There is something I find rather sad about Egypt. You can spend a fortune here, have one of the world’s most famous travel names organise everything down to the last detail, be treated like a VIP from the moment you land – and still go home without ever knowing that some of the most extraordinary experiences in this country were sitting right beside you the whole time.
Not because they were impossible to arrange, but because nobody thought to ask you if you wanted them, and you didn’t know to ask for them. In Egypt, much like anywhere else in the world, if you don’t ask, nobody thinks to tell you.
I do. I’m forever asking questions myself. What’s behind that locked door? How can I get in there? Why isn’t anyone telling people this exists? I’ve spent much of my life in Egypt looking beyond the obvious, finding out what’s possible and discovering experiences that rarely make it into conventional itineraries.
Private Tour. Private Time. Private Visit. Opening Closed Doors. These are not the same thing.
A private tour means you have your own vehicle and guide, but visit the sites alongside everyone else.
Private time usually means staying a little longer somewhere, or perhaps having a guardian arrange a few minutes of relative privacy.
A private visit is something else entirely: a place or part of a site normally closed to the public is opened specifically for you.
There are four established private visits in Egypt that you will increasingly hear about:
- the Great Pyramid,
- the Sphinx,
- the Osirion at Abydos and
- the Sekhmet Chapel at Karnak.
I arrange these regularly, and they are quite rightly considered highlights. But they are only the beginning.
The Doors Nobody Thinks to Ask About
Beyond those four familiar experiences is an enormous range of possibilities that rarely appear in conventional itineraries. There are places, chambers, chapels and archaeological areas that most visitors never hear about. Some require special permission, the right contacts and considerable planning. Others simply require someone willing to ask the questions.
And not everything is about getting behind a locked door. Sometimes it’s about approaching a familiar place from an entirely different perspective, meeting someone with an extraordinary story to tell, or spending time exploring something that a conventional itinerary would simply pass by.
I could compile a list, but it would be rather pointless. It won’t mean anything to you. What fascinates one person may leave another completely cold.
Opening the Door Is Only Half the Experience
I feel quite strongly that a private visit should never simply be a spectacular add-on to an otherwise ordinary itinerary.
Getting through a locked door is one thing. Understanding what you are looking at is quite another.
Take Sekhmet’s chapel at Karnak. Someone who walks in without any background sees a statue in a dark room. Someone who already knows her story, understands her place in Egyptian mythology and has some appreciation of the beliefs surrounding her doesn’t simply discover her. They recognise her – almost as though they were finally meeting someone they’d been told about all their lives.
That’s where the real experience begins.
This is why I don’t think of a private visit as an isolated event. The other temples, tombs, stories and details along the way all contribute. By the time you arrive, you aren’t walking in cold. You’re arriving with an understanding that allows you to appreciate what is in front of you.
So, What Else Is Possible?
Perhaps you have a particular pharaoh who fascinates you, a goddess whose story you’d love to explore, or a place you’ve read about and never imagined you might actually get to experience.
Perhaps you’ve been to Egypt several times and are wondering what you could possibly discover on another visit. Or perhaps you’re coming for the first time but suspect the usual sightseeing itinerary isn’t quite what you’re looking for.
I don’t have a standard menu of extraordinary experiences to hand out. I want to know what interests you, what excites your curiosity and what you’d love to discover. Then I can start asking questions and working out which doors we might meaningfully open together.
I can’t promise every door can be opened, but I can promise that I won’t simply give you the usual list of sights and tell you that you’ve seen Egypt.
If you’d like to find out which doors might be yours, start at Egypt: Beyond the Expected. It explains how I work, how we begin and what that costs. Think about which pharaoh, goddess or half-imagined place has been nagging at you, and we’ll go from there.
Because the Egypt you thought you knew may be considerably bigger than you imagined.
Last updated on 01/11/2026 by Marie Vaughan