Egypt · the one to avoid
Luxor
The verdict
measured — The geometry and the lodging wall are both read. The verdict follows from them. Read 20 September 2026.
Do not book here. Luxor has the longest totality in Egypt — 6m21s, the Sun almost overhead — and it is also where a bed for those nights costs more than the whole trip elsewhere in the path. Go to Marsa Alam, 52 seconds shorter, on the Red Sea, with an airport inside the band and 5.8 degrees cooler.
Visa30 USD per person, on top of every figure below.
- 6m21stotalityour calculation, checked against NASA to 0.2 s
- €2,044where the wall starts · two nights, two peopleBooking.com · read 20 September 2026
- €2,994average of the ten cheapest rooms of the same sample10 rooms sampled, 81 found
What it costs
measured — One query, one platform, one morning — and the same query run in the next town along. Read 20 September 2026.
The same search, changed in exactly one respect — the town — 20 September 2026 on Booking.com, the nights of 1 August 2027 to 3 August 2027, two adults, one room: €2,994 in Luxor against €223 at Marsa Alam, three hundred kilometres away under the same sky.
Through the bed alone, each of the 52 extra seconds Luxor buys you costs about €53. That is the argument of this whole site in one number: the sky is free, the logistics are not, and nobody was measuring the second half.
One platform This is one platform on one morning. It does not say the town is full — "unavailable" is not "booked", and a single inventory is an observation, never a conclusion.
The full argument, with the comparison →
Both rows: Booking.com, read 20 September 2026. How we measure
What to do next
measured — Drawn from the readings on this page. Read 18 September 2026.
- Book Marsa Alam instead. Inside the path, its own airport, and the cheapest bed we measured in Egypt. Marsa Alam, in full →
- Do not fall back on Hurghada. The calculation puts it outside the band: no corona, no darkness, only a deep partial — a different event, not a lesser one.
- Going to Luxor anyway, for Luxor? Nothing here should stop you. Book knowing the room price now, rather than discovering it in June 2027.
Getting there and getting aroundnot collected yet
No operator has been asked about local transport in Luxor. The first two transport campaigns covered nine destinations and this was not one of them — a gap in our scope, not a finding about the town. Expected: the transport pass on Luxor, Marsa Alam and Mecca — action eclipsemission-transport-surfaces-js, 10 October 2026.
Up the line from Aswan
Aswan itself is outside the band. The first station inside totality is Al Gaafra, before Kom Ombo, and it gets 2m09s. Every station after it is inside and the duration climbs the whole way: Kom Ombo 3m39s, Edfu 5m34s, Luxor 6m21s. Being inside the band and being worth stopping at are not the same thing.
By air
We publish no fare for the eclipse window on any route into Egypt. The search engine we read quotes nothing for those dates, which measures its own selling window and not an airline's calendar — a claim that flights were "not on sale yet", with an opening date, stood on this page until 24 August 2026 and was withdrawn for exactly that reason.
Hurghada
Outside the band altogether, whatever the guides say. Flying into Hurghada means driving south on the morning of the eclipse, against a deadline that does not wait.
How we measured thismeasured
Where every figure above comes from, and the limits we put on it ourselves. Read 18 September 2026.
The geometry
Luxor sits close to the axis, so the figures barely move across the city: 6m21s in the centre, at Karnak and at the Valley of the Kings alike, mid-totality 13:05 local with the Sun 81.8° up. Computed from NASA's Besselian elements by our own calculator, checked against the published path table before every run — on 10 October 2026 it agreed to within 0.1 s.
The bed
One query, sorted cheapest first. We publish two figures from it: where the wall starts, and the average of the ten cheapest rooms of the sample. The average rather than the first, everywhere else on this site, because one odd listing drags a floor anywhere. Here both are shown, because the claim being made is about where the wall begins.
⚠️ What this does not say. It describes one platform on one date. It is a sample of the rooms a search returns, not an inventory of the town, and a date decays: we re-read it on a schedule so the curve exists rather than the anecdote. Prices for August 2027 will move again, in both directions.
The sky, which leans Luxor
- Cloud at the hour of totality
- 3.7 %average cover, Copernicus ERA5
- Cloud over the whole day
- 4.4 % to 10.3 %Copernicus ERA5 4.4 % · NASA POWER 10.3 %
- Days under 30 % cover
- 93.2 % to 96.2 %of the 264 days measured, same two sources
Luxor, measured at Karnak on the east bank · 28 July - 7 August, 2001-2024 (264 days) · averages of past years, not a forecast. The two reanalyses agree to within 5.9 points, which is why the range is published as it stands rather than arbitrated. The reanalysis cell that covers Luxor is read at Karnak; the whole city sits inside it.
Climatology: NASA POWER · Copernicus ERA5 · EUMETSAT CM SAF. How we measure cloud
"Same eclipse, same sky" is a measurement here, not a figure of speech — and it does not fall in favour of the cheap option. At the hour of totality Luxor averages 3.7 % cloud against 8.9 % on the Red Sea coast: inland desert is clearer than a coastline, which is what a coastline does. Of the 88 sites along this path we publish a figure for, Luxor is the 9th clearest at that hour. The gap is 5.2 points — real, small, and not what decides this trip. The price of the bed is.
The heat, which leans Marsa Alam
The sky argument above runs the other way once the thermometer is in it. Over the same window and the same years, Luxor averages a daily maximum of 41.7 °C, reaching 40 °C or more on 85.2 % of days, against 35.9 °C and 0.4 % on the coast. The sea breeze buys back 5.8 degrees for a sky 5.2 points cloudier.
⚠️ What this does not say. These are daily maxima from NASA POWER over 264 days, not the temperature at the hour of totality. Totality falls near solar noon, so the maximum is the closest proxy available, and it is still a proxy. Unlike the cloud figures there is no second source to bound it, so it is published as one number rather than dressed as a range.
Getting in
Visa required, obtainable from an Egyptian consulate in France or on arrival in Egypt. France Diplomatie, read 15 September 2026, states it in these words: “Single entry visa (Tourism) 30$ / Multiple entries visa (Tourism) 65$”. Passport valid at least six months beyond the return date. No official page we could reach publishes a processing time, so none is claimed here.