Uzbekistan travel diaries 2026: Tashkent, Samarkand, Bukhara and the far reach of Khiva – photos

Uzbekistan is often introduced through its monuments: turquoise domes, tiled portals, names heavy with empire. But arriving there, what registers first is not grandeur so much as scale and distance. Central Asia still sits slightly outside Europe’s mental map, close enough to feel familiar, far enough to resist shortcuts. Travelling through it demands time, patience and a willingness to let the country explain itself slowly, city by city.

My route into that explanation ran through the TITF Media Campus, a ten-day press tour organised by Aziz Mirdjalilov, Head of Marketing at the Tourism Committee. Journalists, photographers, filmmakers and digital creators from across the world moved together through Tashkent, Samarkand, Bukhara and Khiva, following a programme designed to compress centuries of history into a single, carefully paced itinerary. Within moments of stepping foot in Uzbekistan, it became clear why Alexander the Great is said to have remarked that everything he had heard about the country was true — except that it was more beautiful than he had imagined. To understand how that beauty is framed and explained, I began my journey in Tashkent.

Tashkent: a capital mid-metamorphosis

Getting to Tashkent from Budapest takes a small act of commitment. There is currently no direct flight, so I flew via Istanbul with Turkish Airlines. The Istanbul–Tashkent leg runs about four and a half hours, long enough to register that Central Asia is not quite “near Europe”, but close enough to feel connected rather than remote.

Uzbekistan runs on the som, and the exchange rate has an immediate effect. At the time of writing, €1 buys about 14,214 som. Change €100 and you are suddenly carrying a thick stack of notes that makes you feel momentarily rich, even if only on paper. One practical detail matters later: you can only convert som back if you keep the original exchange receipt.

By the time I reached the hotel, around 6 a.m., it was already time to slip into press-tour rhythm: a quick freshen-up, then down to breakfast before the programme began. Breakfast came with live music and, at that hour, I found myself wondering who looked more tired: me, after an all-nighter on the plane, or the poor musician playing the violin for a basically empty dining room. 

The first colleagues I spoke to were a Malaysian team of two who, on hearing I was from Hungary, immediately brought up Szoboszlai, the famous Hungarian Liverpool midfielder. It felt like a small but telling shift. For decades, Hungary abroad had meant Puskás, his name carrying the country on its own. Now, more and more often, it is Szoboszlai who does that work.

Learning the rhythm of Uzbekistan

We started the day on a bus through Tashkent, and our guide used the ride to sketch the country’s basics. Tashkent literally means “Stone City”, but the translation misleads. The capital is pleasantly green, with parks and tree-lined streets that soften the abundance of Soviet-style apartment blocks. It is also a city shaped by rupture. A devastating earthquake destroyed roughly 70% of the capital, and the reconstruction created a visible split between older neighbourhoods and the newer districts. 

While around 95% of the population is Muslim, daily life feels relaxed rather than strict. Women are expected to cover when entering mosques, but elsewhere the rules ease. We were even surprised to spot a few liquor shops around the city, a small reminder of Soviet-era habits that never fully disappeared.

Uzbekistan sells itself as a country of sun, with around 300 sunny days a year. The statistic supports both tourism and agriculture, but it hides the extremes. Summer temperatures can reach 50C; winter can fall to -10C. For visitors, the most comfortable months are spring and autumn, roughly April to May and September to October, when the heat eases.

Independence arrived in 1991, and with it a deliberate project of national identity-building: Uzbek as official language, and an alphabet shift from Cyrillic to Latin. Even so, around 70% of the population is still fluent in Russian.

Hazrati-Imam complex

Our first stop was the Hazrati-Imam complex in the Old City, Tashkent’s most prominent religious ensemble and, in practice, a carefully arranged space of pilgrimage, education and official representation. Parts of it are ancient, while other parts are distinctly modern.

