What we would skip in Uzbekistan

Almost nothing on this list is bad. Uzbekistan does not have much that is genuinely bad. Everything here is either overrated relative to the time it takes, or badly matched to the trip most people are actually taking, or good only under conditions nobody tells you about in advance. Where we would skip something, we say what we would do with the day instead. If you disagree with us, say so and we will build it anyway.

There is also a section on restoration, because in Uzbekistan the honest conversation is not only about what to skip. It is about what you are actually looking at.

The folklore dinner show

The most reliable disappointment in the country and the thing most often sold to groups.

The format is the same in Samarkand, Bukhara and Khiva: a set menu of mediocre food in a madrasa courtyard, a fashion parade of chapan coats and embroidered dresses, a dutar and doira duo playing over a sound system, and an hour and a half you will not get back. The courtyard is usually magnificent, which is the trap: the venue is doing all the work.

Instead: go to the same courtyard by day when it is free or nearly free, and eat dinner at a rooftop restaurant with the Kalyan minaret lit behind you, or in a family house that our Tashkent partner can arrange, which costs about the same and is a real evening. If you want music, ask for a maqom performance rather than a floor show, which is a different and much better thing.

Samarkand’s Registan light show, as an event

Standing in the Registan after dark when the floodlights are on is one of the great sights of Asia and we build it into every trip. The ticketed sound and light show with music and narration is a different proposition, and it is mostly a queue and a soundtrack.

Instead: go on an ordinary evening when the square is simply lit, arrive at dusk and stay while the light changes. It costs nothing and it is better.

The Registan roof climb, as a priority

There is a well-known arrangement whereby a guard takes you up a minaret at the Registan outside opening rules for a fee. The view is good. The stairs are narrow, dark and genuinely unsafe, the payment is a bribe, and the whole thing is uncomfortable in a way that has nothing to do with the climb.

Instead: climb the Islam Khodja minaret in Khiva, which is officially open, properly ticketed and gives the better view anyway.

Shakhrisabz, unless you know what you are getting

Timur’s birthplace, an hour and a half over a pass from Samarkand. The Ak-Saray palace portal is a fragment of something that must have been astonishing, and standing under it is worth the drive.

The problem is the rest. In 2015 the historic fabric around the monuments was cleared and replaced with parks, plazas and new construction, and in 2016 UNESCO placed the site on its list of World Heritage in Danger. What you visit now is a set of monuments in landscaping, with the town that gave them context removed.

Instead: if you have ten days, skip it and spend the day in Samarkand doing Shah-i-Zinda early and the Konigil paper mill in the afternoon. If you have twelve or more, go, and go knowing what happened, because the erasure is itself part of what makes the visit interesting.

Bibi-Khanym mosque, as a headline

Enormous, and largely a reconstruction from the 1970s onwards of a building that had been a ruin since a few decades after it was finished in 1404. The scale is real and the marble Quran stand in the courtyard is real. Much of what you photograph is not.

Instead: do not skip it, it is ten minutes from the bazaar and worth twenty minutes. Skip treating it as a highlight. Give the hour to Shah-i-Zinda instead, and go at eight in the morning.

Buying a carpet in a trading dome

Bukhara’s trading domes are full of carpets, and a proportion of what is sold there as antique Uzbek or Turkmen work is neither antique nor local. Prices in the domes assume you are buying on holiday.

Instead: buy from a workshop where the loom is in the room. Suzani embroidery in Bukhara from a family workshop, silk carpets in Samarkand at the Hujum factory where you can watch the knotting, ceramics in Rishtan from the potter, ikat in Margilan at the Yodgorlik factory. You will pay a fair price, the money goes to the maker and you know what you have. This is most of what our craft and culture route is for.

The Tashkent TV tower

A 1980s tower with a revolving restaurant and a viewing deck, a security process, and a view over a low-rise city that is mostly trees and Soviet housing. It is not a bad hour. It is not a good use of one either.

