the wonders of Cairo and Aswan, we spend seven days on a classic dahabeya, the kind of sailing ship that took Mr. Stanley and generations of thrilled Thomas Cook travelers their leisurely way down the Nile. No gyms, business centers, or room service, but a fine, sweetly dependable and comfortable vessel in which to, as Kipling wrote, “run the gauntlet before Eternity,” contemplating the timeless riverside life of this river, visiting the Temple of Horus at Edfu, the massive ruins of Kom Ombo, and, of course, Abu Simbel, sentinel of Eternity.