The older spiritual core of the complex is associated with the tomb of Kaffal Shashi, a revered local imam and preacher. Around that grave, over centuries, buildings accumulated: mausoleums, mosques, madrasas.

A madrasa is a religious school, traditionally devoted to the study of the Qur’an, Islamic law and theology. Education there was often slow and intensive. Classes were often very small, sometimes limited to just two boys, and studies might continue for 15 or 20 years, or even for a lifetime.

The Moʻyi Muborak madrasa is particularly famous for holding relics attributed to early Islam, including a 7th century Qur’an and what is claimed to be a hair of the Prophet Muhammad.

Inside a silk-garments souvenir shop on the grounds, we were given a brief demonstration of silk products and traditional women’s clothing. We were told that, in the past, social information could be read from dress alone: age, status, number of children, marital situation. We also learned three simple ways to tell whether a product is made of real silk: how it falls when dropped, whether it slides smoothly through a ring, and how a small corner burns. The burning test was for demonstration only, and not suggested for anyone keen to keep their newly bought silk scarf intact.

Visiting an authentic bazaar

From there we went to a nearby bazaar, the kind of market that still works as an everyday place rather than a tourist attraction. It sells everything from fruit and dried fruit to clothes and meat, but the highlight was the freshly squeezed pomegranate juice, available at almost every corner. Tea stalls offered hundreds of blends chosen by smell; my favourite was a black tea blend with lavender.

What stood out was the absence of aggressive selling. Compared with markets in places where pressure is part of the method — Egypt, Turkey — vendors here tended to respect personal space. You could browse, taste, decline, and move on without turning the interaction into a negotiation over politeness.

Suzuk-Ota complex

Later we visited the Suzuk-Ota complex, associated with Hazrat Sheikh Mustafakul Khodja (Suzuk-Ota), a figure folded into both history and local legend. The site’s story, as told to visitors, contains familiar Central Asian themes: the saintly teacher, the miraculous act, the transformation of terrain through labour and learning. It also carries the Soviet-era scar common to religious buildings across the region: closure, repurposing, industrial use, then reopening and restoration after the late 1980s. 

Inside Tashkent’s underground public gallery

We ended the day underground, in Tashkent’s metro, which reveals itself as much through design as through function. Some stations are grand in a distinctly Soviet way, with marble, chandeliers and geometric designs, their themes shifting between Uzbek history and Soviet modernity. One of the most striking is Kosmonautlar station, decorated with ceramic medallions of Soviet cosmonauts, including Yuri Gagarin and Valentina Tereshkova. Other stations lean toward poets and astronomers. The metro itself was built as part of the post-earthquake reconstruction and engineered to withstand major seismic events.

No trip to Uzbekistan is complete without plov

We finished the day with a plate of Tashkent plov at one of the city’s most famous plov centres. The dish is heavy and filling: rice cooked with meat, carrots, onions and garlic, often with chickpeas and raisins, and is served in generous portions. We were told, with the usual pride attached to national dishes, that every Uzbek city makes plov differently and considers its own version the right one. The next day, we were heading to Samarkand to see how theirs compared.

Samarkand — madrases, necropolis and bursting a centuries-old myth

Alexander the Great’s oft-quoted remark about Samarkand — then known as Maracanda — has long shaped its reputation: everything he heard was true, except that the city was even more beautiful than expected. After conquering it in 329 BC, Samarkand remained a point of reference rather than a footnote. Later writers gave it grand titles such as “the Pearl of the Eastern Muslim World”, while today it is more often described in terms of colour — turquoise domes, minarets and breathtaking mosaics. Needless to say, for architect lovers, Samarkand is a must-visit destination.

We left early from Tashkent North Railway Station on the Afrosiyob high-speed train (766F), and in under two and a half hours we were stepping into Samarkand’s wide, open light.

