Egypt Packing List – What To Wear, Camera Gear, And More!

So you’ve just booked your trip and secured your spot on a tour. You’ve got the Nile, the pyramids, and ancient temples on your mind. But before you take off, there’s one important question: what do you add to your Egypt packing list?

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Putting together an Egypt packing list isn’t always straightforward. Between the desert heat, long sightseeing days, and cultural considerations around clothing, it’s important to know what to bring so you can stay comfortable and prepared throughout your trip.

Before leaving for my own trip to Egypt with Djed, I documented everything I packed — what worked, what didn’t, and what I wish I had brought. In this guide, I’ll share a practical Egypt packing list, including must-haves, things you can skip, and helpful tips based on real experience in the country.

What To Wear In Egypt

Preparing your Egypt packing list isn’t just about dealing with the heat — it’s also about understanding your itinerary and how you like to travel.

Most trips to Egypt focus on ancient sites like temples, tombs, and the pyramids, which means long days outdoors in the sun, a lot of walking and very little shade.

Some itineraries also include time at the Red Sea in places like Hurghada or Sharm El Sheikh, where beachwear becomes relevant, but for most travelers, lightweight, breathable, and modest clothing will form the core of what you pack.

It’s also worth considering your travel style. If you prefer to pack light, versatile pieces that can be layered and re-worn will go a long way, especially if you’re moving frequently between cities or spending time on a Nile cruise.

No matter your approach, the key is to prioritize comfort, sun protection, and practicality.

What It’s Really Like Traveling In Egypt

• It’s hot — even in ‘winter’: Daytime temperatures can still reach 40°C (104°F), especially around temples and desert areas with little shade.
• The climate is dry and dusty: Expect sand and dust almost everywhere, which can affect what you wear and pack.
• Modest clothing is recommended: Covering shoulders and knees helps you stay comfortable and respectful, especially at cultural and religious sites.
• You’ll be walking a lot: Ancient sites often involve uneven ground, stairs, and long distances in the heat.
• Tight spaces are common: Inside pyramids and tombs, expect narrow passages, humidity, and limited airflow.
• You’ll need more water than you think: Staying hydrated is essential — you’ll likely be drinking water constantly throughout the day.

Clothing Etiquette In Egypt

One of the biggest questions when planning your Egypt packing list is whether there’s a dress code.

The combination of a hot climate and a conservative local culture can make it tricky to figure out what to wear in Egypt. You might be wondering: Can I wear shorts? Are sleeveless tops okay? Do I need to cover my hair?

In general, Muslim culture is conservative so the overall rule of thumb is that you should limit the amount of skin you show and curves especially if you’re a woman. That said, the question we’re sure you’re asking is “how much” you should limit your skin showing? Legit question!

The short answer is that there’s no strict dress code for tourists, but dressing modestly is recommended — both for comfort and cultural respect.

What To Wear At Temples And Cultural Sites

For most of your trip, you’ll be visiting temples, tombs, and historical landmarks in full sun with little shade. The key here is to balance modesty, comfort, and sun protection.

A typical outfit would be lightweight, loose-fitting clothing that covers your shoulders and knees, paired with comfortable walking shoes. Breathable fabrics like cotton or linen work best, and a hat or scarf is essential for protection from the sun.

What To Wear In Cities (Cairo, Luxor, Aswan)

In cities, you have a bit more flexibility, but modest and practical clothing is still the safest choice.

Think casual, breathable outfits that aren’t too revealing — for example, loose trousers or longer shorts paired with a t-shirt or lightweight top. Comfortable footwear is important here as well, especially if you’re exploring busy streets or markets.

What To Wear In Desert Conditions

Desert environments are where you’ll feel the heat the most, especially during midday.

Opt for very lightweight, loose clothing that covers your skin to protect against both the sun and dust. Long sleeves might sound counterintuitive, but they actually help shield you from direct sun exposure. A scarf or buff is also useful for dust and wind.

