How many days do you need in Uzbekistan?
Ten. If you want one number and nothing else, take ten days and stop reading.
The reason we can be that direct about Uzbekistan, when we hedge about most countries, is that the geography does the deciding. Four cities sit in a line across the country with a high-speed train between most of them, and each of those cities has an obvious right length. Add them up and you get ten days. Everything shorter drops a city. Everything longer adds a region rather than more of the same.
Here is what each length actually buys.
The building blocks
Before the lengths, the components, because every Uzbekistan itinerary is assembled from these and it is useful to see the pieces.
| Place | Nights we would give it | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Tashkent | 1 to 2 | Undersold by everybody. The metro, Chorsu bazaar, the Khast Imam complex, the best restaurants in the country |
| Samarkand | 3 | The Registan twice, Shah-i-Zinda early, Gur-e-Amir, the observatory. Two nights is a rush |
| Bukhara | 3 | The city that rewards doing nothing. Two nights works, three is better |
| Khiva | 2 | One night means you never see the walled city empty, which is the whole point |
| Nuratau and Aydarkul | 2 | Village guesthouses, walking, a yurt by the lake. The break in a city route |
| The Fergana valley | 2 to 3 | Rishtan ceramics, Margilan silk, Kokand. A working craft valley |
| Shakhrisabz | Half a day | A day trip from Samarkand over the pass, and a complicated one |
| Nukus and the Aral | 3 | The Savitsky collection and the ship graveyard at Muynak. Long, hot, affecting |
Note what is missing from that list: travelling days. The train legs are short enough to fold into the ends of days. The two exceptions are the desert crossing to Khiva, which is most of a day either by road or by the slower train, and the drive over the Kamchik pass into Fergana, which is half a day each way.
Under eight days
A three-city trip: Tashkent, Samarkand, Bukhara. Fly into Tashkent, take the train down the line, fly or train back.
This is a real trip and a good one. You see the Registan, Shah-i-Zinda, Gur-e-Amir, the Kalyan complex, the Samanid mausoleum and the Bukhara trading domes, which between them is most of what Uzbekistan is famous for. What you do not get is Khiva, and you should not try to force it. Squeezing Khiva into seven days costs you two travelling days out of seven and turns the whole trip into transit.
Six days is the floor. Below that you are visiting Samarkand with a Tashkent airport transfer attached, which is a fine long weekend and not a country.
Eight to nine days
The awkward length, and the one where we most often ask people to think again.
Eight days is either three cities done comfortably with a spare day, or four cities done in a hurry. We prefer the first. If your leave is fixed at eight days, the trip we build is Tashkent one night, Samarkand three, Bukhara three, back to Tashkent, and you leave with time in every city and a day spent doing nothing in a Bukhara courtyard, which people report back as the best afternoon of the trip.
Nine days is where a four-city trip becomes honest, just. It is also the length of our romantic route, which takes the opposite approach and uses the days for three slow bases rather than four fast ones.
Ten days, the answer
Four cities, properly, with a rest day. Tashkent one or two nights, Samarkand three, Bukhara three, Khiva two, and a domestic flight from Urgench back to Tashkent that saves a whole day on the return.
This is the shape a first visit should take and it is the classic route. Nothing in it is rushed. You see every major monument in the country, you have one unstructured afternoon in Bukhara and one in Khiva after the day groups have left, and you finish in Tashkent with an evening at a proper restaurant.
Ten days at the comfortable tier costs about $1,850 per person land only. The arithmetic is in what a trip to Uzbekistan costs.
Twelve days
Ten days plus one region. This is where the trip stops looking like everybody else’s, and the choice of which region is the interesting decision.
Plus the Nuratau mountains and Aydarkul. Two nights in village guesthouses in the hills with walking between them, and a night in a yurt by the lake. The best structural addition for a traveller who is starting to tire of tile, and it breaks the route physically as well as visually. This is roughly our twelve-day adventure route.
Plus the Fergana valley. Two to three days over the Kamchik pass for ceramics at Rishtan, ikat silk at Margilan and the khan’s palace at Kokand. The right addition for anyone interested in how things are made rather than who built them, and it is the craft and culture route.
Plus nothing, spread across what you have. Four nights in Bukhara instead of three, three in Khiva, an extra day in Tashkent. Underrated, and the version we would choose on a second visit.
Fourteen days
The four cities plus Fergana, or the four cities plus the long road north to Nukus and the Aral. Two genuinely different fortnights.
The Fergana version is our fourteen-day Silk Road and Fergana route and it is the more balanced trip: cities, then craft towns, with a mountain pass between them.
The Aral version is harder. Nukus is a long way north, the Savitsky Museum holds one of the world’s great collections of Soviet avant-garde painting, and Muynak’s ship graveyard sits on what used to be seabed. It is hot, the driving is long and the accommodation is basic. It is also one of the most affecting places we send people, and nobody who has done it regrets it. We would not put it in a first ten days and we would put it in a second visit without hesitating.
Fourteen days is also where Khiva becomes an easy yes rather than a debate. That debate is in Bukhara or Khiva.
Twenty-one days
Two countries, or one country exhaustively.
The two-country version crosses the Fergana border at Dostyk into Kyrgyzstan and pairs the settled Silk Road cities with the nomadic mountain half of Central Asia. It only works if your dates fall in the first half of September or the second half of June, because that is the entire overlap between the Uzbek season and the Kyrgyz one. The full argument is in the Silk Road in two weeks, and the route is Uzbekistan in 21 days.
The one-country version is unusual and we like it: the four cities with four nights each, Fergana, Nuratau, Shakhrisabz, Termez in the far south with its Buddhist archaeology, and Nukus. Very few people do this. Those who do come back saying it was the first time a country stopped being a list.
Where the cut-off falls
The honest cut-off in Uzbekistan is between day eight and day ten, and it is entirely about Khiva. Below ten days, adding Khiva costs more than it returns. At ten days and above it slots in cleanly.
The second cut-off is at fourteen. Past a fortnight in Uzbekistan alone, most travellers have absorbed as much Timurid architecture as they want in one trip, which is not a criticism of the country. It is why our own three-week recommendation is two countries rather than one.
Plan this trip
Tell us how many days you actually have, including the flights, and we will tell you which shape of trip fits them. Free first proposal, no obligation.
Keep reading
- Uzbekistan: the complete guide to planning your trip
- Classic Uzbekistan in 10 days
- The Silk Road in 14 days
- Bukhara or Khiva: which one, if you can only do one
- What does a trip to Uzbekistan cost?
- All our Uzbekistan trips
Frequently asked questions
Can we see Uzbekistan in a week?
Is ten days too long for Uzbekistan?
How many hotel changes is that?
Does the train save enough time to add a city?
Should we add Kyrgyzstan?
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