Egypt

Cairo is a megacity that sits at the crossroads of ancient and modern — the Great Pyramids of Giza are literally at the city's edge. The Egyptian Museum holds treasures spanning millennia, Islamic Cairo's mosques and bazaars are a maze of history, and the Nile runs through it all. Chaotic, overwhelming, and absolutely unforgettable.

The world's greatest open-air museum — ancient Thebes holds more monuments than anywhere on earth. The Valley of the Kings, Karnak Temple, and Hatshepsut's mortuary temple are staggering. Hot air balloon rides at sunrise over the West Bank are unforgettable.

Egypt's southernmost city sits at the First Cataract of the Nile, where the river narrows around granite islands and the Sahara meets Nubian sandstone. Once the ancient frontier town of Swenett guarding Pharaonic Egypt's southern border, Aswan today is the launching point for Abu Simbel (280km south), Philae Temple (relocated to Agilkia Island after the High Dam flooded its original home), and felucca cruises around Elephantine Island and Kitchener's Botanical Garden. The Nubian villages on the West Bank — Gharb Soheil and Heisa — preserve the language, music, and indigo-and-ochre architecture of a culture displaced when Lake Nasser drowned 44 villages in the 1960s. Significantly hotter, drier, and quieter than Cairo or Luxor; population ~290K.

Egypt's flagship Red Sea resort city, built around the southern tip of the Sinai Peninsula where the Gulf of Aqaba meets the Gulf of Suez. The combination of year-round 25-degree water, vertical coral walls metres from shore, and one of the planet's best wreck dives (the SS Thistlegorm, a WWII supply ship sunk in 1941) made Sharm a global diving capital. Naama Bay anchors the all-inclusive strip, Ras Mohammed National Park guards the most pristine reefs at the peninsula tip, and the Strait of Tiran islands sit a short boat ride offshore.

Egypt's Red Sea Riviera, strung along 40 km of mainland coast facing the Sinai across the Gulf of Suez. Once a quiet fishing village, Hurghada exploded into the country's largest beach-resort cluster from the 1980s onward and now functions as the lower-cost mainland counterpart to Sharm El Sheikh. The Giftun Islands sit a 30-minute snorkel-boat ride offshore, El Gouna (the upscale planned town with its lagoons, marina and golf course) is 25 km north, and Hurghada International handles direct charters from across Europe and the former USSR.

Egypt's second city and the Mediterranean's great Levantine port - founded in 331 BC by Alexander the Great, capital of the Ptolemies, home of Cleopatra, the Pharos lighthouse, and the original Library that for centuries was the brain of the ancient world. Modern Alexandria is a 5-million-strong waterfront city of crumbling Belle Epoque facades, the 2002 Bibliotheca Alexandrina (a 172-million-euro modernist reincarnation of the lost Library), the Catacombs of Kom el Shoqafa, the 15th-century Qaitbay Citadel built on the lighthouse foundations, and a humid sea breeze that feels nothing like the Sahara three hours south.

A Berber oasis of date palms and salt lakes 50 km from the Libyan border, marooned in the Western Desert at the bottom of the Qattara Depression. Siwa was the seat of the Oracle of Amun (consulted by Alexander the Great in 331 BC, who is said to have been told he was the son of a god) and is built around the eroded mud-brick ruin of Shali Fortress, which melted in three days of unprecedented rain in 1926. The Siwi people speak their own Berber language, eat their own food, and have kept the oasis culturally distinct from Arabic Egypt across the 8-10 hour drive from Cairo.