Our guide explained that Samarkand means “rich city” — a name reflected both in the scale of its monuments and in the density of its population and customs. As old as Rome, it is a UNESCO World Heritage site with a protected skyline, where buildings are limited to twelve floors. The city is home to people from more than a hundred nationalities, and while most residents are Muslim, daily life does not follow a single model. Traditions such as newlyweds walking through fire continue, and human and animal figures appear in art and even in cemeteries. Samarkand also boasts a wine factory, two beer breweries and a large number of protected historic buildings. All of this sits in a seismic zone, where earthquakes are a regular part of life.

Registan Square — the symbolic heart of Timurid Samarkand

Samarkand is famous for its madrasas, and nowhere makes that clearer than the Registan, the city’s most photographed square. Registan means “sandy place” or desert in Persian, and it all makes perfect sense, once you notice how the buildings appear to be sinking — not collapsing exactly, but settling, as if time itself is pulling them gently back into the earth.

Registan was once ceremonial, educational and commercial — the city’s public brain and theatre. In the background of all this stands Amir Temur (1336–1405) who rose from a local Turkic-Mongol noble into one of the 14th century’s most feared and celebrated rulers. His empire stretched from India to Anatolia, yet he chose to make Samarkand the centre of gravity. He gathered architects, artisans, scholars and astronomers from across his conquests and turned the city into an imperial showcase of power and intellect. In today’s Uzbekistan, Temur is remembered less as an invader than as a state-builder, a patron of culture and a symbol of historical continuity.

The Ulugh Beg Madrasa (15th century) is the oldest building on the square. Later, the ensemble was completed by the Sher-Dor and Tilya-Kori madrasas in the 17th century.

Shah-i-Zinda Necropolis — a street of eternity

Next came Shah-i-Zinda, the Living King, one of the most sacred and visually striking complexes in Central Asia. It grew around the tomb of Kusam ibn Abbas, cousin of the Prophet Muhammad, said to have come to Samarkand in the 7th century to spread Islam. Legend tells that when he was attacked, Hazrat Khizr led him into a well where he drank holy water and slipped into eternal life, leaving behind a symbolic grave. The facts are simpler — Kusam ibn Abbas did die — but faith kept the story alive, and generations built in its shadow.

Over centuries, the dead gathered here: Timurid rulers, noblewomen, scholars, and courtiers, drawn by the promise of closeness to the Living King. Even today, ritual shapes the visit. Forty steps lead upward, climbed by some with whispered prayers, others counting up and down while making a wish, hoping the numbers match — and that the wish comes true, as if eternity itself might be persuaded to listen.

Bibi-Khanym Mosque

Few sites in Samarkand inspire as much legend as the Bibi-Khanym Mosque. Tradition holds that Amir Temur built it using wealth taken from his Indian campaign, with ninety-five elephants said to have hauled its materials. The scale was meant to astonish, but the ambition proved costly: the mosque was reportedly rushed, began to fail early, and left Temur dissatisfied, particularly with its main entrance, which he ordered rebuilt in haste.

Local lore adds a darker layer. In one version, Bibi-Khanym, often described as Temur’s wife, commissioned the mosque as a surprise during his absence. The architect fell in love with her and demanded a kiss before finishing the work; the mark was noticed on Temur’s return, the architect was executed, and women were ordered to veil themselves. Historically, earthquakes and repeated damage hastened the mosque’s decline, leaving what survives today as a heavily restored monument — admired, debated, and inseparable from the myths that surround it.

Hazrat Khizr Mosque

The Hazrat Khizr Mosque sits south of the Afrasiab settlement, opposite the Siab Bazaar and Bibi-Khanym. It is considered one of the oldest Muslim religious buildings in Samarkand — traditionally traced to the 8th century. From here the city opens up: Registan in the distance, Shah-i-Zinda nearby, Bibi-Khanym’s mass below, and to the north the ancient layers of Afrasiab.

Hazrat Khizr himself occupies a strange place between theology and folklore. He is revered as a saint, patron of travellers, linked to water, wealth and blessing. Popular belief makes him immortal, capable of appearing in any guise; the idea has even been used to explain the deep reflex of oriental hospitality, because Khizr might arrive at any moment as a stranger who needs to be fed.

