Wake up in Luxor on the morning of the eclipse.

For a few minutes, the moon passes directly in front of the sun and blocks it completely. The sky darkens as if it were dusk, streetlights and stars can appear, and the temperature drops noticeably within minutes.

Once the sun is fully covered, its faint outer atmosphere, the corona, becomes visible as a pale ring around the black disc of the moon. This is the only point in the whole event when it is safe to look directly at the sun without eclipse glasses.

Before and after totality, as the moon only partly covers the sun, the light stays bright enough to damage your eyes if you look at it directly. Eclipse glasses are required for every phase except totality itself.

Almost anywhere with open sky above you.

At 13:02 the sun sits about 82 degrees above the horizon, which is very nearly straight up. That changes what you need. You are not looking for a view, a hilltop or a clear line to the horizon.

A hotel roof, a garden, a terrace, the corniche along the east bank, a patch of ground outside a temple. Anything with sky overhead will do.

What matters far more is shade. The partial phases run from around 11:40 to around 14:26, so you will be outside for close to three hours in the hottest part of a Luxor August day, and only six minutes of that is dark.

Somewhere you can step out of the sun between phases is worth more than any vantage point.

Luxor sits slightly north of the centre of the path. The very longest totality falls around 60km to the southeast, but the difference is a handful of seconds and Luxor still sits comfortably above six minutes.

You do not need to travel further, and you do not need to pay for a viewing site.

On the current arrangement, with Egypt on EEST (UTC+3) in August, that gives approximate local times of:

• First contact (partial phase begins): around 11:40
• Totality begins: around 13:02
• Maximum: around 13:05
• Totality ends: around 13:08
• Last contact: around 14:26

These local times assume Egypt stays on UTC+3 and should be confirmed nearer the date. If you need a single number to plan around, use the 10:06 UTC greatest-eclipse figure rather than any one source's local time.

Two departures work, and they give you two different days.

Leave Cairo on 1 August and you wake in Luxor at 06:10 on eclipse morning. Seven hours later the sky goes dark. It is the most direct version of the trip, and the one that feels like an event from the moment you step off the train.

Leave Cairo on 31 July and you arrive a day early. You get the morning at Karnak before the heat builds, and you reach eclipse day already settled rather than straight off a train.

Neither is wrong. The earlier train simply gives you room if anything runs late.

This is the part most eclipse guides skip. Everyone leaves Luxor at once. Domestic flights and sleeper trains out of Luxor on 2 and 3 August will be under pressure from the same crowd that arrived together for the same event.

Book the return before the outbound. The way out is tighter than the way in.

Train 83 departs Luxor at 19:45 and reaches Cairo at 05:30, so an evening departure on eclipse day is entirely possible after totality ends around 13:08.

The sleeper leaves Cairo in the evening and reaches Luxor at 06:10, so the journey happens while you sleep and costs you no daylight. You arrive having rested, on a day when you will be outside for close to three hours.

Domestic flights that weekend are competing with everyone else travelling for the same event.