The alarm goes at four. By sunrise you have forgiven it.
How long you are really off the ground, what a private basket costs, why a morning gets called for wind, and whether the champagne on landing is worth the upgrade. Reviews of the balloon flights you can book.
Four mornings worth the four o’clock alarm: Göreme, Luxor, Teotihuacan, the Atlas foothills.
The baskets that sell out first in the four skies people plan a trip around, with what a seat costs and how long you stay up.
01The Cappadocia oneCappadocia Hot Air Balloon Ride / Royal BalloonRock chimneys, a hundred other envelopes in the same frame, and a landing straight onto the trailer. The flight the whole valley is built around.- 02Over the tombsHot Air Balloon Ride in Luxor Egypt with Transfers IncludedLuxor lifts across the Nile at first light with the Valley of the Kings under the basket. The cheapest serious hour of ballooning anywhere.
03Pyramids at dawnBalloon flight + Breakfast in cave + Pyramids + Pick up CDMX.Up from a field beside Teotihuacan while the avenue of pyramids is still in shadow, then breakfast in a lava cave.
04The Atlas morningBalloon Flight, Berber Breakfast & CertificateOut past the palm groves with the High Atlas holding snow behind you, down to a Berber tent and mint tea.
Cappadocia puts more balloons in the air at dawn than anywhere on earth. Pick your basket.
Every operator lifts from the same few valleys inside the same twenty minutes, so the flight path is not the choice. Basket size, time aloft and what is waiting on the ground are.
★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · Cappadocia Hot Air Balloon Ride / Royal Balloon
The sunrise standardOff the ground before the light, about an hour over Göreme and the Love Valley.
A smaller basketSixteen passengers instead of twenty-eight, longer aloft, pickup from your cave hotel.
Landing with a glassCertificate, sparkling wine and a table set beside the basket where it touched down.
Breakfast afterBack on the ground by eight for a full Turkish spread and a long sleep afterwards.
All 207 Cappadocia flights →
Six skies worth flying: Göreme, Luxor, Teotihuacan, Marrakech, the Dubai desert, the Nile at Aswan.
Each one flies for a different reason underneath it: rock spires, a valley of tombs, an avenue of pyramids, red dunes, a river full of cruise decks. The best-rated basket in each.
Sunrise is not a preference. It is the only hour the air is calm enough to fly.
Balloons go up in the hour after dawn because the ground is still cool and the wind has not started. That is why every pickup is in the dark, why afternoon flights barely exist, and why a lie-in costs you the trip.
The balloon flights more travellers take than any others.
Every balloon flight we have reviewed →Two valleys carry most of this list. The baskets below leave the ground thousands of times a year, and each one earns the slot for a different reason.
1
Balloon Flight, Berber Breakfast & Certificate
Start before sunrise with hotel pickup, tea, coffee, and pastries, then take a 40 to 50-minute balloon flight over valleys and hills near Marrakech. Pilots such as Noor, Yannis, Reda, and Lina are praised for calm landings and friendly explanations. Finish with a Berber breakfast and named flight certificate.
From · $113
Read our review →
2
Cappadocia Hot Air Balloon Ride / Royal Balloon
from $133
3
Early Morning 40-Minute Balloon Flight
from $123
4
Balloon flight + Breakfast in cave + Pyramids + Pick up CDMX.
from $172
5
Balloon flight + pick up in CDMX + Breakfast in Cave + Pyramids
from $169
6
Goreme Hot Air Balloon Flight at Sunrise
from $142
7
Balloon Flight + Cave Breakfast + Pick Up from CDMX or We Fly
from $166
8
Hot Air Balloon Ride in Luxor Egypt with Transfers Included
from $75
What an hour in a basket costs, from Luxor to the Napa Valley.
Every flight on the site grouped by the price of one seat. Egypt is the cheapest sky in the world to fly in; California, the Serengeti and a private basket anywhere are the dearest.
Luxor and Aswan at dawn, Cappadocia outside the summer weeks, and the watching tours that keep their feet on the ground.
The standard sunrise flight nearly everywhere else: Göreme, Teotihuacan, Marrakech, Melbourne, breakfast after landing.