Temur’s grave — uncovering the powerful ruler’s secret

Temur’s presence in Samarkand is not only architectural; it is also physical. He died at the age of 69, reportedly from meningitis. As a Muslim ruler, his face was not depicted during his lifetime, and his image was shaped largely by reputation rather than portraits.

During the Soviet era though, his grave was opened and scientists reconstructed his appearance based on his remains. They discovered that his right leg was three centimetres shorter than his left. Today, there are three sculptures of Amir Temur in Uzbekistan, showing how his image has been shaped into a central figure of national history and identity.

Second day — modern Samarkand, trained for the future

If the first day belonged to dynasties and domes, the second was about how Samarkand now tries to organise its future.

Samarkand is unmistakably a university city. The number of universities is over fourteen, and our guide pointed out how education for women expanded once the Russians arrived, changing the shape of the city’s public life. During our stay, we had the chance to visit the Silk Road International University of Tourism and Cultural Heritage, a modern institution established in 2018 and built around a clear national strategy: to turn heritage into expertise, and expertise into economic development.

Students were surprisingly open and friendly, spoke good English, and were eager to answer our questions without the guardedness that sometimes comes with formal “showcase” visits.

What impressed me most was how practical the training was made to feel. We walked through facilities designed to imitate real environments — the inside of an airplane, the interior of a train — and at the hospitality faculty there were full maquette restaurants built around different cuisines, so students could rehearse the skills of the field they’d chosen in spaces that resembled the real world rather than a classroom.

Uzbekistan’s living traditions: carpet weaving in a country that can’t afford it

Afterwards, we visited a family-owned carpet factory, where the focus shifted to traditional craftsmanship. They explained how to distinguish genuine handmade carpets from the many imitations on the market, often made from bamboo or polyester. In a genuine handmade carpet, the knots should be visible — proof of labour, not machinery — and traditionally it is women who make these carpets.

The carpets came with hefty price tags: a mid-size piece cost around $12,900, while a large one could set you back $60,000. This raises the question of how many locals can realistically afford them in a country where the average monthly salary is said to be about $300–350. One mid-size carpet can take roughly one year and two months to complete. All colours are natural: yellow comes from asparagus flowers, blue from indigo sourced in India, and red from pomegranate. The depth of colour depends on how long the materials are boiled, with longer boiling producing darker shades.

Spectacular Registan Square light show 

Later, as evening settled, we went back to Registan for the nightly sound-and-light show: music, projections, and bright, theatrical colour washing over the madrasas for roughly eighteen to twenty minutes, usually starting around 8 or 9pm depending on the season and local schedule. You can watch from inside with a ticket, or stand outside the square and see it for free — and whichever you choose, the effect is the same: history remixed into spectacle, the old stones made to move again.

Samarkand doesn’t merely preserve the past; it performs it — and then, quietly, trains a new generation to sell it back to the world.

Bukhara – a spiritual stronghold shaped by survival

According to a traditional saying, “if Samarkand is the beauty of the earth, Bukhara is the beauty of the spirit.” While another goes further: “In all other parts of the globe light descends upon the earth; from holy Bukhara it ascends.” These are not casual boasts, and Bukhara makes little effort to soften them. Where Samarkand impresses through scale and surface, Bukhara feels more compressed, shaped by belief, power, labour and survival — and whatever “light” it claims is earned rather than decorative.

A 70s-themed rail ride with modern touches

We arrived in Bukhara from Samarkand by train in the late evening, a journey that took around two and a half hours. There are five daily services, and the rolling stock is modern enough to offer Wi-Fi and even a small ritual of hospitality: a free pastry and a hot drink, handed out like an in-flight snack. It’s a modest touch, but a telling one, reflecting a country that places quiet pride in welcoming its guests.

