Samarkand before lunch. Bukhara by dinner.
Which Registan morning gets you inside the madrasas. What a seat on the fast train costs once a guide has booked it. Whether the Aral Sea is worth two days out of Khiva. Reviews of every tour you can book in Uzbekistan.
The four days a first Uzbek itinerary is built around.
A mountain loop out of the capital, two old towns on foot and a lake over the Tajik border. What each costs, and what the people who took it say.
01The day out of TashkentBest of Tashkent Mountains: Amirsoy, Chimgan & Charvak TripAmirsoy, Chimgan and Charvak in one loop, an hour north of the capital. The reservoir really is that colour in May.
02The Bukhara dayBest of Bukhara: All Day Private Old Town TourThe old town on foot with someone who knows which madrasa courtyards are open. Trading domes, the Ark, the Kalyan minaret.
03Inside the wallsKhiva Historical City Highlights Guided Walking TourKhiva is small enough to cross in a morning and dense enough that you want the history explained while you do it.
04The mountain dayFull Day Private Tour in Seven Lakes from SamarkandThe Seven Lakes, climbing over the Tajik border and back in a day from Samarkand. Long drive, cold water, almost nobody there.
Tashkent, Samarkand, Bukhara, Khiva, east to west.
Nearly every trip runs along one line: the capital and its mountains, the two Timurid cities, then the walled town out near the Turkmen border. A thousand kilometres end to end, and the best day out in each.
Samarkand from Tashkent is a train ride, not an expedition.
The fast train covers the 300 kilometres in a little over two hours, which turns Samarkand into a day trip and Bukhara into an overnight. Three ways to run the line, and what each costs before you add a hotel.
Tashkent: marble metro, morning plov, mountains by noon.
Everything in Tashkent →
The capital is wide, green and Soviet-planned, with underground stations you are finally allowed to photograph and a bazaar that opens at six. The Tian Shan foothills start about an hour north of the ring road.
The city on foot, metro included
Chorsu bazaar under its blue dome, the Soviet-era stations with their chandeliers and carved plaster, and the long green avenues between them. The walking is flat and the guides are inexpensive.
Amirsoy, Chimgan and Charvak
The reservoir turns an improbable turquoise in late spring and the cable car at Amirsoy runs through the summer. Most operators take all three in one loop with a car and a driver.
Plov, pottery and a street-food walk
Plov is cooked in the morning and sold until the cauldron is empty, so a food tour either starts early or aims at the night stalls. Some add a potter’s wheel and a table of Rishtan ceramics.
The Uzbek days out that fill up first.
Every tour we have reviewed in Uzbekistan →More travellers take these than anything else in the country. Prices are per head unless the operator quotes for the whole car.
1
Best of Tashkent Mountains: Amirsoy, Chimgan & Charvak Trip
Spend 8 to 9 hours in the Tian Shan Mountains with hotel pickup, an English-speaking guide such as Mirzo, Odil, or Asilbek, and stops at Amirsoy, Chimgan, and Charvak. Add cable cars, horse riding, chairlifts, boating, or swimming, while enjoying mountain somsa and herbal tea.
From · $48
Read our review →
2
Historical Monuments Guided Walking Tour
from $20
3
Samarkand One Day Tour – Departure From Tashkent
from $219
4
Private Samarkand City Tour With Transportation
from $54
5
A City Tour Of Samarkand: The Pearl Of The East
from $16
6
Full Day Private Tour in Seven Lakes from Samarkand
from $100
7
Samarkand One Day Tour: one day walking & group tour
from $25
8
Amirsoy, Chimgan & Charvak Full-Day Adventure
from $39
Samarkand saves its best hour for the walk between the tombs.
The Registan takes twenty minutes and a lifetime. Shah-i-Zinda is a lane of tiled tombs climbing a hill, Gur-e-Amir holds Timur under a fluted dome, and Ulugh Beg’s observatory is a sextant cut into the ground. Nearly all of it is a short taxi apart.
- 1Historical Monuments Guided Walking Tourfrom $20
- 2Private Samarkand City Tour With Transportationfrom $54
- 3A City Tour Of Samarkand: The Pearl Of The Eastfrom $16
Bukhara and Khiva still look the part.
Bukhara is a lived-in old town: trading domes, a brick minaret Genghis Khan left standing, madrasa courtyards now full of workshops. Khiva is smaller and walled, and it is best walked at either end of the day, once the coaches have gone.
