Road Trip in Egypt: The Red Sea to the Nile

We nearly gave up on our Hurghada to Luxor road trip before we even began after initial research brought up sensational articles like “most dangerous road in the world”, “it’s a death trap”, “bandits, militant activity and a very high accident rate”. Sources cite mandatory applications for permission to travel, the need for police escorts, convoys, and, it’s just all a load of old hooey. At least it was nothing like our experience in 2024.

This was partly Google’s fault for prioritising “useful content” from TripAdvisor queries from over 10+ years ago, and potentially a pushed narrative from Egyptian tour operators attempting to discourage independent travel. Otherwise it was not true in 2024 where the most terrifying part of the journey was the short drive from Hurghada Airport to our marina hotel.

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Is it Dangerous Driving in Egypt?

I felt relatively calm and confident before setting out with reassurance from the Alamo car hire guy at Hurgaddah Airport telling us “It’s very safe, it’s easy to drive here”. “Driving to Luxor? Not a problem”. Before being thrown onto streets of complete chaos. If you live in Egypt, like the Alamo guy, yes, it may be easy to drive in Egypt. If you’ve rarely driven further than the rural roads of the UK, then, not so much. It all depends on an individual’s comfort in driving. Note, they also drive on the right in Egypt, and maybe stick with an automatic.

Personally, I have taken on road trips through 20-plus countries in Europe, America and Asia. I’ve navigated big cities like Barcelona, New York and Bangkok. I am also a crap driver. I can drive straight to be fair, just don’t ask me to parallel park, or reverse into a parking space etc. My only asset is that I’m used to being thrown into these sketchy situations. Otherwise Fanfan, was more stressed than I was and insisted that the short 6km to our Marina hotel from Hurghada Airport felt more like 30km. It was fairly intense.

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Road Trip from Hurghada to Luxor

One of the main warnings was “Do not drive in Egypt at night”. But this was not an option for us with our airport arrival at sunset, then there’s navigating the airport, immigration, acquiring SIM cards, car hire paperwork… the road trip then begins. Our first scrape near came early on when a car behind me beeped and flashed its lights as I was changing lanes to leave the airport. So I quickly find it’s not the headlights you’re looking for when driving. They’re obvious. It’s the reflections and shadows you have to watch out for as many locals do not use headlights at night other than to signal that they are passing.

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Hurghada Airport to Hurghada Marina

The roads from the airport to Hurghada Marina are wide and comfortable with speed bumps every hundred meters or so meaning the traffic remains relatively slow. There are roughly 5 or so lanes with road markings, or at least there were road markings… they can be seen at times. Otherwise they bare little relevance to the flow of traffic as cars will drive over the lines rather than between them. So it’s best to follow the car in front, and stick to the central lanes as the outside lanes proved to be the most dangerous with buses and randoms stopping to drop off people, boxes, animals… Then drive straight, and hope everyone else maneuvers around you. It works.

I read warnings about donkey carts in Egypt but in Hurghada there are a lot more motorbikes. You ever play the game Frogger, with the Custom Keychains? Where you have to choose the right path to cross the road or get squashed. Well there was this young delivery driver, the frog, who managed to speed across 5-lanes of traffic without getting squashed. It was amazing. They are talented folk the locals where your simple waiter speaks multiple languages fluently, teenage delivery drivers can squeeze camels through the eye of a needle, if only they had learned to drive between two lines.

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Driving from Hurghada to Safaga

The next day we travelled during the daytime which proved a whole lot easier with lighter traffic and the ability to see things. We leave the hotel at midday and it’s just a short 40-minute journey to our next stop at Makadi Bay just south on the Red Sea Riviera. We are in no hurry so decided to book a couple nights in an all-inclusive resort. Again, follow the car in front, drive straight, and the traffic will manoeuvre around you. It really is easy. There are very few junctions and turnoffs either as it’s pretty much one straight road following the shoreline from Hurgadah to Safaga that connects a string of private beach resorts. Otherwise there’s little between and near nothing inland.

One of the more challenging parts of the drive was a 6-lane junction on the way to Saraga with turn-offs to Cairo, Ras Ghareb and I had to be on the furthest lane to Safaga. This meant squeezing across this massive bottleneck of vehicles where I find myself squashed between a dumpster and a horny bus driver. Cars are beeping from all angles and fighting for every inch. It would have been the most stressful part of this stretch but I decided to embrace the chaos it became kind of fun bashing on my own horn and flipping people off. Although I’m not sure you’re meant to flip people off.

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The Package Holiday Resorts

Most tourists in Hurghada fly in for their all-inclusive holibobs, to eat, drink and fart around for a couple weeks then fly home again. They stay on massive resort complexes, with armed security, cut off from the reality of local life, so no street touts, and there’s no haggling on bills as everything is all paid upfront. Admittedly not over-appealing for us but they do offer a safe haven for both us and the car. It’s a lot less risky than parking on public streets. You can also book individual night stays through booking.com with the exact same perks as those on package holidays. Anyway, we stayed at the Makadi Spa, at Makadi Bay, which is part of the Red Sea Resorts.