Stations are taken quite seriously. Security screening is thorough, while architecturally, they remain anchored in the late Soviet 1970s. Everything works, everything is clean, but there is no attempt to disguise their origin.

Bukhara itself feels immediately different from Samarkand. Less monumental, more compressed, more worn-in. It is flatter, drier, dustier — and has been repeatedly tested by forces both human and natural. Earthquakes are a constant presence here, as is salinity in the soil, which corrodes foundations and shortens architectural life spans.

Ark Fortress of Bukhara

We began the first day in Bukhara at the Ark Fortress, the hulking citadel that rises above Registan Square. Camels were tethered near the entrance — partly for effect, partly for photographs — calmly absorbing the steady flow of visitors.

The Ark is the oldest structure in the city, with origins reaching back at least to the 5th century. For more than a millennium it functioned as a city within a city: residence of the emirs, seat of government, and home to officials, poets, scholars and soldiers.

Its apparent solidity is misleading. The Ark has been destroyed and rebuilt countless times — by invasions, rebellions and earthquakes. In 1220, when Genghis Khan’s forces captured Bukhara, inhabitants fled into the fortress, only for the Mongols to break through, massacre the defenders and raze the structure. In 1920, it fell again, this time to the Red Army. Soviet bombardment left much of it in ruins, and it was never restored to its former function. Today, the Ark Fortress is a vast earthen ruin, its long walls enclosing a largely silent, archaeological interior.

Djami Mosque of the Ark

We visited the Djami Mosque of the Ark, built during the Ashtarkhanid period. Like many Bukharan mosques, it is divided into winter and summer spaces. The mosque with its impressive wooden columns now houses a small manuscript exhibition, a reminder that Bukhara once styled itself the “dome of Islam”, a centre of scholarship as much as power.

Ismail Samani Mausoleum

We began the second day at the Ismail Samani Mausoleum, built in the early 10th century and remarkable as the first known Central Asian monument made entirely of fired brick. Originally constructed for Ismail Samani’s father, it later became the ruler’s own tomb, carrying traces of older, pre-Islamic beliefs about earth and heaven. Local legend holds that Ismail continued to rule for forty years after his death, delivering justice from beyond the grave.

Shahristan Archaeological Site

Following the mausoleum visit, we strolled through the Shahristan, the historic urban core that grew beyond the Ark’s walls. This was where Bukhara truly came alive: bazaars, workshops, mosques, houses layered atop earlier houses. Much of it lies beneath the present city, excavated in fragments. What survives reinforces the sense that Bukhara was never static; it expanded, collapsed, adapted, and continued.

Urda palatial bathhouse: where history takes a dark turn

Nearby are the remains of the Urda palatial bathhouse, a 16th-century royal hammam. Our guide was unusually candid here. The hammam, she explained, served purposes beyond hygiene. Groups of young girls — sometimes as young as twelve or thirteen — were brought in to be assessed by a woman secretly employed by the emir. Those deemed pretty enough were married into the ruler’s household. Many were fourteen or fifteen, expected to bear children immediately. Some, unable to face such a fate, took their own lives.

According to manuscripts, the emir was permitted four legal wives and dozens of unofficial ones; divorce could be pronounced without warning, even while a wife was asleep. Hence, women wore their jewellery day in and day out and stitched coins into their belts, knowing they could be expelled with nothing else.

Seen in this context, the Ark reads less as a single monument and more as a record of how power, belief and daily life were tightly interwoven within the fortress walls.

Mir-i-Arab Madrasa

At the Po-i-Kalyan complex, the Mir-i-Arab Madrasa stands opposite the Kalyan Mosque. Built in the 1530s, it is still an active religious school. Its dense blue-and-gold tile work and turquoise dome dominate the skyline, with ongoing restoration a familiar sight.

