Someone has been dreaming about Egypt for years, they’ve finally decided to go, and they write to me asking about a private visit to the Great Pyramid, the Osirion at Abydos (photo above Nov 2024), the Sekhmet Chapel at Karnak.
The private visits are expensive, and many people would like to spread their cash over more than one private visit by sharing the visit and sharing the cost. It may not be a totally private visit at that point, but it’s still way ahead of the quick in-and-out among the crowds visit.
If you’re one of those people, here’s something worth knowing.
You have a much better chance of actually getting that shared private visit to the Gt. Pyramid etc if I’m booking your whole trip, not just that one piece.
It’s all about logistics, good planning and flexibility in swopping around tour dates.
When someone asks me to slot them into a shared private visit on its own, I’m trying to match one fixed date against whoever else happens to want the same thing on the same day. Sometimes it works but most of the time it doesn’t, and people end up disappointed.
But when I’m building and booking your full itinerary – internal flights, dahabiya or cruise boat, hotel nights, other sightseeing, the whole shape of your sightseeing – I have room to move. I can shift your Saqqara morning by a day, swap your Karnak visit with someone else’s, rearrange who’s doing what on which morning across three or four different groups I’m already coordinating. That flexibility is the entire trick.
It’s not that I have some secret pool of private access sitting around waiting for people. It’s that I can shuffle the whole board until the pieces line up. I can’t do that for someone who’s only handed me one afternoon to work with and depending on someone else’s good graces to swop tour days at the last minute if it comes to that.
Some people email me about the private access piece because they’ve already decided, somewhere in the back of their mind, that the rest of the trip they can figure out themselves. Book some flights, find a driver, read a few blog posts, wing it from there – that’s actually working against them.
I’ve lived in Egypt since 2003 and been actively working as a full time Egypt planning advisor since 2005, and the mistakes independent travelers make are rarely the big obvious ones. They’re the little things like –
- Turning up at the wrong entrance gate to the Giza Plateau thereby wasting time and energy in the heat and chaos.
- Climbing to the entrance of the Gt. Pyramid to find out that ticket sells separately and having to go back again to the ticket office.
- Planning Karnak for the hottest part of the day instead of early morning.
- Driving to the Nobles Tombs in Luxor and being told they should have bought the tickets almost 2 km back the road.
- Discovering the private visit to the Gt. Pyramid of Giza that you wanted needed a permit that should have been arranged weeks ago, or contacting me too late to match up with a small group.
- Being stranded at the Citadel because there are no passing taxis to hail for the return journey to the hotel.
- Spending half a day in shops not on the itinerary because the driver or part-time unregistered guide booked online earns commission there.
- None of those things ruin a holiday on their own, but add on a few more frustrations and together they change the whole experience.
None of that is about money. It’s about understanding Egypt, and knowing how everything works behind the scenes so one experience flows into the next.
I can build you something at whatever level suits your budget – lean and well-run, or the full high end experience, or somewhere in between. What I’m really selling you is not having to guess what could go wrong on your own and having to cover all the bases.
And if it’s that shared private access that first brought you to me – good. Just know the way to actually get it is to let me plan around it, not just slot into it.
If any of this is where your head’s at for a trip to Egypt in 2026/27, tell me your dates and roughly what you’re working with, and I’ll see what I can put together.
Last updated on 16/07/2026 by Marie Vaughan