Instead: ride the metro and look at the stations, which are individually designed in marble and mosaic and are the best thing in Tashkent. Then Chorsu bazaar, then plov at midday at the Plov Centre, which is touristed and still excellent, as covered in Uzbek food, bread and the plov hour.

Khiva on nine days or fewer

The most common structural mistake we correct. Khiva is 280 miles (450 km) west of Bukhara and costs the better part of two days to include, and on a nine-day trip those days come out of Samarkand and Bukhara.

Instead: three nights in Bukhara and three in Samarkand, and Khiva on the next trip alongside Nukus and the Aral. The full argument is in Bukhara or Khiva.

The Aral Sea, on a first visit

We are going to break our own rule here, because this is the one thing on this list we love.

Muynak’s ship graveyard, sitting on what used to be seabed, and the Savitsky Museum in Nukus with one of the world’s great collections of Soviet avant-garde painting, saved by being hidden 1,200 miles (1,900 km) from Moscow, are among the most affecting places we send anybody. They are also a long way north, in serious heat, on long roads, with basic accommodation, and they need three days.

Instead: on a first ten-day visit, leave them. Put them at the centre of a second trip, with Khiva, where they will be the point rather than an endurance test bolted onto a monument circuit.

Camel rides, as an activity

A camel ride at Aydarkul is fifteen minutes of being on a camel. It is a photograph rather than an activity.

Instead: spend the afternoon walking in the Nuratau hills or sitting with the family whose guesthouse you are in, which is the reason to be there. See walking the Nuratau mountains.

Summer, as a season

Not a sight, and the most important thing on this list. June to August in Bukhara and Khiva runs over 100°F (38°C) with no shade in a tiled courtyard, and the useful hours are before eleven and after five.

Instead: late April to mid-May, or mid-September to late October. If your dates are fixed to summer we will build it, we will start at six and stop at eleven, and we will tell you in writing what you are giving up.

What is heavily reconstructed, and what is genuinely original

Not a skip list. A looking list, and it is the single most useful thing a guide can tell you here.

Much of what you photograph in Samarkand is restoration, a great deal of it carried out from the 1950s onwards and some of it still going. Domes were rebuilt, tile was replaced, geometry was corrected. Timurid Samarkand had been badly damaged by earthquakes, so the choice was never between a restored building and an intact one. Knowing which is which makes the trip better rather than worse.

Heavily reconstructed. The Registan ensemble, particularly the domes and the outer tile. Bibi-Khanym, largely rebuilt from ruin. Much of Shah-i-Zinda’s outer surfaces. Most of Khiva’s Ichan Kala, restored from the 1970s and substantially converted to museum use. Shakhrisabz’s surroundings, cleared and rebuilt in 2015.

Genuinely original, and where to look closely. The Kalyan minaret in Bukhara, 1127, standing because Genghis Khan reportedly spared it. The Samanid mausoleum, tenth century, brick laid in patterns rather than tiled, the oldest significant building in the country and almost untouched. The fourteenth-century interior tilework low on the Shah-i-Zinda avenue, which is the finest tile in Uzbekistan and the least visited. The underground arc of Ulugh Beg’s sextant, cut into bedrock. The wooden columns of the Juma mosque in Khiva, some carved centuries before that mosque existed.

None of this is a reason to skip the Registan. Standing in it at night is worth the flight on its own. It is a reason to ask your guide, at every site, which parts are which, and to insist on an answer.

Plan this trip

Tell us your dates and we will build a route with the good hours protected and the filler removed, and tell you what is original at each site. Free first proposal, no obligation.

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Keep reading

• Uzbekistan: the complete guide to planning your trip
• Bukhara or Khiva: which one, if you can only do one
• How many days do you need in Uzbekistan?
• Uzbek food: bread, plov and the hour that matters
• Classic Uzbekistan in 10 days
• All our Uzbekistan trips

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