Uzbekistan is four cities deep.
Which Samarkand day gets you inside Shah-i-Zinda. What a Bukhara old-town walk costs. Whether the drive out to the stranded ships is worth two days. Every tour in the country, reviewed and priced.
Uzbekistan is four cities and the road between them.
Tashkent for the flight in and the mountains behind it. Samarkand for the Registan. Bukhara for an old town you can cross on foot. Khiva for the walled city. Almost every itinerary is built around one of them, so pick yours before anything else.
Tashkent to Khiva, the way most trips run it.
ShahrisabzThe Uzbekistan tours travellers book most.
Every review →Mountains above Tashkent, monuments in Samarkand, one long transfer through the desert forts. These carry more travellers than anything else in the country.
1
Best of Tashkent Mountains: Amirsoy, Chimgan & Charvak Trip
Review of Tashkent’s mountain day trip to Amirsoy, Chimgan, and Charvak, with cable cars, lake views, optional rides, costs, and practical tips.
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
Transfer: Bukhara – Khiva via Ancient Fortresses
from $160
7
Full Day Private Tour in Seven Lakes from Samarkand
from $100
8
Samarkand One Day Tour: one day walking & group tour
from $25
Samarkand earns its two days.
The Registan puts three madrasas on one square and is only the opening. Shah-i-Zinda climbs a hillside of tiled tombs, Gur-e-Amir holds Timur, and Bibi-Khanym still backs onto a working bazaar. Several of these are places of burial and prayer as much as sights, and a guide is the difference between reading the tile and reading the building.
Bukhara and Khiva are walking cities.
Bukhara runs from the Kalyan minaret to the Lyab-i-Hauz pool in about twenty minutes, trading domes and all, and the Ark fortress sits at one end of it. Khiva is smaller again: Ichan Kala is one walled rectangle, and a morning inside it covers the lot.
When Uzbekistan passes 40 degrees, plan around the middle of the day.
Summer afternoons in Samarkand and Bukhara run past 40°C and the tiled squares hold every degree of it. The local answer is simple: monuments early, something under a roof through the worst of it, and the mountains above Tashkent or the water at Charvak when you want out of the city altogether.
Uzbekistan stays cheap until you hire a car.
Every tour on the site, sorted by what it actually costs. A guided morning round the Samarkand monuments runs to less than a restaurant lunch at home; the desert days cost what a driver and a tank of fuel cost.
Guided walks, city tours, cooking classes and museum mornings. Most of what you will actually do.
Full days with a car and a guide: Shahrisabz over the pass, the mountains, a private old-town tour.
Long-distance days and multi-day runs: the desert fortresses, the Aral Sea, the four-city circuits.
Three days only Uzbekistan can hand you.
Tiled madrasas stand across Central Asia. A fishing fleet stranded in a desert, a plov cauldron the width of a table and a felt yurt in the Kyzylkum belong to this country.
The Ships at Muynak
Muynak was a fishing port. The water is now well over a hundred kilometres north, and the trawlers sit on the sand where the harbour used to be, rusted through and lined up as though still moored. Reaching them is a long day of driving from Nukus, or two days with a night at a desert camp on the way. There is no short version of this trip.
- 1Daytrip from Khiva to Aral Sea Cemetery of Ships. All in one★★★★★★★★★★ 4.3 · 52 reviews
- 2Muynak Ship Cemetery Tour From Nukus★★★★★★★★★★ 4.3 · 32 reviews
- 3Aral Sea Adventures (2 day)★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 30 reviews
Plov, and Who Makes It
Plov is not a side dish here. Rice, carrot, lamb and cottonseed oil go into a cast-iron kazan for a couple of hours, and every region defends its own method: Samarkand layers the ingredients and leaves them, Tashkent stirs them together. A class usually starts at the bazaar picking the carrots and ends with everyone eating from one plate.
- 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
The Desert Camps
The road between Samarkand and Bukhara crosses open steppe, and the camps out near Lake Aydarkul put you in a felt yurt for the night with a camel to ride and a fire after dark. They are built for visitors and nobody pretends otherwise, but the silence and the sky are not staged.
- 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 blue is the reason most people come to Uzbekistan.
All history tours →
Uzbekistan 6 days private tour Tas-Khiva-Buk-Sam-Tas
Read our review →Book these before you land in Tashkent.
Most of Uzbekistan can be arranged the evening before from a hotel desk. These cannot. They need a vehicle, a driver, a border form or a bed that somebody else has already booked.
- 01Daytrip from Khiva to Aral Sea Cemetery of Ships. All in oneTwo days of driving out of Nukus with a night in the desert. Nobody assembles that at short notice.
- 02Yurt stay and Hiking in the Nurata Mountains tour – 2 daysThe camps out at Aydarkul have a fixed number of beds and fill right through the season.
- 03Full Day Private Tour in Seven Lakes from SamarkandThe valley sits over the Tajik border, so the day runs on paperwork as much as on a driver.
- 042 Days Tour to Bukhara and Samarkand from Tashkent by trainAfrosiyob seats between Tashkent, Samarkand and Bukhara go days ahead in spring and autumn.
By city — west along the Silk Road
Tashkent103 tours
Samarkand104 tours
Bukhara48 tours
Khiva & Urgench39 tours
Nukus & the Aral Sea11 tours
The Fergana Valley6 tours- The whole Uzbekistan catalogue →
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