On 2 August 2027 the Moon's shadow crosses fourteen countries in about three hours, and the difference between the best seat and the worst is the difference between six minutes and twenty seconds of darkness and none at all. Choosing where to stand is the whole decision, and most of the advice online answers it with a map rather than an argument. Here is the argument. There are really only five countries worth considering, one obvious winner that is much harder to reach than anybody admits, one sleeper nobody talks about, and one sensible European answer. | Country | Best totality | Clear sky odds | Getting there | Verdict | | Egypt | 6m 22s | Near certain | Awkward, see below | The best sky, the worst logistics | | Saudi Arabia | 5m 55s at Jeddah | Very good | Direct from London, easy e visa | The sleeper pick | | Algeria | 5m 19s inland | Good | Visa is the obstacle | For the determined | | Tunisia | About 4m 40s on Djerba | Good | Easy and cheap | Solid, underrated | | Morocco | 4m 52s at Tetouan | Very good inland | Easy | Best value in the west | | Spain | 4m 48s at Ceuta | Mixed, 74 to 89 | Trivially easy | The sane European choice | | Gibraltar | 4m 28s | 74% | Direct UK flights | English speaking, tiny, books out first | | Libya, Sudan, Yemen, Somalia | Long, in places | Various | No | Ruled out on safety | The centre line of this eclipse runs through Middle Egypt, and the greatest duration of the entire eclipse, **6 minutes 23 seconds**, falls in the desert a short distance southeast of Luxor. Luxor itself gets 6 minutes 21. Sohag gets 6 minutes 22. Asyut gets 6 minutes 20. Nowhere else on Earth in the twenty first century gets a longer totality on easily reachable ground. The weather case is even stronger than the duration case. Jay Anderson, whose Eclipsophile analysis is the standard reference for eclipse weather, puts mean August cloud cover over the Egyptian desert at close to nothing and describes the cloud prospects for this eclipse overall as among the lowest he has analysed in forty five years. In practical terms, if you go to Middle Egypt you will see it. > If you want certainty, you go to Egypt. If you want to actually get there without a fight, you go somewhere else. The three airports nearest the centre line are Sohag, nine kilometres from it, Asyut, fourteen kilometres, and Luxor, thirteen kilometres. Sohag and Asyut have **no European scheduled service at all**. Luxor's UK routes are seasonal and amount to roughly **two direct flights a week from London**. Meanwhile Hurghada, which has nearly ten million passengers a year and deep year round service from TUI, easyJet and Jet2, sits **190 kilometres outside the path**. It sees a deep partial eclipse and no totality whatsoever. A great many people are going to book Hurghada on the assumption that Egypt equals the eclipse, and they will spend eclipse morning in a coach. So Egypt is a genuine expedition. You are looking at Cairo and then a domestic flight or the overnight sleeper to Luxor, which takes ten to twelve hours and opens for booking around March 2027, or a long road transfer from the Red Sea. Book the internal legs before the international ones, because the internal legs are the scarce part. The Western Desert oases are a trap of their own. Siwa is in the path at about 5 minutes 30 and Bahariya at about 6 minutes 18, but Kharga, Dakhla and Farafra are all outside it, Farafra by a hair. The list of oases the Foreign Office exempts from its travel advice and the list of oases inside the path are not the same list, so do not read one as the other. One more Egyptian trap worth knowing. Marsa Alam **town** gets 5 minutes 29 seconds. Marsa Alam **airport** sits well to the north and gets 4 minutes 35. Nearly a full minute separates a place and the airport named after it. Jeddah gets **5 minutes 55 seconds**, which is more than any point in Africa west of Libya and nearly ninety seconds more than the best of Spain. It has direct flights from London on four carriers, an e visa that takes minutes, good hotel stock, and no internal travel required, because the city itself is in the path. On the numbers it is the best combination of duration and access anywhere on the track. The trades are real though. August in Jeddah is brutally hot and humid, the Red Sea coast carries the heaviest dust loading on the whole path, which softens the corona, and the region has a security history worth reading current advice on. Note also that Mecca is in the path, at 5 minutes 10, and non Muslims cannot enter, which also affects the road you take inland. Tetouan gets 4 minutes 52 and Tangier 4 minutes 51, both a shade better than anywhere in Spain. Inland is better still for weather: Anderson scores Chefchaouen at **95 per cent** likelihood of clear skies, against 84 for Tangier and 74 for Gibraltar. Flights are cheap, no visa is needed for UK or EU travellers, and the country is set up for tourism. The catch is the crossing. The eclipse falls in the middl