What To Wear On A Nile Cruise

A Nile cruise is much more relaxed compared to sightseeing days.

During the day, you’ll likely still be wearing your usual sightseeing outfit, but onboard you can switch to comfortable, casual clothing. Evenings are laid-back, so think light layers, relaxed outfits, and something easy to move around in.

What To Wear At The Red Sea Coasts (Optional)

If your trip includes destinations like Hurghada or Sharm El Sheikh, the vibe changes significantly.

Here, you can dress much more like a typical beach destination — swimwear, shorts, skirts, and lighter clothing are all completely normal, especially within resorts. Just keep in mind that modest dress is still appreciated when outside resort areas.

Key Guidelines To Follow

• As a woman, do you need to cover your hair or wear a hijab? – The answer is no. There are some thoughts that for solo female tourists it’s a good idea especially if you’re travelling without a guide in the big city but as a non-Muslim, it’s not something that people will impose on you. At the end of the day, wear what’s comfortable for you. The only exception is when visiting mosques where you’re expected to cover yourself up with a light scarf.
• Do you have to wear long sleeves? – No absolutely not. T-shirts or a short-sleeved shirt are fine, but tank tops are less common. Sleeveless tops may attract attention, especially outside tourist-heavy areas. Tank tops revealing your shoulder is frowned up and you’ll probably get some looks but that’s certainly not to say that we didn’t see people wearing this. Cleavage is a more of a cover-up situation as you will attract unwanted attention.
• Can you wear shorts or capris? – For men and women, it’s expected you cover your knees, so capris are perfect. We’ve read that shorts are okay for men but it’s still better to wear longer pants for sun cover and keeping your legs clean from the sand and dust.
• Are tight clothes allowed? – There’s no rule here for this but again, especially if you’re a woman, you’ll get looks and unwanted attention if you do but a lot of that is because you’re a foreigner. On our latest trip to Egypt, we saw tons of locals wearing tight jeans and ripped jeans as well, so those styles have definitely made their way over. Just like the above, use your best judgement here. Loose-fitting clothing has the benefit of not drawing too much attention but also helping you stay cool in the heat and blends in better with local styles.
• Are flip flops and sandals ok? – Most locals wear these but for long sightseeing days these are not usually practical, opt for closed-toe shoes. We didn’t wear our sandals while on the road (they were exclusively used in the room as slippers), because we didn’t want to be covered in dust and sand. On the Dahabiya this means rinsing your feet every time you get back on the boat but of course the advantage being that you have full ventilation while you’re exploring temples or walking through a village.

The truth of the matter is that while in large crowds and throughout our entire trip to Egypt, we saw people dressing the whole range of clothes. No matter what you wear, when you’re walking through the street of souvenirs, you’re going to get hassled and it’s not because of what you’re wearing but because you’re a tourist.

Dressing respectfully is a good idea but as you’ve seen from our recommendations above, a lot of it is paired with being smart with the climate.

The other thing to consider is if you’ll be travelling through Egypt fully guided like we did. If that’s the case, you’ll never be put into situations where you’ll get awkward stares or aggressive attention. On the Dahabiya Nile cruise, it’s even more easy going because you’ll be spending a ton of time on the boat and on deck, you can wear anything you want.

The Egypt Packing List

If you’re regulars on Going Awesome Places and you’ve seen other packing lists such as for Ethiopia, New Zealand, or Inca Trail, you’ll know that we try to pack light and minimal, but our camera gear and some personal comforts always manage to bulk things up.

It’s worth noting this because every person travels differently and packs in a certain way. As a guy, my set up is totally different than my wife’s but at the same time we are the kind of travellers that make sure we never bring too many pants, that most of our clothes are easily hand-washable, we bring versatile clothes and with that, leverage layers as a way to keep things warm if we need to.

If this isn’t you, that’s totally fine. This Egypt packing list is meant more as a starting point if you’re looking for ideas of what to bring and also to be reminded of things you might not have thought of.

