Uzbekistan with children in 10 days: trains, a yurt and a potter’s wheel
Uzbekistan works better with children than most people assume. The distances are covered by fast trains rather than long drives, which children like. The food is bread, rice, grilled meat and melon, which most children eat. Uzbek adults are openly, sometimes overwhelmingly, welcoming to children, an
- Duration
- 10 days
- Pace
- Moderate
- Hotel changes
- 4
- Best months
- Apr, May, Sep, Oct
- From
- $1,850 per person
The two things that need designing around are heat and monument fatigue. Four cities of tiled madrasas is a great deal for an eight-year-old. So this route alternates: a morning of buildings, an afternoon of making something, a night in a yurt, a camel, a market, a train.
Who it suits: families with children roughly six and up. The yurt night suits eight and up better.
Your specialist: a named Central Asia specialist here, with our Tashkent partner running the ground and city guides chosen because they are good with children.
Day by day
Days 1 and 2: Tashkent. Arrive, and do nothing. Day two is the metro, which is the best possible way to introduce this country to a child: you ride between stations that look like palaces, and the game is finding the cotton flowers, the astronauts and the mosaics. Then Chorsu bazaar for lunch, which is noisy, enormous and full of things to taste, and the afternoon in a park or a pool.
Days 3 and 4: Samarkand. The Afrosiyob train, a little over two hours, which children generally rate as one of the highlights. Then two nights.
Day three: Gur-e-Amir in the late afternoon, which takes forty minutes and is the tomb of a conqueror, a story that lands well at that age. The Registan when it is lit.
Day four: Shah-i-Zinda early, which is stairs and colour and short. Then the paper workshop at Konigil, where mulberry bark is boiled, pounded by a water-driven hammer and made into paper by hand, and where children get to make a sheet and keep it. Afternoon at Siab bazaar buying melon and non bread.
Days 5 and 6: The Nuratau mountains and a yurt camp. Three hours by road from Samarkand to a village guesthouse in the Nuratau hills, where the family cooks and children can help. A short walk to petroglyphs, which are prehistoric carvings of ibex and hunters on rock faces and are more interesting to children than any museum.
Day six: on to a yurt camp by Lake Aydarkul on the edge of the Kyzylkum. A camel ride at a walk, a swim in the lake in season, a fire, and a night in a felt tent under a very large sky. This is the night children remember.
Days 7 and 8: Bukhara. Four hours by road to Bukhara, arriving for lunch. Two nights inside the old town, in a courtyard house where the front door opens onto the medieval city.
Day seven afternoon: the Ark fortress, which is a fortress and therefore fine, and the trading domes, where the game is finding the scissors made in the shape of storks.
Day eight: a morning at Poi Kalyan and the minaret, kept to two hours, then the Sitorai Mokhi-Khosa summer palace with its peacocks. Afternoon in the Lyabi-Hauz square with tea and time to run about.
Day 9: Bukhara. Free, and a workshop. Options in your document: a miniature painting studio, a suzani embroidery workshop, or a puppet maker who runs short shows in his own house. Evening is the good one: the old town after dark is safe, walkable and empty.
Day 10: Fly out. Bukhara has its own airport with connections to Tashkent, which saves the desert drive. Home, or a last night in Tashkent.
This route deliberately leaves out Khiva. Khiva is the hottest, the furthest and the most museum-like of the four cities, and adding it means either a six-hour desert drive or a tight domestic flight. With children we would rather have the yurt night.
What is included
Accommodation with breakfast throughout in rooms confirmed as family rooms or connecting, a night in a Nuratau village guesthouse and a night in a yurt camp with full board, all train seats booked the day the window opens, the Bukhara to Tashkent flight, private vehicles with child seats fitted, licensed guides on five days chosen for how they work with children, the paper workshop with a sheet each to take home, a craft workshop in Bukhara, the camel ride, all site entries, and a WhatsApp group with your consultant and our Tashkent partner team throughout.
What we would change, and when
- Teenagers? Add Khiva and drop a Bukhara night. Ichan Kala at dusk and the climb up the Islam Khoja minaret work well at that age.
- Under six? Cut the yurt camp, which has shared washing facilities and no air conditioning, and stay two nights in the Nuratau guesthouse instead.
- Want more time? Two nights in the Fergana valley at the start adds ceramics at Rishtan and a silk factory at Margilan, both of which are working places children can watch and try.
- Travelling in summer? We would not, with children. If your dates are fixed to July, the day starts at six, the middle of the day is at a pool, and we say so in the proposal.
Honest notes
Heat is the real constraint. From late May to September the middle of the day is genuinely unpleasant, and children feel it before adults admit it. April, May, September and October are the months, and we will be unhelpful about summer dates on purpose.
The yurt camp is simple. Felt tents with beds and bedding, shared washing blocks, an outdoor kitchen, no air conditioning, and electricity for part of the evening. It is clean and it is not a hotel. Some children love it immediately and a few do not, and we will describe it honestly before you commit.
Four cities of madrasas is too much for most children. This route has three and a mountain. If your children are unusually into history, we will add Khiva and take out the yurt night, and it is a different trip.
Food is repetitive. Plov, shashlik, lagman, samsa, bread and salad, cooked well, most days. Fussy eaters do fine on bread, rice and grilled meat. Fresh fruit in September is exceptional.
Nappy-changing facilities and public toilets outside hotels are poor. Carry what you would carry anywhere.
Built by your named Central Asia specialist, checked by our Tashkent partner team before it goes out.
Related
Shape this trip around us All Uzbekistan, four cities on a trade route and a train that ties them together trips
