A first-person travel vlog documenting Nate and Kara Buchanan’s overnight ‘first class’ train trip from Cairo to Luxor. The video follows their late rush to the station, onboard ‘room’/bathroom tour, dinner and breakfast service, short sleep, and arrival in Luxor with immediate walk toward their hotel and nearby temple. The tone is informal and experiential, emphasizing logistics, small on‑train comforts, and travel quirks (heat, bumpy ride, local food).
Chapters
I love it. Yay. Thank you.
Our work week is officially over. We are leaving Cairo today, and we're going to our second city in Egypt, which is Luxor.
So there's two main ways that most people get from Cairo to Egypt. You can either fly, or you can take the train. We've chosen to take the train for two reasons. Number one is cheaper, and number two, it seemed like a bigger adventure.
It's not just a normal train, it's an overnight train. So we don't leave the Marriott until 7 o' clock tonight.
So we are here soaking up our last few moments in the executive lounge, and we're about to head out to the train station. It.
Train.
Train. Like choo, choo choo choo bus. Okay. The. The train. Train. Oh, yeah. Train. Yes.
Yeah.
Here Ren the stations. We're.
Google translates Arabic to English.
According to my maps, we just passed the train station. Our Uber driver seems a little confused. Our train leaves in 16 minutes. You're supposed to be there 30 minutes before I get a little nervous.
Wow, we are running so late. We drastically underestimated Cairo traffic. Then our Uber driver got lost. Now we have less than 10 minutes to our train leaves, and we have no clue where we're going.
All right, we found the station. We're making Progress. We're running.
86.
Platform eight. Number one, the first one on this bus.
Platform eight. Yeah. We go up, down.
It's here.
This is our train. Hello.
We think this is our train. We think we're gonna make it. Our train's left for five minutes. This is it. We just have to get on it.
Oh, I was like, 90% sure we weren't gonna make it when we were lost in the Uber.
That was. That was a lot of emotions. I just need to.
Did it. Now all we have to do is sleep.
Oh, my goodness. My hands are, like, shaking.
We've never been that close. Gosh, as soon as our Uber driver passed out, I was like, okay, maybe there's like, a side entrance he's taking us to. And then we were just sitting at this red light, and I could see it had 30 seconds until we even went again. So I'm typing all this stuff into Google. Like, our train leaves in 10 minutes, and he just was so slow.
And we're leaving right on time.
Oh, we seriously almost missed this train.
I totally convinced myself that this train was going to be really, really late. And it was going to be fin, but it left right on the docked. Like, if I wouldn't have been checking my maps in the Uber, we wouldn't be on this train. Okay, we're not going to talk about it anymore. We're moving. We're going to Luxor. I mean, as one. Wait, where are we going? We're going to Luxor. Now that we're nice and calm, I'm going to do a little room tour. So right now this is set up like chairs. Later there will be beds. We have two big pillows. Spanket looks pretty nice and it's really small, but I feel like this. This space is set up really efficiently. We have a door that actually closes and locks. This whole space is ours. We have a curtain closet. Above my head is storage for our bags. And we have all of these buttons. The little train attendant man is the cutest little guy. He came in here and showed us what all these do. So I already forgot. Is this a button? No. Okay. That's not a button. These are the lights.
You gotta really turn it.
He said this is for romance. Air conditioner and heater. And then he said this is music.
Maybe it's not on yet.
And on the other side. Switch side with me. We have this little vanity area with this very bright light. It's great for videos. Washcloths, espresso sink, liquid soap, drink holders. And there's an outlet. It says shavers only, but he said we could plug our bones into it. I don't know if that's going to make everybody lose power on the entire train, but we're going to try. And I think that about covers it. This is home for the next 10 hours. And dinner's coming soon.
So in case you've never watched one of our train videos before, bathroom tours have kind of become my thing. I don't know why. I find it very fascinating the different types of bathrooms on these transportation. So here is my detailed review of this bathroom.
This toilet is very interesting. I'm not sure where it goes. There's this little trap door. So I'll let you know how that goes. There's toilet paper.
I've only been in one other bathroom that has the foot pedal to drink the water. And it was in India, but I didn't get to use it. So I'm about to time.
Nothing's happening. Oh, there it is. I did it. There's so.
No soap.
The toilet also has a pedal and everything just goes down. The trap door in Conclusion.
Not bad.
Smells good. Floors only a little bit wet.
And there you go.
It's dinner time. They came in and brought these little sketchy trays. I feel like I'm gonna have to hold my tray the entire time or it's gonna slide off on this bumpy tray. Looks like we have a bunch of some tahini sauce, a little cake and three hot things.
This crack is reducing its structural integrity.
Almost lost it.
I'm not sure if Egyptian rice is a thing. I've never heard of it and I can't even tell you what's different about it. But the rice that we've had in Egypt is so good. It's kind of like sticky rice, but I don't think it is. Might have to do some googling. The rice is pretty good. The key is dip everything in the tahini sauce.
Hello. Finish? Yes. Good morning. Coffee or tea? Coffee. Coffee. Coffee. Yes.
Thank you so much.
Our train attendant came and made our beds for us. It's only 9:25 but we have to get up at 5am So I think we're going to try to go to sleep. This is one of the bumpier trains we've been on before. But I'm typically kind of like a baby when it comes to moving vehicles. It kind of rocks me to sleep so I think I'll sleep pretty well.
Beds don't feel too hard.
See if the music is working.
I guess we won't be going to sleep in the music.
And lights out.
Oh, oh, there we go.
5:00Am.
It'S breakfast time.
So tired.
Not sleeping very well.
It looks like breakfast consists of bread. Bread, bread, cheese plate, more cheese and jam.
Thank you so much.
Thank you.
We've made it to Luxor. Do we look as tired as we film? I don't think I slept last night. Oh, we're good. We're walking. What? We're walking. Okay. Yeah, we're close. Sorry. Okay.
Well, we made it out of the train station without getting in a taxi which turned into be a huge challenge.
This fly is following me down the road. Now we have about a 10 minute walk to our hotel.
Turns out not many people are out and about it.
6Am the sun's up though. Like the sun was up at 5 when we woke up. It gets light so early here.
Never seen a wild ferret.
Never seen a rat with that long of a body and such short legs. Also, it is already about 90 degrees outside this morning. It's supposed to get up to 116 degrees. I'm pretty sure I've never been in weather they're that hot before. Are you gonna melt.
All the way to the top? Huh?
Yes.
Thank you.
So where are the lights to this place?
Ah, there we go.
Home sweet home. Just for a night.
Come on, before it gets too hot. We have to go to the temple. Don't do it. Don't get tired. Don't get tired. Don't do. Go. It's going to be good. Yeah, it's thousands of years old.
Yeah, Come on. Let me know how it is.
We literally asked him to stop the car in the middle of the road. Cuz it was a fast, faster walk than it was driving and we just ran across the road.
But it's okay, we're here.
Too much time in the lounge.
Look, I got something dirty all over my pants. Like where did this happen?
