Sleeper train from Cairo to Luxor

September 25, 2007 6:59 PM

Sleeper train from Cairo to Luxor. . . there are some snags. If you have done this, help my mother out.

My mom is trying to book a sleeper train from Cairo, Egypt, to Luxor, using
this company, Abela Egypt. Unforunately they are not answering e-mails and their phone number has been disconnected.

Tickets can be booked locally, but it is more expensive to do so. If anyone has done this before, any suggestions you might have would be appreciated.

I know this is a long shot, but the hive mind has always come through for me before.

posted by mai to travel & transportation (5 comments total)

It should be easy to book in Cairo -- will she really save a lot of money in advance? If so, there are lots of Egyptian travel agencies on the web. For example, the official www.egypt.travel/
posted by Rain Man at 7:08 PM on September 25, 2007

when i did this, we just went to the train station and booked tickets for the night train the following day. i can understand why your mother would want to book tickets in advance, but if that ends up being difficult, it is pretty easy to do this in person.
posted by netsirk at 9:21 PM on September 25, 2007

I never took a sleeping car, but did do Cairo-Luxor by first class night train. It's not that long a trip to do it a seat -- 9 hours or so -- and I don't remember it as being terribly uncomfortable. Then again, this was 15 years ago, and my tolerance for uncomfortable modes of travel was higher then. It cost LE36.90 at the time, and looks not to have gone up much since.

My point? If buying tickets at the station doesn't bear-out, or if she encounters some of that awesome Egyptian bureaucracy, it shouldn't be too expensive or miserable to tough it out in a first class seat.
posted by mumkin at 11:57 PM on September 25, 2007

I purchased my sleeper car tickets in Cairo through a local tourist agency. It was simple, and if I recall correctly, reasonably priced.
posted by syzygy at 3:23 AM on September 26, 2007

Seconding netskirk. When I lived in Cairo (2004-2005) I took the first-class overnight train (in a seat, not the sleeper) twice, and the second class train once (I loved the second class train, my visiting brother...not so much). Go to Ramses Station with cash, there is an office specifically for the tourist trains there. IIRC, its on the left as you walk into the main station from the Metro stop, with a lot of faded travel posters of the Egyptian sites in various western languages. Have her go as soon as she gets there, though, and if she runs into any problems, make sure she is polite, persistent, and even willing to pay some sort of "additional fee" as mumkin's link suggests. Baksheesh is real, Jim!

Oh, and I would highly, highly suggest a visit to Aswan. After Siwa, it's one of my favorite places in Egypt.
posted by diggerroo at 5:39 AM on September 26, 2007