UZBEKISTAN · THE SILK ROAD
The blue cities of the Silk Road.
Samarkand, Bukhara and Khiva, the Kyzylkum desert and the mountains beyond, with the tours worth taking in each. Tilework, bazaars and caravan roads, reviewed one by one.
Only in Uzbekistan
Three things you can only do here.
Old cities and desert nights exist in plenty of countries. These three do not translate: a square of blue-domed colleges, a fishing fleet stranded in a sea that vanished, and a felt yurt under the Kyzylkum stars. Plan the rest of the trip around them.
Samarkand
The Registan, and the blue that built it
Three madrasas face each other across one square, their portals sheathed in turquoise and cobalt majolica, their domes ribbed and the colour of the sky. Timur and his grandson Ulugh Beg made Samarkand the showpiece of the Silk Road, and nowhere else on earth gathers this much monumental tilework in one place. You walk in, and the scale does the rest.
- 1 Samarkand: Historical Monuments Guided Walking Tour
- 2 Samarkand: Historical City Highlights Guided Walking Tour
- 3 Private Samarkand City Tour With Transportation
Muynak
A fishing fleet stranded in the sand
Muynak was a busy port until the Aral Sea drained away and left its trawlers marooned on the old seabed, rusting in a desert that used to be water. You can walk between the hulls where the shoreline once stood. It is one of the strangest and most sobering places anywhere, and it exists only here.
- 1 Daytrip from Khiva to Aral Sea Cemetery of Ships. All in one
- 2 Aral Sea Adventures (2 day)
- 3 From Khiva To Aral Sea 2-Days One Night In Yurt Stay
The Kyzylkum
A night in the desert, the caravan way
Out past Nurata the road gives way to red sand and felt yurts pitched beside Lake Aydarkul. You ride a camel at dusk, eat around the fire, and sleep under more stars than seem possible, the way the Silk Road caravans did between the cities. The mornings are silent except for the wind.
- 1 Yurt stay and Hiking in the Nurata Mountains tour – 2 days
- 2 Yurt Camp Tour with Night from Bukhara
- 3 Desert Adventure from Samarkand: Yurt Camp & Aydarkul Escape
The one everyone books
If you only do one, do this one.
More travellers book this than anything else in Uzbekistan. An easy first thing to lock into the plan.
The classics
Uzbekistan's Most Popular Tours
Samarkand's monuments, Bukhara's old town, the Chimgan mountains and the desert yurt camps. The trips most travellers build a route around.
Plan the route
How long do you need?
Uzbekistan's headline sights line up along one high-speed rail line, so the real question is how far down it you travel. Three routes that work, depending on the time you have.
By place
Pick a city, or the road between.
Samarkand for the monuments. Bukhara for the old town. Khiva for the walls. Tashkent for the bazaars and the trains. Then the Kyzylkum for desert nights, and Chimgan for the mountains.
By type
Or pick the kind of day.
Walk the monuments with a guide. Drive up into the mountains. Cook plov in a village home. Cross into Tajikistan for the Seven Lakes, or ride the desert out to the rusting ships at the Aral Sea.
At the table
Plov, and the long table.
Every region cooks its plov differently: rice, lamb, carrots and yellow quince layered into a cast-iron kazan until the whole courtyard smells of it. The best way in is a class in a family home, where you shop the bazaar in the morning, cook over the fire, and sit down to eat what you made.
- 1 Samarkand: Village Tour with Plov Cooking Class & Home Visit
- 2 Tashkent: Uzbek Culture, Food, Crafts & Pottery Masterclass
- 3 Samarkand: Uzbek Cooking Class in a Village Home
The monuments, on foot
Walk the old Silk Road.
Registan Square, the Poi Kalon, the tiled necropolis at Shah-i-Zinda. A good guide turns a wall of tilework into 600 years of story. These three are the ones to start with.
An hour from Tashkent
When the cities are enough.
The Tian Shan foothills rise straight off the plains: cable cars up Chimgan, the turquoise Charvak reservoir below, snow in winter and cool air all summer. The capital's favourite day out, in three forms.
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