This private Valley of the Kings tour covers Luxor’s West Bank in approximately six hours, with hotel pickup and return included. It pairs three open royal tombs in the Valley of the Kings with the terraced temple of Queen Hatshepsut at Deir el-Bahari and a photo stop at the Colossi of Memnon, guided throughout by a licensed Egyptologist from Egypt Luxury Trips. Standard entrance fees, private air-conditioned transport and bottled water are included; special tombs such as Tutankhamun’s take a separate ticket. Because the tour is private, the pace is set by you rather than a group schedule — a real advantage in the Valley, where tomb time is what most visitors run short of. It suits first-time visitors and photographers alike.
Your guide meets you at your Luxor hotel or cruise ship and the day starts without any waiting around for other passengers.
You cross to the West Bank by private air-conditioned vehicle. It is a short drive, and it trades the Nile-side town for the desert hills where the New Kingdom chose to bury its rulers. Your guide uses the drive to set up the geography of the day, so you arrive at the Valley already knowing what you are looking at.
Local insight: This itinerary stays on the West Bank throughout. If you would rather cover Karnak and Luxor Temple on the same day, our Full-Day Luxor Tour: East and West Banks is the version to look at instead.
This is the centre of the day, and the reason most travellers come to Luxor at all.
You enter on the standard ticket, which covers three tombs from a rotating selection. Egypt's antiquities authority decides which tombs are open on any given day, so your guide confirms the day's choices on arrival rather than promising a fixed list in advance. That is not a limitation of this tour — it is how the site works, and any operator promising you named tombs months ahead is overpromising.
Inside, painted corridors run deep into the rock, still carrying colour and the funerary texts written to guide a pharaoh through the underworld. Your Egyptologist reads them with you.
Local insight: Tutankhamun's tomb is the one most visitors ask about. It sits outside the standard three and needs a separate ticket bought at the gate. Decide on the day, with your guide's input on what is open.
From the royal tombs you continue to the mortuary temple of Hatshepsut, and the shift in scale is immediate.
The temple is cut in three flat terraces directly into the cliff face — one of the only structures in Egypt built this way. It belongs to the only woman who ruled as pharaoh in her own right rather than as a regent. You walk the colonnades and chapels where her reliefs once claimed divine birth, a piece of political argument in stone, made to justify a throne that many in her own court never fully accepted.
Local insight: This is the most exposed site of the day. The terraces are open to full sun, so a hat and water matter here more than in the tombs.
A short stop on the way back, and a good final photograph.
Two eighteen-metre statues of Amenhotep III stand alone in open fields. They are the only survivors of what was once the largest mortuary temple on the West Bank, the rest lost to Nile flooding centuries ago. This is a brief stop by design — long enough for photographs and for the scale to register, not a full site visit.
Your guide returns you to your Luxor hotel or cruise ship in the same private vehicle, finishing where your day in Luxor continues from. Roughly six hours, door to door.
Group tours lose time at the ticket gate and moving as a pack between tombs. On a private Valley of the Kings guided tour, that hour goes back into the Valley itself. You decide how long to stand inside each tomb.
The same Egyptologist who takes you through the royal tombs also walks you through Hatshepsut's colonnades and the Colossi stop. Nothing resets, nothing gets repeated, and questions you ask at the first site get answered properly at the third.
Special-ticket tombs, Tutankhamun's included, are not part of the standard entrance fee anywhere in Luxor. We tell you before you book rather than at the gate, and you decide on the day whether to add one.
Pickup and return work the same whether you are in a Luxor hotel or on a Nile cruise ship docked for the day. If you want an earlier pickup or more time at one site, you message our team directly — not a call centre.
The tour runs approximately six hours door to door. That covers the crossing to the West Bank, the Valley of the Kings, Hatshepsut's temple at Deir el-Bahari and the Colossi of Memnon photo stop, plus your return transfer. Your exact pickup time is confirmed when you book, and can be adjusted with our team if an earlier or later start suits you better.
Your standard ticket covers three tombs drawn from a rotating selection set by Egypt's antiquities authority. Which tombs are open changes, so your guide confirms the day's options on arrival rather than promising a fixed list in advance. Tutankhamun's tomb is not included in the standard entrance fee and requires a separate ticket purchased at the gate.
Hotel or cruise-ship pickup and return in Luxor, private air-conditioned transport, standard entrance fees to the Valley of the Kings, Hatshepsut's temple and the Colossi of Memnon, a qualified Egyptologist guide, bottled water, and taxes and service charges. Tickets for special tombs such as Tutankhamun's, meals, tipping and any additional attractions are not included.
Private. Your guide, your vehicle, your pace — not a shared bus. You decide how long to spend inside each tomb and where to linger at Hatshepsut's temple, which is the single biggest practical difference between a private Valley of the Kings tour and a group departure.
Your guide collects you from your Luxor hotel or from your Nile cruise ship if you are docked for the day, and returns you to the same place at the end. The arrangement works identically either way, so cruise passengers do not need a different booking.
Your travel date, your pickup point, whether you are staying in a hotel or on a cruise ship, and any mobility considerations for the Valley's tomb steps and ramps. Send those through the enquiry form and our team will come back with everything else you need to decide.
Because the tour is private, the pace is yours rather than a group's. The Valley does involve tomb steps and ramps, so tell us about any mobility considerations before you book and we will plan the day and the tomb selection around them rather than after the fact.
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