Tourists Transportation facts for Egypt
In general, I found Egypt quite hard to manage as an independent traveler. Even googling simple topics about Egypt won’t return useful information from solo travelers and all you get is advertisement for tours for the same activity. But above of all, what annoyed us the most was transportation between cities.
For example, If you are not Egyptian and want to travel by train from Cairo to Luxor or Aswan you have to get on tourist night train. And obviously we wanted to go south to Luxor but didn’t like to be told which train to get on. The way it’s sold to tourists, is for their own safety. But just thinking about the basic facts, even if safety of the tourists is the concern, I prefer to be a random tourist among locals on a random train rather than being one of thousands of tourists getting on the tourist night train from Cairo to Luxor and Aswan.
More than tourists safety, It looks like it’s more about tourists money. The cost for the sleeper night train from Cairo to Luxor is 80 $ to 100 $ (1800 LE) and the cost of the first class day train with reserved seat is only 12 USD (195 LE) and it makes sense to justify tourists being on the night train!
Apart from the fact that we didn’t like to be forced on the tourist train, we didn’t like to travel this amazing route during night as well. Cairo to Luxor railway goes south next to Nile, give stunning and spectacular views over the Nile and all the small villages and town by the river bank and it is a shame to travel it during the night. For all these reasons we were committed to get on the morning Train.
Buying the Ticket for the Day Train:
After some investigation, we come up with four possible solutions.
1- The first easy solution was buying the ticket online. If we could buy the ticket online, we could get on the train without being checked, normally they check the ticket somewhere in the middle of the way and there’s no way that they kick a tourist with a ticket off the moving train. We tried it and it didn’t work. I tried both Arabic and English versions of the website and none of them worked all the way to the end so we moved to the second option.
2- For the second attempt, we had to go to Ramses train station in Cairo city center. We heard that there are some ticket machines, that we can buy tickets without getting to ticket booth. This plan failed as well because all of the ticket machines were broken and we moved to the third option.
3- While we were at Ramses train station, the third solution was going directly to the ticket office and ask for the ticket to Luxor!! But we had to go with a local!!! And we didn’t know anyone. So we got to the ticket office which was busy and chaotic and waited to find someone reasonable in the queue who could speak English and were willing to help and after a bit of wait, we saw a very nice guy. After explaining the train number, date and class of the ticket, he was happy to buy it for us. Local ticket office queue is separated for men and women so I had to stay away from the queue and Amir stayed in the queue with the nice young gentleman who offered us help.
Despite the long queue, we managed to get the ticket quite fast. On the left hand side of the same office, two tourists with their tour guide were buying the night train ticket without any queue and we managed to get our ticket even before them. We payed 25 USD for both of our tickets with reserved seats on the first class part of the next morning day train. Mission complete. And by the way they didn’t asked for any ID!! I’ve read somewhere that they might need ID but no one asked for it.
For the night train we had to pay 200 USD and missing the daytime views!
If we weren’t lucky with the third solution, we wanted to move to the forth and the last solution. I’ll put it here as well just in case that it comes handy for someone.
4- If you weren’t successful with any of the three options above, just find out the exact departure time and platform for Luxor train and just get on the train and find a seat in the first class part. Normally the first class won’t be full and you can find a seat. You might need to change your seat as people with reserved seat get on the train along the way but in general there will be a seat available all the way to Luxor or Aswan. When someone came to check the tickets, ask him to sell you the ticket, it might gets slightly more expensive than buying it from the office but it saves the hassle of going to the ticket office. On our next morning train, we’ve met two couples that did the same and everything went well for them. They didn’t sit next to each other and had to change their spot few times but I still think it definitely worth it as the last option.
How to get on the train:
Ramses is the main railway station of Cairo and the Cairo-Luxor train leave from there but after some research we realized that it will stop at Giza station as well. It saved us a lot of time to go to Giza train station instead of the Cairo city center. Read our previous post on why we picked Giza for our three day stay in Cairo here.
We were a little bit nervous though to get questioned in a smaller train station like Giza because technically no tourist supposed to be in the train station in the morning and apart from us, no one was there but everything went well. We’ve been asked by a police officer to sit in a waiting room instead of waiting on the platform after checking our tickets but it was just because he wanted to be nice to us as foreigners, later he came in and let us know when our train showed up. The train was perfect in the first class part, lots of leg room and reclining chair and perfect A/C. Best that lots of European trains I must say. The only thing that I can complain about was the situation of the bathrooms and dirty windows which made it impossible to take any clear photo from our seats.
We left Giza station at 8:30 am and got to Luxor after the dark. The train ride was amazing with stunning views and a spectacular sunset views over the Nile. Definitely recommend it for going to Luxor or Aswan from Cairo or the other way around. In the next post, we share the story of our few days of stay in Luxor! Till then, enjoy the life take care 🙂