Without further ado, let’s jump into what to pack for a trip to Egypt.

The Bags

For a few years, we’ve been travelling with this awesome combination of bags that really satisfies our needs as travelers and photographers/videographers. The key for us is that it’s versatile. The backpack can be used as a day pack if we need to carry a lot of things and the sling can fit inside when commuting. In situations where we need something light and portable, the 5L Sling was perfect.

We learned quickly in Egypt that, more than anything, having something that is light and not bulky makes things a lot easier because heat exhaustion can hit you pretty hard.

• Peak Design Travel Backpack – This is my carry-on bag and large enough to store my documents, laptop, all my camera gear, the 5L Sling, Tech Pouch, and additional personal items. It gets large and heavy, but it’s worked well for me. Ignore the drone that’s in here though as I’ll get to that later on.
• Peak Design Large Camera Cube – This sized camera cube is great because I can still do side-access but also has a ton of divider space to store everything from lenses, drone, microphones, clothes, or anything else. It keeps everything organized.
• Peak Design Capture – The metal do-hickey attached to the strap is what I use to clip my camera on for quick-access.
• Peak Design 5L Sling – The latest addition to my set up and pairs so well with the Travel Backpack. It’s big enough to fit my camera attached to a lens, additional lens, extra batteries, and personal items which is more or less all you need when you’re exploring ancient sites in Egypt. While I wasn’t able to carry a water bottle with this set up, luckily my wife had a good backpack (Marimekko Kortteli Backpack) to keep us hydrated.

Backpack vs suitcase? In the end, we decided that travelling with a suitcase to Egypt would work just fine because this was the kind of trip where we didn’t need to be incredibly mobile. 

Travelling with a tour company that was full-service like Djed Egypt Travel, you have the luxury of travelling with a bit more bulk because there is a level of service where your luggage is transported from hotel to van, van to Dahabiya, Dahabiya, back to van, and to and from the airport, etc. You don’t need to worry about this sort of thing.

• Standard check-in size expandable suitcase – 4-wheel 26″ roller suitcase.
• Travel-size sports towel – We knew that there would be towels at each accommodation but felt that this was an easy throw-in in case since we heard that there was a swimming opportunity on the Nile.
• Photocopy of important documents – Something you always want to travel with in case you lose something like your passport, credit card, or other important document. Leave this in your suitcase and separate from your day-use bag.
• Stuff sack for dirty clothes – This is a standard 20L/medium stuff sack that we use to throw in things that need to be hand washed.

Clothes For Egypt

When it comes to what to wear in Egypt, this is honestly my typical set up for trips. You’ll find that it’s t-shirt heavy, but what may be a bit unique is that we brought along more of our ‘safari’-type of clothing in the buttoned shirts, which are great because they’re more conservative and also well-ventilated.

• Assorted t-shirts – I packed a total of 7 t-shirts for a 10 day trip.
• Pistol Lake long-sleeve henley and short-sleeves t-shirt – While they have since closed up shop, this is still one of my staple shirts for travel. These are super light, easy to wash, and simple shirts that go with any travel scenario.

• Calvin Klein white linen shirt – While not completely necessarily, this was a nice clean shirt to be able to switch to at the end of the day on the Dahabiya.
• Mountain Hardwear short sleeve shirt – Also no longer available, but one of my go-to and similar to the Columbia shirts, this is the long-sleeve version that has all the same benefits.

Pants are always hard to decide because you’d love to bring more but you have to be resigned to the fact that you’re just going to wear the same few pants over and over. Nobody’s judging! The key here is that jeans just don’t make a lot of sense (ever) and to bring a mix of things depending on what situations you might run up against.

• Shorts – Knowing that temperatures would get close to 40C, this was a late addition.
• Capris – A solid extra pair of trousers to mix things up for variety.
• Casual pants – These are great long pants by Uniqlo that are light, comfortable thanks to the drawstring waist and quite breatheable.
• Khakis – One pair of more technical khakis by Columbia that were perfect for dessert conditions and again light, washable, breatheable, and comfortable.