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Driving from Hurghada to Luxor

The next stretch was the uncertain part. Driving from Hurghada to Luxor, from the Red Sea to the Nile, travelling east to west across Egypt’s Eastern Desert (aka as Arabia, the Arabian Desert, part of the Sahara Desert). The journey takes roughly 3 hours 45 minutes in total to drive from Hurghada to Luxor including 2-hours crossing the eastern desert from Safaga to Qena (Route 60). From Qena it is then an hour or so south, following the Nile, to reach Luxor. And the adventure begins.

First we bypass the port town of Safaga, which is a relatively straightforward drive outside of the town centre. From Safaga it is then a straight road across the eastern desert to reach the Nile. Fortunately the roads are wide with 2-3 marked lanes, relatively recently tarmacked, and are just easy to drive on. No oncoming traffic either as each roadway is separated with the occasional connection to u-turn if for some reason you need to. What little traffic there is surprisingly stick between the lines and most traffic is slow-moving freight trucks. It’s an easy drive.

Note, be sure to fill up on petrol before leaving the Red Sea as there will be no gas stations for another 2-hours (175km) and the last place you want to break down is in the middle of the desert. I’d bring lots of water as well just in case. While the surroundings are desert, they are more mountainous and stony, rather than silky gold sands. It is fairly repetitive for a good hour drive, a bit boring, with endless uninhabitable landscapes, not a glimpse of vegetation, wildlife or a bird in the sky. There is a reason near all Egyptian civilization is found by the Red Sea or the Nile. You can go years without any rain here.

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Police Check Points (Qena Traffic Police)

The landscape changes slightly after an hour or so “You see that? a tree!” before we reach our first checkpoint with the Qena Traffic branch. In total we pass 4 checkpoints but are only pulled over at two. I grab my bag with passports and car registration card but they’re not really interested. “Where you from?”“Thailand and Northern Ireland”. I skipped on the British part in case they ask for their stuff back. “Rosetta Stone? No never seen it!”. They take our number plate, ask if we have a phone and satnav, point us in the right direction “go straight” and send us on our way.

Checkpoints are more for those arriving in the resort areas and major cities (Qena in this instance) for security reasons. Potential miscreants, human trafficking, internal issues, they’re not on the lookout for random tourists. If anything we’re a novelty. I’m fairly sure they were joking around at the 2nd checkpoint when asked if it was just me and my daughter, “It’s my wife. Been married 12-years”. I’m not sure if it was my grey hair or Fanfan’s youthful good looks (or both) but it is also the norm for adult women to wear hijabs in Egyptian culture. Either way I wasn’t sticking around to question it. Fanfan found it funny 🙁

You can continue to Qena (aka New Qena City) but we found no reason to do so. Instead we follow the quickest and most direct route (Google Maps) running parallel to the Nile. Again the landscapes are arid and mountainous for most of the drive before reaching the lush, green oasis of Luxor on the banks of the River Nile. There are (obviously) 2 sides to the River Nile, the East Bank and the West Bank. Fortunately we stayed on the West Bank in Luxor, surrounded by serene local village life, which is in complete contrast to the mayhem of the opposite east side.

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East Bank vs West Bank of Luxor

The traffic along the West Bank of Luxor is different to what we had in Hurghada with added donkey carts and all sorts of weird rural vehicles. I have no idea what half of them are. The main road follows a smaller river on the left with residential and shop house lodgings on the right. The streets are fairly busy not only with vehicles but pedestrians as well so you have to keep watch for randoms crossing out from buses or tuk-tuks. It’s best to just go slow again and keep straight as traffic will manoeuvre around you.

Reaching the hotel was trickier as streets got thinner and thinner after crossing the small river towards the banks of the Nile. It’s more or less dirt tracks but at least there’s no traffic. Our hotel is then situated on the riverside with views over the traditional felucca and riverboats passing on the Nile. On the grounds are hoopoe birds,surrounding are farmlands with horses and buffalo, and it’s like the perfect oasis away from the mayhem of the east bank. At the same time, the hotel offers free shuttle by boat across the Nile and cheap crossings to various Luxor attractions.

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Driving in Luxor (The Local Attractions)

Again, Luxor has two sides: the west bank, where we stay, and the chaotic built-up east bank. While we originally planned to drive across, it was much quicker and easier to mtake the hotel shuttle boat to visit Luxor temple. This was the smart option as the streets are complete mayhem after sunset with horses, taxis, tuk-tuks, whizzing around in all directions. I’d not recommend driving on the east bank at night. But we did get to experience traffic at night with the return journey by taxi, a 40-minute drive from the East Bank to our West Bank hotel, a white knuckle ride at times, costing just 300 EGP (around $6US) for the 20km ride.

