Luxor holds a third of the world's ancient monuments in one river bend, and a surprising share of it costs nothing. Sphinx avenues viewed from the railings, a 10 EGP ferry across the Nile and 60 EGP clay-pot tagines keep three full days cheap.
A 2.7km processional road of some 1,050 ram-headed and human sphinxes, reopened in 2021 between Luxor and Karnak. Railings along Sharia al-Kabbash follow its full length, so you can walk beside the sunken avenue and photograph it without a ticket.
An 11th-century mosque perched on Luxor Temple's buried courtyard, its doorway now some 8m above the pharaonic floor. Reach it by the outer stairway on the temple's north side, outside the ticket gate, between the five daily prayer times.
A compact museum cut into the Corniche riverbank: mummified cats, crocodiles and baboons, embalming hooks, canopic and natron jars, and the priest Maserharti. Open 09:00-17:00 and a fraction of the cost of the West Bank tombs.
The public ferry crosses to the West Bank from the jetty below Luxor Temple for about 10 EGP, running every 15 minutes until late. Locals board with bicycles, sacks of bread and schoolbags; the sunset crossing costs exactly the same as any other.
Luxor's covered market runs a kilometre north from the temple: mounds of cumin and hibiscus, galabeyas, tin lanterns, and a produce end past Sharia el-Mahatta where residents actually shop and prices are not set for tour groups.
A plain kitchen facing Luxor Temple serving kushari, and chicken or vegetable tagines baked in clay pots with bread, tahini and salads for roughly 60-120 EGP a head. Fluorescent light, plastic chairs, portions that defeat most people.
The everyday market behind Luxor train station: dates, guava, summer mangoes, sugar cane bundles, and aish baladi pulled from the oven at around 2 EGP a loaf, with falafel and foul carts feeding commuters off the Cairo trains.
Two blocks south of the temple, this is where Luxor eats after work: asab sugar-cane presses at 10-15 EGP a glass, ta'meya sandwiches from 5 EGP, grilled kofta and liver stands that fire up once the heat drops.
Two 18m quartzite statues of Amenhotep III, the visible remnant of the largest temple ever raised in Egypt. They stand at the West Bank roadside with no fence and no ticket booth, sharpest in early light before the coach convoys arrive.
Hassan Fathy's 1940s mud-brick model village, built to rehouse the tomb-robbing families of Old Gurna: domed roofs, a theatre and a mosque, now half-collapsed and half-lived-in. Free to walk, and a rare 20th-century sight out here.
Rent a bike at the West Bank ferry landing and ride the flat canal lanes through Gezira, Ramla and Kom Lolah — sugar cane fields, donkey carts, buffalo, and the guesthouse belt where a double room runs 300-500 EGP a night.
The bank beside the West Bank landing faces east over the Nile to the floodlit columns of Luxor Temple, with the Theban hills turning pink behind you. Tea from the kiosk is 10 EGP and the view itself is charged to nobody.