Here’s what I packed in terms of undergarments.

To round this out, here are a few additional layers and shirts that I packed for Egypt.

• Switchfoot light windbreaker – A super thin light jacket in case it’s needed.

Okay probably a little bit extra but I brought two hats and a buff for this trip.  The full-brimmed hat was what I was feeling for Egypt and something I was looking to use in photos.

• Buff headwear – Something we bring as a versatile piece of gear great for wiping sweat, as headwear, to clean things, or anything else you can come up with.

Lastly, is footwear.  This is also another challenging part of packing because it’s easy to get carried away here and that can be a problem because shoes are very bulky.  We may have gotten carried away here but here goes.

• Keen Explore Vent – In Merlot, this was my primary sneakers style shoe for the trip, and it did incredibly well. The fact that it was ventilated meant that my feet stayed relatively cool but that also did mean that sand could get in.
• Peak Design shoe pouch – A small accessory by Peak Design but nonetheless quite useful as a lightweight bag to store shoes while keeping your suitcase clean.

Personal Items

The below are a few miscellaneous essentials that are going to be important for a trip to Egypt.

• Sun Bum 50SPF sunscreen – There’ll be LOTS of sun.
• Strepsils – I get sore throat easily so a pack of these is always in my bag.
• Hand-sanitizer – Always handy to have especially at restaurants and spontaneous snacking.

As far as other personal items, these are some of the things that were usually on us or in our pockets.

• Maui Jim Chee Hoo sunglasses – As we’ve said many times before, once you go Maui Jim, you can’t go back.
• Burt’s Bee’s lip balm
• Sea to Summit wallet
• OCS dive watch – Not that we were going to be diving on this trip but this is my only rugged sports watch so it usually comes with me.
• Travel insurance paperwork – Using Kanetix, we purchased another year of multi-trip annual travel insurance, and this slip is just a small “cheat sheet” of my policy and coverage provided by Allianz.
• iPhone 11 Pro

Camera Gear

For this trip to Egypt, extra gear had to be packed because we knew that we’d be filming video as well. That said, most of what you see here are part of my standard photography and videography kit.

Starting from the top and working our way down:

• Olympus microfibre cloth
• Peak Design Leash – While I don’t use this very often, in situations where I need my camera to sit around my neck, this is always available in my backpack.
• TASCAM DR-10L portable lav – Not something we normally bring but we knew we needed something to record good audio for interviews.
• Rode VideoMic Pro – Shotgun mic for those same interviews as better back up audio.
• Formatt Hitech filter set – This is primarily used for long-exposure photography and consists of the Elia Locardi Signature Edition set.
• B+W circular polarizer filter – Great for sunny skies and water reflections from the Nile.
• Giottos Rocket Air Blaster – With all the dust and sand from Egypt, this is something that you’ll need to clean your lenses.
• Lenspen – Another lens cleaning tool.
• Olympus 4o-150mm lens – Telephoto lens that I envisioned to be using it for portrait photos and from the Dahabiya.
• Olympus 7-14mm lens – Wide angle lens especially for the temples and pyramids we’d be close up to.
• Think Tank Photo SD Pixel Pocket – Memory card carrier with tons of SD and MicroSD cards.
• Peak Design hex key
• Extra batteries for the camera
• Olympus OM-D E-M1 Mark 2 – My primary camera body for photo and video for the past 3 years and honestly the perfect set up for someone like me.
• Olympus 12-40mm lens – This is the lens attached to the camera body.
• Instax Mini90 – I brought this for kicks because I knew we’d be travelling with friends and this is a great way of creating mini memory keepsakes.
• Extra film for Instax

Electronics

This is the last section of this Egypt packing guide and we get to some of the electronics that we brought with us on the trip. While a laptop certainly isn’t necessary, I usually bring mine because I can do work if something arises and it also allows me to back up my photos and edit photos on the fly much more easily than through my phone. 

