Egypt

Egypt is, in one sense, exactly what you expect: the pyramids are as large as advertised, the temples as numerous, the heat as serious. In another sense it takes you by surprise, because the scale of what survives here is not something photographs prepare you for. Civilisations rose and fell across this stretch of the Nile for three thousand years before Alexander the Great arrived, and their physical remains are still standing, still sharp, still covered in paint in the places the sun hasn't reached. That is not a normal thing.

The country divides naturally along the river. Egypt's topography is mainly desert plateau, cut by the Nile valley, and that geography has defined everything: where people settled, where temples were built, where the ancient dead were buried. Outside the fertile strip on either bank, the desert begins immediately and doesn't relent. On the Nile cruise, watching the country from the deck in the afternoons, you can see exactly where the water's reach ends — vivid green right to the edge, then sand. The Nile is also, unexpectedly, a rich green itself when you get close to the banks, a colour that takes some adjusting to.

Pharaonic Egypt thrived for around three thousand years before Alexander's conquest in 323 BCE, after which it became part of the Hellenistic world. Rome followed, then the Byzantine Empire, then Arab Muslim conquest in the seventh century CE. The layers of that history are visible everywhere: Coptic churches built inside temple precincts, mosques alongside ancient ruins, the nineteenth-century colonial fingerprints still legible in Cairo's architecture and railway stock.

I've visited Egypt twice, by different routes. The first was a Nile cruise from Luxor south to the Aswan Dam and back, on a small ship of twenty cabins with silver service meals and a schedule built around the heat, all tours done before the day broke open, back on board before eleven. The temples in that light, in that dry air, are something else. Colours survive in sheltered crevices, blues and yellows still sharp after three thousand years. The bas-reliefs are crisp in a way that feels almost impossible. The second trip was overland with G Adventures: Cairo first, then south by night train to Aswan, across to Abu Simbel, and back up through Kom Ombo and Luxor. The pyramids for the first time. A very different pace, and a very different Egypt.

Both are worth your time. They are not the same country.