Though its name evokes one single, iconic sight, Petra is more than just Al Khazneh (the Treasury): it is an entire city of 800 monuments, temples and tombs carved into coral-pink sandstone canyons in the third century BC. The ancient capital of the Nabateans was unknown to the West until 1812, but even after all this time, nothing prepares visitors for the sight of the Treasury emerging at the end of a narrow gorge like a glorious, golden, ornately chiseled dream. 

Mysterious petroglyphs, fire-red desert sands and vast rocky canyons: Wadi Rum is the poster child of desert escapes, in no small part to its role as the backdrop to the 1962 film Lawrence of Arabia. Explore the dramatic, almost-Martian landscape by day, and brave the chill of dusk to see it transformed by night, when Bedouin campfires crackle in the dunes and stars become ancient tools of navigation.

Parisian-style boulevards and souks fragrant with cinnamon and sumac; mosques, museums, skyscrapers and the Citadel: Cairo amazes. It is the gateway to any venture into Egypt’s ancient past: Giza’s Pyramids beckon, but so too does Memphis, the legendary city founded in 3100 BC; the ancient necropolis of Sakkara, whose six-stepped pyramids represented the pharaoh's passage to heaven; or Dahshour, where the 'Bent Pyramid' cuts a curved dash against desert skies.

Gazing into the Nile, Aswan’s Philae temples have stood since the seventh century BC, the golden totems of a region murmuring with millennia of history. Here, too, lies the remarkable archaeological site of Kom Ombo, whose temple is dedicated to the crocodilian god Sobek; indeed, you may spot his reptilian successors basking in the desert sun as you ply the Nile’s easy, fabled waters aboard one of A&K Sanctuary’s luxury riverboats.

The thread of ancient Egypt unspools in Luxor, a lush oasis in the Saharan sands. In every direction, the same “wonderful things” archaeologist Howard Carter described upon his excavations in 1922: the spectacularly preserved Edfu Temple, dedicated to Horus; the Temple of Luxor’s imposing obelisk; and the iconic Valley of the Kings and the Queens, hidden away in the silent, rocky folds of the landscape.