The Tech Pouch is also another key part here and I basically don’t travel without it now because it keeps all of this gear nice and organized.

Starting from left to right:

• Samsung T5 2TB SSD – The perfect external hard drive where I store all of my photos and videos. I back up my photos onto here as the trip goes on.
• Various adapters – The reality of things with Thunderbolt/USB-C.
• Anker PowerCore II 10000 – While the iPhone 11 Pro has excellent battery life, this is a good back up in case of heavy usage.
• Apple AirPods – Primarily for watching Netflix on the plane.
• Pen – For filling out custom forms
• Business card holder
• Power blocks for the Macbook Pro and iPhone
• Ultimate Ears UE900 – Old earbuds that I use for airline entertainment systems.
• Peak Design Tech Pouch – We do a full review and breakdown of the tech pouch. This is a great organization system especially when you have a lot of small gadgets that need to be kept together. This bag is perfect for all the things you see above (minus the laptop of course).

Lastly are the various chargers for all of the camera gear and electronics for the trip.  Of course, the big DJI charger to the right was removed because the drone didn’t come with me.

• European outlet adapters – Got a bunch here but the most best of the bunch is the Skoss Europe adapter. That said, the outlets in Egypt don’t have the circular receptacle that you find in most parts of Europe so even something as simple as the black one here work fine.
• Eagle Creek sac – This is an all-purpose travel pouch (medium size) that we turned into a bag for our chargers.

What We Missed In The Photos

• Bug spray – Even when the time of year isn’t mosquito season, like when we travelled in October, it is still better to protect yourself from mosquitos just in case.
• Bag for single day clothes – Something we learned to do is always pack a separate bag that comes with you with an additional day’s worth of clothes in case the airline loses your bag.
• GoPro – Since I had to pull out the drone, I ended up replacing it with my GoPro Hero 5, grip, battery and charger

Real-Life Feedback From Our Trip

So of course, all the photos were taken prior to going to Egypt, but thinking what you’ll need is often different from what you end up using or realizing you wish you had on a trip. 

So, the below is a quick breakdown of the things that we picked up on from our 10 day trip to Egypt.

What Was Absolutely Necessary

• Sunscreen – At one point we thought we’d run out but between the two of us, we were constantly applying and re-applying especially on those intense days in Cairo and Luxor where there was no cover at all and we were bouncing between ancient sites.
• Sunglasses – Goes with the sunscreen above
• Long-sleeve shirts – The warmer layer is helpful but what I wanted to say here is that most people on the Dahabiya put on their nice clothes for dinner and so it was actually good that I packed a few nicer long sleeves for the evening.
• Half-zip fleece – Now we don’t mean to say that a lot of warm layers are needed but the Dahabiya does get cold at night and at sunrise when we were on the deck.
• Hand sanitizer – You’ll get super hungry on those long days in Cairo and Luxor so this is good to have when you want to snack in the car or while on the go.
• Hats – A must-have. The sun is so intense in Egypt.
• Peak Design 5L Sling – So thankful that I had this with me on this trip. I don’t know if it was heat exhaustion but at times when I had the heavy backpack, it was really slowing me down. The 5L Sling was perfect for those situations where you’re running out of the van or Dahabiya to see something.
• Sandals/flip-flops – Let’s just say we had a unique bathroom situation in Luxor with our ‘open concept’ bathroom.
• Imodium – Unfortunately I and a few others did end up getting some stomach issues along the way so always come prepared.
• Chapstick – Glad we had ours as we definitely felt the dryness almost immediately when arriving in Egypt.
• Moisturizer – Whether it’s hand, face, or body moisturizer, you’ll need it all. For some reason my fingers started getting extremely dry and resulted in hang nails and peeling skin.

