The Silk Road, city by city.
Which Registan tour actually gets you inside Tilya-Kori. Whether the Aral Sea run is worth the two days it takes. Where the plov is still cooked in a kazan the size of a bathtub. Every tour in Uzbekistan, reviewed.
Tashkent, Samarkand, Bukhara, Khiva — in that order.
All multi-day routes →In Samarkand, the Registan is only the first square.
Three madrasas facing each other across one plaza, a gold-leaf prayer hall behind the middle door, and a lane of tombs at Shah-i-Zinda where the tilework closes over your head. Two days is the minimum and most people wish they had booked three.
Tile, mud-brick, mountain and a kazan of plov.
Four walled cities, a range of mountains an hour from the capital, a dried sea with ships in the sand, and a rice dish people plan their week around. Start with whichever of these you came for.
Samarkand only, or the whole caravan?
All multi-day routes →
Uzbekistan can be one city or four, and the answer is decided by how many nights you have and whether you are willing to move at 07:00. These three run the most people; the full list splits the rest by how far west they go.
Samarkand, there and back in a day
Out of Tashkent on the early Afrosiyob, the Registan before the coaches, Shah-i-Zinda and Gur-e-Amir after lunch, back on the evening train. Long, but it works.
Samarkand and Bukhara, two nights
The two cities that carry the country. Trains do the moving so the days stay yours: Registan and the tombs, then Bukhara’s old town, which is small enough to walk end to end before dinner.
Adding Khiva and the desert
Past Bukhara the country empties out. The Khorezm plain, the mud fortresses at Ayaz Kala, then a walled town where the whole old city sits inside one gate.
What everyone books between Tashkent and Khiva.
Every review →The tours more travellers take than anything else in the country — and what each one actually gives you for the day.
1
Best of Tashkent Mountains: Amirsoy, Chimgan & Charvak Trip
A full-day trip from Tashkent to Amirsoy, Chimgan, and Charvak Lake, with cable car views, mountain rides, and a swim stop.
From · $48
Read our review →
2
Samarkand: 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
Tashkent City Tour
from $69
7
Transfer: Bukhara – Khiva via Ancient Fortresses
from $160
8
Full Day Private Tour in Seven Lakes from Samarkand
from $100
Bukhara fits between three trading domes.
The old town is a twenty-minute walk across and almost nothing in it was rebuilt. Jewellers under one dome, hatmakers under the next, moneychangers under the third, and the Kalyan minaret standing over all of it since the twelfth century.
Inside Khiva’s walls, nothing is ten minutes away.
Itchan Kala is a whole town behind one mud rampart: a fat turquoise minaret that was never finished, a tall one you can climb, and lanes that go quiet the moment the day-trippers leave for Urgench. Stay the night if you can.
- 1Transfer: Bukhara – Khiva via Ancient Fortressesfrom $160
- 2Daytrip From Khiva To Ancient Fortressesfrom $98
- 3Aral Sea Adventures (2 day)from $699
From a bowl of plov to a driver for the day.
Every tour on the site, sorted by what it costs. Uzbekistan is cheap to travel and the good days are not the expensive ones.
City walks, bazaar mornings, cooking classes and the day trips out of Tashkent.
A guide to yourself, the Shahrisabz pass, the Seven Lakes, a night in a yurt camp.
The long ones: the Aral seabed, the fortress road west, whole-country routes with a driver.
Things that only happen between the Kyzylkum and the Tien Shan.
Tiled domes exist across Central Asia. A kazan lunch in a Samarkand village, a bed on the Nurata steppe and a fishing fleet stranded in the sand belong to this country alone.
The Plov Lunch
Plov is not a side dish here, it is the reason the afternoon exists. Rice, carrot, lamb and cottonseed oil go into a cast-iron kazan over a wood fire and come out three hours later; the cook does not stir it. Most classes run in a village house outside Samarkand and end with everyone sitting on a raised platform under a vine, eating far too much.
- 1Samarkand: Village Tour with Plov Cooking Class & Home Visit★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 29 reviews
- 2Samarkand: Uzbek Cooking Class in a Village Home★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 22 reviews
- 3Cooking class in Samarkand with local life experience★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 19 reviews
The Yurt Night
An hour past Nurata the road gives up and the Kyzylkum starts. The camps are a dozen felt yurts around a fire, a camel or two, and Aydarkul lake close enough to swim before breakfast. There is no light for a hundred kilometres, which is the entire point of staying.
- 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
The Ship Cemetery
At Muynak the fishing fleet is still where the water abandoned it, rusting on sand that was seabed inside living memory. The shoreline is now a long drive further north across the Ustyurt. It is a two-day trip from Khiva or Nukus, and nobody comes back from it unmoved.
- 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
Out past Nurata, the Kyzylkum takes over.
All desert nights →
Yurt stay and Hiking in the Nurata Mountains tour – 2 days
Read our review →
From Khiva To Aral Sea 2-Days One Night In Yurt Stay
Read our review →Book these before you fly to Tashkent.
Most of Uzbekistan can be arranged from your guesthouse the night before. These four cannot — they run on train seats, fixed bed counts and a driver who has to be somewhere else tomorrow.
- 01Afrosiyob high speed train tickets – Guaranteed PassSeats on the high-speed line are released in a fixed window ahead of travel, and the morning Samarkand runs go first in spring and autumn.
- 02Daytrip from Khiva to Aral Sea Cemetery of Ships. All in oneTwo days by 4x4 across dried seabed, with fuel, a driver and a camp arranged in advance. It is not a trip anyone runs at short notice.
- 03Yurt stay and Hiking in the Nurata Mountains tour – 2 daysA desert camp has a fixed number of beds and there is no second camp down the road. April, May, September and October fill first.
- 04Samarkand: Village Tour with Plov Cooking Class & Home VisitThe village kitchens take one group a day, because it is somebody’s actual house and the kazan only holds one lunch.
When Bukhara hits forty degrees, move at dawn and eat indoors.
July and August are genuinely fierce on the plain, and the tile work throws the light straight back at you. The answer is not to stay in: it is to be out by seven, spend the middle of the day at a table or a workbench, and come back to the monuments when the shadows are long again.
By city — and what sits just outside it
Tashkent91 tours
Samarkand82 tours
Bukhara41 tours
Khiva37 tours
Shahrisabz13 tours- Chimgan & Amirsoy17 tours
Nukus6 tours- Every tour on the site →
By day out — kazan, camel, minaret or mountain
Latest Uzbekistan tour reviews.
All recent →
Private Intercity Transfer Tashkent – Samarkand – Tashkent
Read our review →
Ancient and Modern tour in Samarkand with Transport
Read our review →
Transfer Tashkent Airport / Railway Station – Hotel
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Samarkand Capital of Amir Timur Private Tour with Transport
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Seven Lakes Panjakent: One-Day Adventure from Samarkand
Read our review →
Day trip with John to Solar Furnace & Heliocomplex institute
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