What a day out in Uzbekistan actually costs.
Every tour on the site, grouped by price. The country is cheap by any standard, and the gap between a guided morning and a car with a driver for the whole day is smaller than you would expect.
Old-town walks, guided monument mornings, metro tours and village cooking classes.
Full days with a car: Shakhrisabz over the pass, the mountain loop, Bukhara on foot.
Multi-city runs, the Aral Sea overnight, and a private driver for a whole itinerary.
Three things that happen in Uzbekistan and almost nowhere else.
Tiled madrasas run right across Central Asia. A fishing fleet stranded in a desert, a yurt camp under the Kyzylkum stars and a cauldron of plov cooked for two hundred do not travel.
The ship cemetery at Muynak
Muynak was a fishing port until the rivers feeding the Aral Sea were turned onto cotton in the 1960s. The water is now far to the north and the trawlers sit on sand where the harbour used to be. It is a long drive from Khiva or Nukus, normally run as an overnight with a yurt stay out on the old seabed.
- 1Daytrip from Khiva to Aral Sea Cemetery of Ships. All in one★★★★★★★★★★ 4.3 · 52 reviews
- 2Aral Sea Adventures (2 day)★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 30 reviews
- 3From Khiva To Aral Sea 2-Days One Night In Yurt Stay★★★★★★★★★★ 4.6 · 20 reviews
Yurt camps in the Kyzylkum
Between Samarkand and Khiva the road crosses several hundred kilometres of red desert, and the camps near Aydarkul break the drive. A yurt sleeps five or six on floor mattresses, dinner is cooked outside, and somebody brings a camel round at sunset. The nights stay cold well into spring.
- 1Yurt stay and Hiking in the Nurata Mountains tour – 2 days★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 35 reviews
- 2Yurt Camp Tour with Night from Bukhara★★★★★★★★★★ 3.8 · 35 reviews
- 3From Khiva To Aral Sea 2-Days One Night In Yurt Stay★★★★★★★★★★ 4.6 · 20 reviews
Learning to cook plov
Plov is rice, carrot, lamb and cottonseed oil cooked in a kazan the size of a bath, and every region argues for its own version. The Samarkand classes run in village houses: the market first for the meat, three hours around the cauldron, then lunch with the family that taught you.
- 1Village Tour with Plov Cooking Class & Home Visit★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 29 reviews
- 2Uzbek Cooking Class in a Village Home★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 22 reviews
- 3Cooking class in Samarkand with local life experience★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 19 reviews
Four Uzbek bookings that will not wait.
Most of this country can be arranged over breakfast. These four run on border formalities, train seats and a fixed number of beds out in the desert.
- 01Daytrip from Khiva to Aral Sea Cemetery of Ships. All in oneThe Muynak run is two days of driving with a night in a camp, and the camps are small. Nobody puts it together the evening before.
- 02Full Day Private Tour in Seven Lakes from SamarkandThe road climbs over the Tajik border, so the day runs on passports and formalities rather than on your schedule.
- 03Yurt Camp Tour with Night from BukharaA camp is a handful of yurts, not a hotel. Capacity runs out long before the demand does.
- 042 Days Tour to Bukhara and Samarkand from Tashkent by trainFast-train seats are released a set number of days ahead and the popular departures sell out. The operator holds them for you.
Plov before noon, bread off the wall of the oven, tea that never stops.
A cooking class here is a market trip, a cauldron and a family lunch. Book one of the Samarkand village classes, a Tashkent food walk, and a morning at a bread oven where the stamped rounds go onto the tandyr wall by hand.
By eleven in July the Registan is forty degrees.
High summer here is dry, cloudless and brutal on open squares and desert roads. The answer is the same one everybody local uses: start at six, be under a roof or up a mountain by midday, and come back out once the tiles have stopped throwing heat.
By place — the Silk Road line and its detours
By kind of day — monuments, mountains, kitchens, desert
Tashkent, Samarkand, Bukhara, Khiva: the line almost everybody follows.
KyzylkumJust reviewed, in and around the four cities.
More recent reviews →
Tashkent City Tour with Hotel Pickup and Drop off
Read our review →
Transfer Tashkent Airport / Railway Station – Hotel
Read our review →
6- Day Private Tour to Tashkent, Khiva, Bukhara and Samarkand
Read our review →
Day trip with John to Solar Furnace & Heliocomplex institute
Read our review →