What We Didn’t Use Or Barely Used

• Telephoto lens – I used this a handful of time while on the Dahabiya because we had more free time and I could shoot animals and fishermen along the Nile but while we were in Cairo or Luxor, there was never a moment where it made sense to lug it around since I was mostly travelling with the 5L Sling while the Travel Backpack stayed in the van.
• GoPro – This has always been the issue with the GoPro where it’s only useful for water-related activities and POV type of shots.
• Peak Design Neckstrap – The only scenario where I thought I could’ve used it was on the camel but because of how rushed the whole thing was, the 5L Sling ended up being ok.
• Sports towel – We used this after taking a dip in the Nile but we totally could’ve just used the Dahabiya’s bath towels.
• Formatt Hitech long exposure filter kit – Didn’t get any use at all because there just weren’t any opportunities to do any serious shooting
• Windbreaker jacket – This stayed in the suitcase the whole time because the half-zip fleece was the only thicker layer we needed.
• Tank tops – It was hot but considering the more conservative dress in Egypt, it was just never a good idea.
• Hiking socks – Those thick hiking socks I had to wear because I was running out at one point but they were just a bit too thick in this climate. Stick to the low-ankle, thin socks if you can

What We Wish We Had

• More European plug adapters – We managed to charge all of our different devices since I had my laptop but with 4 outlets in the Dahabiya cabin, I think we could’ve used another adapter to charge more devices while the power was on.
• Toilet paper – More for the ladies or #2s but you’ll find that most public bathrooms will not have any toilet paper so it’s a good idea to have a roll or tissue paper packs with you
• SPF Chapstick – In retrospect, SPF protection on the lips would be helpful to have.
• Headlamp – Not absolutely necessary but with power out on the Dahabiya, this can be useful although I just ended up using my phone’s flashlight.
• More cash – We certainly underestimated how much cash we needed for this trip.  We budgeted $500 USD in cash for the two of us but ended up converting some extra CAD we had with us to supplement. What you’ll end up spending more on is not so much the shopping but the tipping. More on this on the Egypt 10 day itinerary.
• Snacks and granola bars – Our time in Cairo and Luxor was amazing but we had to skip a ton of meals because our schedule was that packed. We’d recommend packing a bunch and keep them in your backpack or in a bag in the van.

Hotspot Wifi vs SIM Card

For my latest trip to Egypt, we had two choices – we could either get a local SIM or use my Skyroam.  Since our tour guide, Djed Egypt Tour, said that they’d be taking care of our data needs for us, we ended up leaving Skyroam at home.

When we landed in Cairo, we picked up a Vodafone SIM card at the airport.  Their ‘tourist bundle’ packages are pretty straight forward and are laid out below.

That said, we could’ve easily brought our Skyroam as well and used their day passes for unlimited usage that is also shareable with your friends and family because it’s a wifi hotspot and no SIM card is required. You can read our full review of Skyroam to decide for yourself whether it’s something you want to pick up before you go to Egypt.

Travel Insurance

Another top question that we had and what we’ve gotten the most questions about is “is Egypt safe?”. To answer that question will require another blog post. That said, we’ve been to Egypt twice post-revolution and on both trips, we’ve always found Egypt to be safe.

Now does Egypt have some quirks in terms of being hassled by souvenir shop owners and locals finding creative and aggressive ways to ask for tips? Yes, but unlike in Athens, we never felt like there were gangs of pickpockets or general thieves ready to pounce. It’s not that kind of country and the Egyptian people are very friendly and welcoming.

With that said, we never travel without travel insurance these days because you never know what might happen. Politically, Egypt is unstable and we’re not going to lie, there have been incidents in the country, so even more reason to have, at a minimum, basic medical travel insurance coverage.

In Canada, we typically go through RATESDOTCA to make sure we can find the cheapest rates for travel insurance. Another place we’d recommend buying coverage is through HeyMondo.

Frequently Asked Questions

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Have specific questions about your own Egypt packing list as you prepare for your trip? Don’t hesitate to drop a comment below and we’ll get back to you as soon as we can!