Kalyan Mosque

The Kalyan Mosque, completed in 1514, opens onto one of the largest courtyards in Central Asia. Arcaded galleries surround the space, leading to a prayer hall with a tiled mihrab and wooden minbar. Despite its scale, this is a working mosque in a city that never stopped using its past.

Sitori-i-Mokhi Khosa Palace

Our next stop lay outside the city: Sitori-i-Mokhi Khosa, the countryside palace of the last emir, Said Alimkhan. Its name means “where stars meet the moon”. Built over two decades from the late 19th century, the palace combines Bukharan planning with Russian engineering and European taste.

The White Hall, glittering with mirrors and white plaster, was designed to impress visiting elites. Nearby rooms — bedrooms, banqueting halls, the harem — now form part of a slightly dusty Museum of Applied Arts. A 1928 photograph shows the emir’s unveiled concubines, a detail that unsettles more than it explains. After 1920, the palace briefly served as the seat of the Bukharan People’s Republic, before history moved on again.

Bolo Hauz Mosque

We ended the day with a brief stop at Bolo Hauz Mosque, opposite the Ark. Built in 1712 as the emir’s personal Friday mosque, its twenty wooden pillars reflect in the pool before it, doubling themselves into the “forty columns” of local lore. The pillars, carved from elm, walnut and poplar, have survived earthquakes, conquest and regime change — a quiet architectural fact that mirrors the resilience of the city and its people.

By the time we boarded the bus for Khiva, Bukhara had left its mark less through beauty than through accumulation: layers of belief, violence, adaptation and endurance. It is not an easy city, and it does not pretend to be.

Khiva – through the gates of the walled city

Khiva was the place that stayed with me the most. We arrived from Bukhara after an over seven-hour bus journey that began on smooth new asphalt and ended with the driver picking his way round potholes on a road that seemed permanently half repaired, a reminder that in Uzbekistan infrastructure is still catching up even as the country talks up sleek modern connections. The contrast will be sharp soon enough: from 2026 high-speed electric trains are due to run between Tashkent and Khiva, cutting the journey from 14 hours to about 7 hours 40 minutes. 

Khiva sits very near the Turkmenistan border, in the Khoresm oasis in the southern reaches of the Amu Darya delta. South of the Aral Sea and at the edge of the Kyzylkum desert, it is a compact town of around 50,000 people where the historic Ichon Qala, a recognised UNESCO World Heritage site, is enclosed by thick mud-brick walls and marketed without much embarrassment as a “museum city”. Compared with Bukhara, which still feels like a lived-in trading town with cars and motorbikes crowding its streets, Khiva’s inner city looks and behaves more like a carefully arranged set, its spaces tightened and composed for visitors. 

Ichan-Kala Museum-Reserve: tradition and shared discomfort

The Ichan-Kala Museum-Reserve, which in practice is most of the old city, presents Khiva as a sequence of curated zones rather than a single coherent museum. You enter through Ota Darvoza, the west gate, and almost immediately the everyday world drops away. Our programme began with the big set pieces along the main axis: the bulk of the Muhammad Aminkhan madrasa, its courtyard now more hotel and souvenir market than seminary, and the attached minaret stump that never became a full tower but still dominates the immediate skyline. 

From there we walked to the Islam-Khoja complex, its slender minaret and compact madrasa providing the elevated view over a sea of flat roofs and turquoise domes. As we passed rows of stalls selling everything from embroidered fabrics to suzani textiles, we kept seeing chugurmas — the traditional fluffy sheepskin hats that men were once expected to wear year-round. If a man stepped out without one, people assumed he was bad news. The thought of carrying that weight in the August heat felt like a small, rough symmetry: women still endure layers under the hijab, so perhaps the old rules at least spread the discomfort around.

Nurullabay Palace

We began the next morning at Nurullabay Palace, a deliberate shift away from Ichon Qala’s compressed skyline. Built in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the palace, now restored as a museum, grew from a garden that Muhammad Rakhimkhan II acquired from a wealthy merchant on condition it kept the owner’s name. His son, Asfandiyar Khan, expanded it into a summer residence whose character diverges sharply from Khiva’s mud-brick silhouettes.