Otherwise many of the tourist attractions in Luxor are found on the West Bank (Valley of Kings, Queens, etc. which are simple to drive to during the day. All sites have large parking areas outside, with random fees taken by sketchy-looking parking attendants, who will likely try to lead you past touts flogging tourist tack when there are gates right next to the entrances. It is frustrating as a tourist in Egypt. I also feel sorry for the guy who puts effort into creating the road markings in these car parks as people like to park anywhere but between them.

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Driving from Luxor to Hurghada

We had yet to fill up on petrol since arriving in Egypt but were now running low for our return journey driving from Luxor to Hurghada. So before taking on the return journey we needed first to fill up on petrol which sounded like a simple task. So we checked on Google Maps to find the nearest petrol station and, after a short drive, we pulled up to the pumps to find they were all sold out of Gasoil 92. A new one for me. So I asked the attendant where to find petrol and he pointed me to the opposite east bank for petrol stations. Fortunately this was the direction we were heading in a last-dash visit to Kharnak which was less stressful than expected.

The roads are much quieter before the coaches and tour buses arrive from the Red Sea resorts etc. After a quick tour of Karnak Temple we are back on Google Maps to find the nearest petrol stations. We do find a number nearby but after trying two only to find massive queues we decide to just get petrol along the way. Again Google Maps showed a couple of them on the roads out of Luxor. The problem is they no longer exist. Probably never did. So we find ourselves with 2 bars of petrol and a 65km drive through dessert (1hr 15) to Qena where we near sure we saw a petrol station at the main junction.

2 bars is potentially 1 bar in a mile so we were carefully watching the gauge “How far can a car go in the red?”, “Are you sure that station was in Qena?”, “Are we even on the same road”. It was probably around halfway when we reached a checkpoint to ask some advice “Gasoil? 92?” He pointed up ahead and across the verge to the road running parallel with traffic travelling the opposite way. To reach it we would make a U-turn, cutting across a connecting dirt track, to find the petrol station. And, after pulling up, we are quickly surrounded by 3-4 attendants and it’s all a bit confusing.

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Petrol Stations in Egypt

“Fill her up please”. English isn’t well known in the sticks of Egypt. After a bit of back-and-forth, he just starts to fill her up. I’m kind of wary of these situations so I ask Fanfan to take a video of me and the pumps only the attendants point to a sign showing that photos/videos are not allowed at petrol stations. Fortunately, the price is shown on the pump and they use cards as payment so they can’t really rip you off. Although the guy did add a chunky markup as a tip which I questioned and refused before offering a more reasonable percentage. It’s all peanuts anyway with a full tank (well, 85%) coming to £8.56 in total including the tip.

After another u-turn, via another dirt track, we are back on track with another fairly straightforward drive across Egypt’s Eastern Desert to the Red Sea resorts. Again we bypass Qena then it’s a 2-hour straight drive across the desert. Similar to before but in the opposite direction. Almost all new roads. Traffic driving from the Nile to the Red Sea is next to none, yet we pass a surprising number of cargo vehicles on the shoulders with flat etc. o don’t think vehicle maintenance in Egypt is very strict. We also came across a crash (pictured) which seemed completely bizarre given how little traffic there is on the road. Otherwise it is a smooth, safe and uneventful drive to the Red Sea Resorts.

Again we would travel via Safaga to follow the coastline towards Hurghada where we have another all-inclusive resort stay just 10 minutes from Hurghada Airport. All very straightforward as driving in Egypt has become normal for us now. At least it’s nothing compared to our earlier arrival. We park the car onsite for our 2-night stay at the resort. I am kind of conflicted with these all-inclusive resorts. The great thing is you can eat and drink as much as you like. The problem is you can eat and drink as much as you like. I’m used to bingeing most days of the week so I kind of like to escape it when I travel. Hence this random road trip from Hurghada to Luxor.

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Is It Cheap to Travel in Egypt?

Egypt is both silly cheap and a bit of a rip-off for travel. At local shops and stores it’s silly cheap. Buying stuff in and around the resorts is otherwise a bit of a rip-off with huge markups for tourists. This is why the all-inclusive resorts are quite handy. But were it not for the road trip we would not likely have noticed this as the only other option is being bussed from one resort or tourist trap to the next.

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How Much Does a Road Trip in Egypt Cost?

Silly cheap. For example, at the petrol station out in the sticks, we paid £8.56 for a (85%) tank of petrol. We bought 2 big bottles of water, 1 tin of coke, 2 fruit juices, and 4 packs of crisps (2 big 2 small) which totalled 86EGP (£1.40). It’s unbelievably cheap. Overall we paid £13 for petrol on the road trip in Egypt which covered around 650km. Silly cheap. For car hire it was roughly £10 per day which we then doubled for full cover with AXA. In total for a 7-day road trip, it wasn’t much more than £150. Staying in luxury between at all-inclusive resorts.