Private baskets, the Serengeti at first light, Napa with a chef, and the packages that hang a Nile cruise off the flight.
Picked up at four, airborne by six, back in bed by nine.
An hour in the air costs you a whole morning, and most of it is spent on the ground watching the thing being built. Roughly how a flight day runs, wherever you fly.
- 04:15Hotel pickupA minibus in the dark. Wear the clothes you will fly in and bring a jacket; it is colder on the launch field than in the air.
- 05:00Launch fieldCold-air fans first, then the burners. A heap of nylon becomes a four-storey envelope in about fifteen minutes, and you climb in while it is still lying over.
- 05:50Lift offFifty to ninety minutes aloft on most flights. There is no lurch and no sensation of speed, so nobody gets airsick and nobody needs to hold on.
- 07:10LandingThe chase truck is usually there before you are. Sparkling wine, a certificate, and everyone helps flatten the envelope back into its bag.
- 08:30BreakfastIncluded on most flights: a table beside the field, a cave restaurant, or straight back to the hotel buffet before it closes.
Wind decides, and the pilot calls it at four in the morning.
Balloons fly in almost no wind at all, so a scrubbed dawn is an ordinary event rather than bad luck. Book your flight for the first free morning of the trip and keep the next one clear, take the pickup with a phone that is charged, and read the refund line before you pay. Winter fog costs Cappadocia whole weeks; Luxor loses barely a morning all year.
Three things that only make sense seen from a balloon.
Rock spires that people carved houses into, a river with tombs cut in the cliffs behind it, and an avenue of pyramids coming out of the haze.
The chimneys of Cappadocia
Volcanic ash settled here, hardened, and eroded into spires soft enough to hollow out, so people cut houses and churches into them and are still living in some. From the ground it is a strange skyline; from four hundred feet it is a whole eroded plateau with a hundred other balloons drifting across it. Flights lift from Love Valley and the Göreme bowl about forty minutes before the sun clears the ridge.
- 1Cappadocia Hot Air Balloon Ride / Royal Balloon★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 6,829 reviews
- 2Goreme Hot Air Balloon Flight at Sunrise★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 4,924 reviews
- 3Cappadocia Hot Air Balloon Ride/ Turquaz Balloons★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 3,330 reviews
Over the Valley of the Kings
The Nile draws a green line perhaps three kilometres wide, and everything outside it is desert. Balloons cross from the east bank at first light over Hatshepsut’s terraces, the Colossi of Memnon and the mouth of the valley where the royal tombs are cut. Sugar cane, mud-brick villages and buffalo pass underneath. Nowhere else can you fly this cheaply over three thousand years of anything.
- 1Hot Air Balloon Ride in Luxor Egypt with Transfers Included★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 4,319 reviews
- 2Hot Air Balloon Ride over Luxor Relics★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · 1,681 reviews
- 32-Day Luxor Tour with Hotel, Balloon, & Boat Ride★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 1,113 reviews
The avenue of the dead at first light
An hour north of Mexico City an entire vanished city sits on a grid, and the Pyramid of the Sun is big enough to read as a hill from the air. Baskets launch from fields beside the site while the avenue is still in shadow, then land for breakfast in a cave restaurant cut into a lava tube. Nobody has been allowed to climb the pyramids for years, which makes the basket the best seat left.
- 1Balloon flight + Breakfast in cave + Pyramids + Pick up CDMX.★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 6,335 reviews
- 2Balloon flight + pick up in CDMX + Breakfast in Cave + Pyramids★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 5,651 reviews
- 3Balloon Flight + Cave Breakfast + Pick Up from CDMX or We Fly★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 4,410 reviews
In Egypt the balloon usually comes bolted to a boat.
Luxor and Aswan sell the dawn flight inside a Nile cruise: four days sailing between the two cities, Abu Simbel by road before daybreak, and the balloon on the last morning. Booked on its own, a Luxor flight is the cheapest hour of ballooning in the world by a wide margin.
By place — the valleys that fly all year
By kind of flight — shared basket, private, or feet on the ground
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