First time in Aswan?

Three for the city, four if Abu Simbel is in. You can see Aswan in two; three feels better; four gives the city room to make sense. The difference between two days and three is not a fourth temple — it is an afternoon with nothing in it.

East bank for restaurants, the station and getting things done. An island for quiet and a slower pace. Gharb Soheil and the west-bank Nubian areas for a Nubian-owned stay. Neither is universally best — the trade-off is always how much boat dependence you will accept for quiet.

Yes, but how you go changes the answer. A shared coach at four in the morning and two hours in a crowd is a different experience from arriving the afternoon before and having the forecourt to yourself at opening. It needs its own day either way.

Not to get around — Aswan is one of the easier Egyptian cities to do independently. Yes at Philae and at Qubbet el-Hawa, where the building is a sequence of arguments and the tombs are texts. A guide changes those two visits completely.

Felucca when the afternoon is the point and you are not on a clock. Motorboat when you need several stops in a fixed window, or when the wind has not turned up. For Elephantine alone, take the public ferry — it goes to the same island for a fraction of the price.

Three different holidays that share a river, not three price points. They differ in how many people are aboard, where the boat is physically allowed to moor, how much of the day you control, and whether there is a bathroom.

Most of it, yes. The public ferry to Elephantine costs less than a coffee, the souq is a walk, and a taxi to Philae plus a negotiated boat is straightforward. What is worth arranging is Abu Simbel, a boat for a whole day, and a guide for the two sites that need one.

Historically just south of the First Cataract, which is why Aswan was the frontier. Culturally, in this city — there are Nubian neighbourhoods in Aswan, Nubian villages on Elephantine, and Nubian towns north of here around Kom Ombo.