Urban lifestyles are only capable of making such high demands on our time and energy because we remove ourselves from the fundamentals. The essentials that are often sold to us in cheap and poisoned forms under the guise of convenience. Imagine getting pampered in the Egyptian farmlands, where you’ll find nothing to wake you in the mornings besides the sunrise and the wafting aromas of freshly baked bread. Now imagine finding such a place only 20 minutes away from Cairo, a pocket of idyllic rural isolation cloaked from one of the most densely populated cities in the world.

Villas d’Egypte is a boutique countryside stay high on nostalgia and low on pretension, the old-world family “3ezba” or farm so to speak subtly sprinkled with the services and accoutrements of luxury-hospitality but still firmly rooted in the rustic traditions of the land.

Guests can choose from six inviting en-suite bedrooms in any of the four villas then while away their stay beneath the shade of swaying palms or in the shimmering pool. The villas are fully catered with in-house chefs who conjure up exquisite Egyptian cuisine, as well as a charming baker named Om Yassin serving fresh bread and feteer every morning.

Villas d’Egypte was established by entrepreneur Elwy Taymour, who wanted to capitalise on the beautiful setting of his sprawling family estate. His family are frequent travellers, and wanted to recreate the homely yet luxurious hospitality experiences they often experienced in similar countryside escapes around the world, a niche he felt lacking in his homeland. Building on the success of ‘Nubia’, their floating boutique home in Upper Egypt, he decided to bring the experience to rural Egypt.

“We love experiencing other countries and cultures from a local perspective and are hoping to be able to offer the same in Egypt,” director of operations Sarah Nabih tells #SceneTraveller. “It’s very much a boutique stay experience and we are aiming to make it as personalized of a service as possible. It’s meant to feel like your own rural retreat.”