10 Day Tours with Flights Included

Seven days is too short for serious long-haul. Fourteen is a bigger bite than many working travellers can take. Ten splits the difference and works surprisingly well for both trip depth and leave planning.

The arithmetic: ten days on the ground means nine nights, flying in on day one and out on day ten. Knock off half a day for arrival jet lag and half a day for pre-departure packing and you have eight full active days. That is enough for a three-city or four-region trip, two countries with a sensible border crossing, or one country with both the headline sights and the off-piste add-ons that make a trip feel like yours.

For time-off planning, ten days slots neatly into two working weeks with weekends at each end: fly Saturday, tour Sunday through Monday week, fly home Tuesday. That is six or seven working days off, depending on how your employer counts weekends — light enough to run twice a year on a generous European or Australian allowance, and the kind of trip a US traveller on 10 to 15 days might make their one big getaway.

Egypt: Cairo plus a full Nile cruise plus Abu Simbel is the classic ten-day itinerary. Seven nights on the Nile with shore excursions covers Luxor, Edfu, Kom Ombo, Aswan and Abu Simbel, with two or three nights in Cairo for the Pyramids and the Egyptian Museum. Intrepid and G Adventures both run this route at 1,600 to 2,400 EUR.

Peru: Lima, Cusco, the Sacred Valley, Machu Picchu and Lake Titicaca is the standard ten-day trip, from 1,800 to 3,200 EUR. The extra three days over a week let you add either the Inca Trail (four days, permit required) or Titicaca (two days), and both earn their place.

Vietnam: Hanoi, Halong Bay, Hoi An, Hue, Saigon and the Mekong Delta is the north-to-south classic at 1,400 to 2,500 EUR. Ten days is the minimum to do it justice; two weeks is more comfortable.

Japan: Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka and Hiroshima plus Hakone or Nikko, in the 3,500 to 5,500 EUR range because Japan is dear on the ground. Ten days covers the headline cities without a scramble.

Two-country combos that open up at ten days: Egypt plus Jordan, Thailand plus Cambodia (with Angkor), Argentina plus Iguazu, and Morocco plus Portugal.

The land price for ten days runs 1,400 to 3,500 EUR mainstream and 3,500 to 7,500 EUR premium, with plenty of regional swing.

• 1,400-2,000 EUR land: Morocco with the Sahara, Vietnam north to south, extended Turkey, an Egypt Nile cruise on the mainstream operators.
• 2,000-2,800 EUR land: Peru's Sacred Valley plus Titicaca, Jordan plus Israel, a Balkans loop, the Greek islands with the mainland.
• 2,800-3,800 EUR land: India's Golden Triangle plus Rajasthan, Iceland plus Greenland, a two-region Italy, premium Egypt on a dahabiya.
• 3,500-5,500 EUR land: Japan, the National Geographic Journeys tier, Costa Rica plus Panama.
• 5,500-9,000 EUR land: luxury guided, private small groups, five-star throughout.

Economy flights run 400 to 1,200 EUR depending on origin and destination. As a European-origin guide, Peru and most of Asia sit at 650 to 1,000 EUR, Japan at 700 to 1,100 EUR, Morocco and Egypt at 300 to 600 EUR; from North America or Australia the same destinations price differently, so check your home airport. Multi-city tickets, flying into one city and home from another, usually cost 5 to 15 percent more than a round trip and often save a backtracking day.

Shoulder-season savings of 15 to 25 percent apply right across the board. For Peru and Egypt, the shoulders are March-April and October to early November. For Southeast Asia, it is the quiet stretch of June to August. For Japan, dodge the cherry-blossom peak in late March to early April and the autumn-colour peak in mid-November.

Ten days is the first length where jet lag becomes manageable rather than the main event. The size of the hit depends on how many time zones you cross and which way — flying east into the difference (Europe to Asia, say) tends to cost three or four days of adjustment, feeling a beat off through the first half and normal through the second, while flying west with the clock is gentler, more like two or three days. Work out the gap from your own home time zone, not a fixed one.

The pacing trick on a 10-day trip is to load the active days into the middle third. Days one and two after landing work best as low-key introductions: a market, a walking tour of the arrival city, an easy half-day. Days three to eight take on the big stuff, the trek, the cruise, the multi-site days. Days nine and ten wind down with something gentler before the flight home.

Built-in rest days are worth having on a ten-day trip. The best itineraries include a half-free day in the middle and a pool afternoon near the end. If yours has no slack anywhere, nine days of 7am starts, it will feel like work rather than a holiday, so hunt for the words 'at leisure' in the day-by-day schedule.

For trips with altitude (Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia, Nepal), keep the first full day after arrival gentle and at altitude. Cusco at 3,400m hands most travellers a headache on day one; a day of coca tea and easy walking sorts it before the trekking or touring begins.

Ten-day trips gain more than any other length from multi-city flight booking. Itineraries often start in one city and end in another: Peru opens in Lima and sometimes finishes in Cusco, Vietnam runs Hanoi to Saigon, Egypt tours start in Cairo and sometimes end in Luxor or Sharm El Sheikh. Kiwi.com handles these as single itineraries, with the Kiwi Guarantee covering both legs.

Travel insurance on a ten-day trip is non-negotiable, for three reasons. The total prepaid cost is high enough that a cancellation hurts. The trip is long enough that a mid-trip bug is a genuine possibility, and a dodgy stomach for a day or two is common on Asia and Latin America trips. And long-haul medical evacuation from places like Nepal, Peru or rural Egypt runs into five figures without cover.

Budget 40 to 90 EUR for a single-trip policy, or 80 to 200 EUR for an annual multi-trip if you travel more than twice a year. True Traveller, Insure and Go and bank-provided cards are all decent. Just confirm your policy covers the specific activities on your itinerary, because altitude, diving and trekking are routinely excluded by default.

Some combinations fit ten days nicely; others need more. The test is whether the hop between countries eats less than a day.

Good fits: Egypt plus Jordan (Cairo to Amman is a 90-minute flight), Thailand plus Cambodia (Bangkok to Siem Reap is a short flight), Peru plus Bolivia at Lake Titicaca (a land crossing of a few hours), Vietnam plus Cambodia (a Saigon-Siem Reap flight), Morocco plus Portugal (Marrakech or Fes to Lisbon is cheap and quick).

Borderline: Argentina plus Chile across the Andes works in ten days on the Mendoza-Santiago axis but turns painful if you try to bolt on Patagonia. India plus Sri Lanka is possible but tight, since each really wants its own week.

Poor fits at ten days: Egypt plus Morocco (long flight between, no border), Thailand plus Indonesia (the flight costs and times eat into your days), Peru plus Argentina (the Lima or Cusco to Buenos Aires hop burns most of a day each way).

Intrepid and G Adventures both sell pre-packaged two-country combos under names like 'Essential Egypt and Jordan' or 'Vietnam and Cambodia'. These usually run 2,400 to 3,800 EUR land, 10 to 14 days long, with the inter-country flight or transfer folded into the price. They are generally well put together and save you building the combo yourself.