About us

it is about “Discovery Your Way”. No groups, No flags, No fixed dates. You can see the parts of Egypt that interest you most, on your dates, with your own driver and guide.

it is designed to your interests, with 1:1 help from your own dedicated Egypt specialist, every step of the way!

Travel has changed dramatically over the past 100 years. Over time, as it became easier and simpler, travellers collectively lost our sense of adventure and exploration. We instead stuck with pre-trodden formulaic tourist trails. With all of the corners of the world available to visit and truly unique experiences on offer they instead chose to congregate en masse in the same areas. This meant the unique magic that made these areas famous was lost to the crowds of over tourism. As the world shrunk, so did their imaginations. They chose destinations in order to compete or keep up with friends, neighbours and strangers on social media. They spent more time on planes than in destinations and more time ticking boxes or counting countries than making memories. Ultimately, they adjusted destinations to their needs than instead learning new ways of being.

We established Egypt Local Guide to create a community of like-minded travellers. We also offer journeys through some of the most interesting and life changing parts of Egypt. Exploration isn’t simply grand feats of polar or naval navigation. At its very core it is simply travelling through an unfamiliar place in order to learn about it. We prefer the real, the raw and the revealing. Our preference is to explore a destination and all of its elements, its nuances and its lessons.

We explore because we can. That being said, we don’t think that exploring somewhere new or amazing should be limited to people of a particular budget, or background, or age. Putting the joy of discovery back into travel and recapturing the magic travellers had on their very first adventure, irrespective of budget, is our priority. We do this with real connections, real discoveries and real experiences. As a result, we offer custom bespoke luxury itineraries through remote environments and authentic tours for all price ranges.

More importantly, we firmly believe that travellers need to stop doing trips that they “should” be doing. They should instead do the adventures they actually want to do.

It’s pretty simple. we are nothing without our travellers . Our company beliefs can be summed up in four words: Be good, do good.

For our travellers, we aim to welcome everyone warmly into the society and treat you with the utmost amount of honesty and fairness. You are trusting us with a travel dream that may have been built over decades and we want that process to be as enjoyable as possible. The safety of our travellers and the guarantee of quality are two of our driving principles. We regularly monitor all of our destinations, looking for any situation that could jeopardise these principles. If it arises, we take the necessary steps to either rectify the situation or remove the cause.

Our destinations are some of the most rewarding and exciting in Egypt and we are privileged to be able to show you around them. We want to ensure that these destinations benefit from your visit and are around for future generations to enjoy. This includes supporting and amplifying sustainable initiatives, whatever the source may be. We also look to support local projects to ensure some of what we get we give back, including a percentage of any profit we make. There is also zero tolerance for exploitation of people, animals or the environment, including a strict no animal interaction policy.

Our destinations can be places that inspire and intimidate travellers. With these amazing destinations we are always mindful that we are taking care of more than just travel arrangements and recommendations but instead are handling the long held dreams of our explorers.

With this in mind, we try to maintain as open and honest a conversation with you as we can. We are happy to chat about why we recommend what we recommend or do what we do.

Planning travel can be exhausting. There is so much information and yet so little clarity. Often you end up more confused than when you first started. So, we thought we’d explain how we travel at Egypt Local Guide and introduce you to our planning process.

You might notice there aren’t many tours featured on the website. It’s intentional. We don’t want to just throw you on a tour that sort of fits and move on to the next person. We like to take the time to understand what you really want on your journey and offer suggestions from there. Sometimes it’s simple and easy to figure out. Sometimes it means asking you more questions and diving deep into your motivations. We often find that the perfect trip our travellers have can be very different from their original enquiry. We always ask ourselves “What is best for this person’s expedition?”.

So, when you reach out to us we will begin to work together to plan an amazing adventure for you. This might be via email, video chat, phone or messages, whatever suits you best. We’ll walk you through the whole process and make sure you are perfectly matched with the trip of your dreams. The Egypt Local Guide will be there from the first moment you get in touch until after you come back home with countless memories to share. We’d also love to see your photos, but please limit them to the top 500!