Behind high walls and set around four courtyards, the palace reads like a hybrid: Khorezm courtyard planning overlaid with European aspiration. The decorative interior approach is equally mixed: ceilings painted with floral motifs, grand fire-places with elaborate colourful designs, and the much-mentioned seventh room, with its inlaid stones and peacock feathers, carries the slightly restless energy of a ruler keen to broadcast modernity as much as tradition.

German Mennonite Museum with a Hungarian twist

Following the richly ornamented palace, we headed to the German Mennonite Museum, housed in one of the modest buildings in the old town, documenting the odd, often forgotten chapter of 19th-century Mennonite settlers invited by the khans to bring in new skills.

Alongside its displays on carpentry, engineering and everyday life sat a small but striking reminder of another foreign thread woven into Khiva’s history: a memorial plaque to Ármin Vámbéry, the Hungarian orientalist, explorer, ethnographer and a covert intelligence informant for Britain, whose 1863 journey through Central Asia—undertaken in the guise of a dervish—made him one of the first Europeans to reach Khiva, Bukhara and Samarkand. 

The museum also brought Khudaybergen Devanov to mind — the father of Uzbek photography, who later served as finance minister of the short-lived Khorezm republic and left behind the first Uzbek documentary along with a trove of early images of Khiva.

Other must-visit Khiva gems

Throughout our second day, we visited three more landmarks that sharpened the sense of Khiva’s long, layered past. The Pahlavon Mahmud Mausoleum, centred on the grave of a 13th-century poet and wrestler whose workshop became a shrine, now holds the tombs of Khiva’s khans under its turquoise dome. Tash Hauli Palace, built in the 19th century after years of forced labour, shows power through colour and precision, its courtyards lined with the intricate tilework of the decorator known as Abdullah the Genius. And the Djuma Mosque, a cool hall carried by 212 carved wooden columns — some salvaged from buildings a millennium older — offers one of the city’s starkest and most atmospheric spaces.

Central Asia’s most sought-after wedding location

One of the city’s quieter surprises was how wedding parties seemed to outnumber tour groups. Instead of backpackers, it was newly or soon-to-be married couples with families in tow — not only from Khiva itself but from across Uzbekistan and neighbouring Central Asian countries. Men broke spontaneously into traditional Uzbek wedding dances in the public squares, while brides — many strikingly young — steered their flowing white dresses over the cobbled streets as they queued with the grooms for a photograph before a minaret or tiled portal.

Uzbekistan remains a place where most people marry at 18 or 19, and where families who send children abroad to study still expect them to return for good to find a spouse — and, in quite a few cases, they are pressed or required to do so whether they want to or not. Four or five children have quietly become two or three, but the wedding as a public event has not shrunk.

Khiva’s unique flavours

If Khiva’s built heritage can feel frozen, its food culture pulls the other way. What we ate inside the walls differed from the familiar cycle of plov and shashlik across Tashkent, Samarkand and Bukhara. Khiva leans on lighter textures, sharper herbs and a fondness for pumpkin. Yumurta barak, a local speciality, looks plain but its beaten-egg filling gives it a softness somewhere between fresh pasta and a thin omelette; locals add a spoon of yoghurt. We also tried gumma, a fried cousin in appearance but filled with minced meat and onions. Both dishes sit closer to a quiet home meal than to anything meant to impress.

By evening we were back on the road to Urgench International Airport for the short flight to Tashkent. When the high-speed trains finally start running from the capital, Khiva will feel less remote — and I’m already looking forward to returning by rail.

How Uzbekistan is turning heritage into a destination

Uzbekistan has long attracted travellers for its history, but it is now learning how to organise that attention. Across the country, heritage is being paired with infrastructure, leisure and long-term planning rather than left to stand alone. From purpose-built tourist complexes to alpine resorts and international trade fairs, the shift is visible on the ground. These are not isolated projects, but parts of a broader attempt to turn admiration into movement — and movement into return visits.. 

