In 1849, Gustave Flaubert chartered a dahabeah and sailed up the Nile from Cairo. He and his companion, Maxime du Camp, had a French government stipend to photograph pharaonic temples, but Flaubert was much more interested in conducting his own intimate survey of courtesans who had been exiled to Upper Egypt by the sultan Mohammed Ali, bent on ridding Cairo of female dancing and prostitution. A century and a half later, I arrange a voyage between Aswan and Luxor with Didier Caille, another French lover of Egypt (in the platonic sense), who has restored a nineteenth-century dahabeah. Dahab means gold in Arabic; dahabeahs were originally gilded houseboats. With two lateen sails and an elongated-dagger prow for oarsmen, they ferried harems on Egypt's river highway, sailing south with the prevailing wind or rowing north with the current.

Today, Luxor's winter colony aesthetes—Paris designer Christian Louboutin among them—have begun transforming dahabeahs into floating vacation homes. The projects, including new commissions and rehabilitated antiques, number fewer than a dozen, but they have the potential to become Egypt's version of the Moroccan riad, or medina house, appealing to travelers' yearning for back-to-the-future chic. Didier has christened his white-and-blue ship the Vivant Denon, after the chief artist from Napoleon's 1798 expedition, and indeed it looks like a plate out of La Description d'Égypte.

A self-taught Egyptologist and former Club Med bartender with a ready grin and shaggy blond curls, Didier was the first to offer dahabeah sailing trips; it's less a business than a word-of-mouth venture originating with referrals from friends, and he runs just ten dahabeah cruises a year. His English is a little rusty, but he has a storyteller's gift for making dry history come alive and he keeps an extensive library of old travel journals and reference books on board so guests can catch up on the details. Didier is also an expert at stealth travel, timing temple visits to avoid periods when they are saturated with package tours and steering us to treasures the big boats skip.

On a conventional cruise ship, you're stuck with rigid schedules and loads of pot-luck companions. Sleeping just six, the Vivant Denon is perfect for a family or friends who want to design their own itinerary. I've taken along my eleven-year-old daughter, Sophie; Condé Nast Traveler editor Alison Humes and her ten-year-old son, Aidan; and photographer Cathrine Wessel and her assistant. Our quarters consist of a salon and four whitewashed cabins decorated with simple cushions, old Nile lithographs, pharaonic-inspired Art Deco ashtrays, and a few well-chosen antiques. The master cabin at the stern has two window seats; this is everyone's favorite nook for playing cards, reading, or bird-watching. Leaning out a window, I dip my fingers in the river. We can hear frogs croaking, and our Nile views are so intimate that one morning I slide open my shutter to discover a gray water buffalo peering back.