Luxor

Luxor is two cities sharing one name. The modern city is loud, sprawling and full of tuk-tuks; the ancient one runs along both banks of the Nile and holds the largest concentration of ancient buildings in the world.

On the east bank, Luxor Temple and the Karnak complex sit in the middle of the modern city, which is convenient and chaotic — you will walk through traffic to reach a 3000-year-old gateway. On the west bank, the Valley of the Kings and the temples at Deir el-Bahari sit in a quieter landscape of sugar cane and mud-brick villages, reached by ferry or by road over the bridge.

Timing

Almost everything opens around 6 am and the heat builds by 10. The standard advice is to do the west bank first, when the tombs are coolest and emptiest, then cross over to Karnak. Follow it. The tombs are unpleasantly humid and you will not enjoy them at midday in June.

The hot air inside the Great Hypostyle Hall at Karnak is genuinely hard to take. Two hours is enough to see it; more than that is endurance rather than interest.

One thing most people skip

The Workers' Village at Deir el-Bahari — the mud-brick settlement built for the workers who constructed the temple — is usually empty, and it is the place where you understand who actually built these things.