Arda Khiva Tourism Complex

Arda Khiva, four kilometres outside the old city, is the clearest example: a brand-new tourist complex built on the initiative of President Shavkat Mirziyoyev and opened in the autumn of 2024, designed to absorb overflow from Ichon Qala and encourage visitors to stay longer and spend more. You enter through carved wooden gates and, for a moment, it feels like stepping into a miniature Khiva.

At street level, Arda Khiva works like a compact town, with cafés, craft workshops, souvenir stalls, hotels and guesthouses laid out so nothing feels far away. Narrow canals run alongside the streets, and while the gondolas can seem a little kitsch at first, it can be a fun addition for families with children.

Just beyond the complex lies the artificial Govik Kuli Lake, created to echo the old course of the Amu Darya and complete the idea of Khiva as a “port city”. Boat trips skim across the water, and the open shoreline gives visitors space to linger — not as history rebuilt, but as history reimagined, allowing tourism to expand without overwhelming the real Khiva behind the walls.

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Amirsoy Ski Resort: teaching a desert nation to ski

If Arda Khiva smooths the past into a resort shape, Amirsoy announces that Uzbekistan wants a future beyond domes and desert citadels. The drive from Tashkent quickly gives way to mountain air, and then suddenly modern cable cars carrying visitors rise into the Western Tian Shan as if someone has dropped a Swiss postcard into Central Asia.

Even non-skiers are drawn upward. The cable car ride alone is worth it, lifting you above the trees and into a wide, snow-covered landscape. The chalet village, with its fireplaces and igloo-like dining domes, leans into Alpine fantasy, but the aim is serious. Plans to link Amirsoy with older Soviet-era resorts would create a single, large-scale mountain destination. Uzbekistan is not only inviting foreigners to ski here; it is teaching itself how to belong in the winter tourism world.

TITF in Tashkent: where ambition goes on display

After days on the road, the Tashkent International Tourism Fair felt like stepping into Uzbekistan’s control room. Bright regional pavilions, folk performances and constant negotiations turned the capital into a live pitch, less about monuments than about direction. Alongside the displays, discussions centred on flight routes, hotel capacity, education and sustainability, while the parallel gastronomy festival made a strong case for cuisine as soft power.

I covered the fair in detail earlier — you can read the full report here: Tourism on the Silk Road: Uzbekistan opens its doors to the world at TITF-2025 – photos

Closing notes from the Silk Road

On the day of departure,  suitcase repacked and alarm set far too early again, Uzbekistan no longer felt like a single destination. It felt like a sequence of arguments — between past and future, faith and pragmatism, preservation and performance — all playing out in real time.

What stayed with me most was not any single monument, however grand, but the way the country is learning to manage its own weight. Uzbekistan is heavy with history. For years, that history simply sat there, admired, endured, or quietly ignored. Now it is being reorganised: taught, branded, illuminated, priced, and sometimes softened so it can travel better.

There is a confidence growing here, paired with a certain restlessness. You see it in the students training for jobs that did not exist a decade ago, in the resorts rising in the mountains, in the effort to make railways faster and borders feel closer. You also see its limits — in the gaps between wealth and craft, in traditions that survive unevenly, in questions that are politely sidestepped rather than answered.

Travelling through Tashkent, Samarkand, Bukhara and Khiva is not a smooth narrative. It is a layered one, full of contradictions and unfinished sentences. And perhaps that is exactly why it works. Uzbekistan does not offer a single, neat story. It offers accumulation.

As the plane lifted off over Tashkent, I realised I was already mentally rearranging the journey — what I had misunderstood, what I wanted to see again, what I had missed entirely. That, in the end, may be the country’s quiet success: it does not close the book. It leaves you mid-paragraph, thinking about when you might return to keep reading.