ITINERARY

Uzbekistan: 10-day travel itinerary

Ten days is enough for the four cities everyone comes for — Tashkent, Khiva, Bukhara and Samarkand — with a night in the desert in between. Below is the route day by day, how to get from one city to the next, and what to know before you book. It is the trip we run ourselves, so nothing here is theory.

Day by day

1
Tashkent
Land, drop the bags and start easy: the Hazrati Imam complex, the museum of applied arts, dinner where the city eats. Most flights come in early morning, so the first day is longer than it looks.
2
Tashkent
The modern half — Independence Square, Amir Timur Square, and the metro, where every station was designed as its own room. Photography underground is allowed now; it was not until 2018.
3
Tashkent — Urgench — Khiva
An hour and a half in the air instead of a night on the train, then 30 km by road. Sleep inside Ichan Kala, the walled town: after the day visitors leave, it is yours.
4
Khiva — Bukhara
480 km across the Kyzylkum along the Amu Darya, eight to nine hours with stops. The road is the point, not the price of getting there: desert, the river, tea at a roadside cafe.
5
Bukhara
The one city on the route you never get into a car for. Lyabi-Hauz, the Poi-Kalyan complex, the Ark, the trading domes — all of it within twenty minutes on foot of each other.
6
Bukhara — Nurata — yurt camp
The Chashma spring at Nurata, petroglyphs in the hills, and then the desert: a yurt, a fire, dinner under a sky with nothing else lit under it.
7
Yurt camp — Aydarkul — Samarkand
Camels in the morning if you want them, then the lake — Aydarkul is man-made and enormous, and you can swim in it. Lunch by the water, then on to Samarkand.
8
Samarkand
The Registan, Gur-e Amir, Bibi-Khanym, Shah-i-Zinda and the Siyob bazaar. Start at opening time: by ten the squares belong to the groups, and the light is better early anyway.
9
Samarkand — Shahrisabz — Samarkand
South over the pass to Timur’s home town, where he built a palace so large that its surviving gate is 38 m tall. Back in Samarkand for the evening.
10
Samarkand — Tashkent
Two hours on the fast train, a last few hours in the city, then the airport. Leave the shopping for Tashkent — the bazaar there is cheaper than the tourist rows.

The cities on the route

Tashkent

Tashkent

The largest city in Central Asia and the one nobody plans time for. Give it a day and a half anyway: the Chorsu bazaar under its blue dome, the metro, and the food, which is the best in the country and the cheapest.

Khiva

Khiva

A walled town of clay and brick, the first place in Uzbekistan on the UNESCO list. Small enough to walk end to end in twenty minutes, which is why staying the night inside the walls changes it completely.

Bukhara

Bukhara

The most whole of the old cities: not monuments with a town around them but a town that never stopped being one. Narrow streets, shaded squares, and a minaret Genghis Khan reportedly refused to destroy.

Kyzylkum and Aydarkul

Kyzylkum and Aydarkul

The night between the cities. A camp of yurts in the desert, camels, and a lake that appeared in the 1960s when a dam overflowed — 3,000 square kilometres of water where the map says sand.

Samarkand

Samarkand

Three madrasahs around one square, a street of tombs climbing a hill, and Timur under a ribbed turquoise dome. Two full days is the least it takes; we have a page of its own for it.

Getting from city to city

The fast trainThe Afrosiyob does Tashkent–Samarkand in about two hours and Samarkand–Bukhara in under two. Seats open for sale in advance and the good departures go first — this is the one thing worth booking early.
One flight, not a night trainTashkent to Urgench is an hour and a half in the air against sixteen on the rails. On a ten-day trip that flight buys back most of a day, which is why the route uses it.
The desert roadKhiva to Bukhara is 480 km with no railway shortcut worth taking: eight to nine hours by road along the Amu Darya. Plan it as a day of the trip rather than a transfer.

Worth knowing before you book

When to goApril to early June and September to October. July and August sit above 35 °C and the walking has to happen before ten in the morning. Winter is cold, empty and cheap, and the tilework in low sun is worth the coat.
MoneyCards work in hotels and the bigger restaurants; bazaars, taxis and small cafes want cash in som. Exchange in banks rather than on the street, and take some cash for the desert stretch, where there is no signal, let alone a terminal.
What to wearOrdinary clothes everywhere; no head covering is expected. Working mosques and the shrines ask for shoulders and knees covered, so a scarf in the bag saves the day. In summer, a hat matters more than anything else on this list.
How much to fit inTen days holds these four cities and one desert night without a rushed morning. Adding the Fergana Valley or the Aral Sea to the same ten days means seeing the road instead of the country — those are worth their own trip.

The whole ten days, arranged

Hotels, the flight to Urgench, the desert crossing, guides in every city and the yurt camp — booked as one trip, with one person answering for it.

What we can arrange

All of it we book ourselves. Write once with your dates and you get an answer with a price, not another search form.