We are so passionate about the places we visit and the amazing experiences we can offer in them. Much of that is due to the contributions of the local people who call that area home. As much as possible we endeavour to see that the benefits of your travel go to those in the area you visit, rather than leaving and going into the pockets of some grand corporation elsewhere.

We support projects that support locals and enable tourism as a force for good.We offer a variety of travel styles under various categories. Each of these allows travellers to explore places in different ways, yet all offering amazing travel experiences. Whether you are after the bare bones of a trip, something more comfortable, the utterly indulgent or a combination of all of them, the choice is yours. Sometimes there is a crossover between travel styles and we can even create a unique combination style just for you!

The idea behind the travel styles is to offer you an incredible trip irrespective of your budget. Above all else, we try to make sure that each style offers amazing value for money and also gives the best possible trip for the style chosen. Any budget can offer both good and bad trips. So, we have worked hard to ensure that the quality remains appropriately high for each style. There are clear differences within each trip style and obviously the larger the budget, the more luxurious or adventurous you can be. That being said, just because you may not have deep pockets doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy a destination or experience. Our primary focus is to give people a chance to explore the world in a way that suits them.

We’ve worked hard to figure out what works best for each destination. In some destinations, there is some crossover between styles. In some remote destinations we are limited to certain styles of travel whilst in others we have all the options to offer. We can talk you through what may suit you best during our first consultation.

We are nothing without our destinations and with a number of us having young children we are extremely aware that the destinations we visit today may look markedly different, or not exist, later in our children’s lifetimes.

We support businesses that have a sustainable approach to their environmental practices, whether it be through their energy usage, food sourcing, carbon offsetting or wildlife protection programs.

At Egypt Local Guide, we are all professional travellers, travel professionals and explorers of the world. We have all worked for many years within the global travel industry and possess the logistical experience required for both the simplest and most complicated of itineraries. In addition, we have also each climbed mountains and glaciers, dived coral reefs and shipwrecks, rafted down raging rivers and walked through wild African savannah. We have eaten street food of unknown origin and at fine dining restaurants. We believe in travel as a force for good. Our aim, through travel, is to both provide opportunities for remote communities and also to build larger communities around learning, cultural understanding and shared experience.

With the founders alone having a combined 40 years of travel industry experience, and the experience of working in all areas of the industry, we have the knowledge and know-how to make any trip a success. Egypt Local Guide itself is new compared to the long-running giants of the industry. However, our experience with our destinations as they are today is unmatched.

In our experience, we’ve found that having a long-running company can often lead to apathy and complacence. Just because things have always been done a certain way doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t constantly look for better methods. When initially creating Egypt Local Guide we painstakingly looked at all aspects of the company and how we could improve them. As one example, we decentralised our offices (or “outposts”). Because of this, we aren’t restricted to only hiring available people from the immediate vicinity of the office location, like most other travel companies. Instead, by offering our team the option to work from anywhere there is a reliable internet signal we have been able to hunt for the finest experts for all our destinations, irrespective of their address (or in some cases, current location).

founders and directors Nahla & Ahmed were a guides but were frustrated that travelers only scratched the surface of Egypt. Nahla & Ahmed knew there was so much to see and experience outside the group tour experience. Back then all tours were all fixed, and travelers had zero flexibility to create a trip around their interests.

Nahla & Ahmed wanted to get people off the beaten track, of the guidebook, out of sterile parks, official attractions, and beyond the typical tour routes.

They wanted to remove detours to touristy stops , and instead take people into the countryside, to talk to the farmers, to try some authentic food at the kind of restaurants his local and overseas friends loved.

So Nahla & Ahmed set about to create an award-winning tour operator, starting a website to help people Discover Egypt their way. Cairo Private Tours was born. The passion, motto, and purpose have never changed,

Discovery Your Way!

We have some outside the box tours. Tailor-make the kind of trip that interests you.