Uzbekistan in 10 days: Tashkent, Samarkand, Bukhara and Khiva at an easy pace
Places in this article: Samarkand · Bukhara · Khiva · Tashkent
Ten days is when Uzbekistan stops being a race. The four main cities still fit, but now Khiva gets two nights, Samarkand gets a day for Shahrisabz and Bukhara gets an afternoon in a ceramics workshop. You only have to remember one rule: do not land in Tashkent on a Sunday. Here is how we lay out the ten days, and why that rule matters.
The 10-day Uzbekistan itinerary at a glance
The cities lie almost on one line from east to west, so we travel west and come back from Khiva in one move, by plane or by the fast train.
| Day | Where | How the day goes |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Tashkent | Arrival, rest, an evening walk in the centre |
| 2 | Tashkent | A full day: the The religious heart of old Tashkent: madrasahs, a Friday mosque and mausoleums. Right next to it stands the new Center of Islamic Civilization, opened in 2026. Read more → complex, Tashkent's old bazaar under a big blue-green dome, not far from Hazrati Imam. Bring cash in so'm. Read more →, the Did you know? A metro designed to ride out a magnitude-9 earthquake The three original lines of the Tashkent Metro were built to withstand an earthquake of magnitude 9.0, and the tunnels lie unusually shallow, only 8–25 m below the street. Read more → |
| 3 | Tashkent → Samarkand | Morning Uzbekistan's high-speed train: Tashkent to Samarkand in 2 hours 30 minutes, Tashkent to Bukhara in about 4 hours. Tickets are tied to your passport. Read more →, 2 to 2.5 hours; the Did you know? The Registan's sun-carrying lion went on a banknote The Sher-Dor Madrasah (1619–1636) is named for the big cats with the sun on their backs on its portal. The image appeared on the reverse of Uzbekistan's 200-som note of 1997. Read more → in the afternoon |
| 4 | Samarkand | A full day: Did you know? Timur's tombstone went to Persia and came back The dark-green jade slab on Timur's grave in Gur-e-Amir was carried off by Nader Shah in 1740. It broke, and on his advisers' urging he sent it back to Samarkand. Read more →, The great mosque Amir Timur ordered after his Indian campaign of 1398–1399, one of the largest of its time. Read more →, Samarkand's main bazaar, right next to Bibi-Khanym: Samarkand bread, dried fruit, nuts and halva. Read more →, Did you know? Why Shah-i-Zinda means 'the Living King' The necropolis grew around the shrine of Qutham ibn Abbas, a cousin of the Prophet Muhammad. Legend says he did not die in battle but went down a deep well to a garden of paradise, where he lives on. Read more → |
| 5 | Samarkand → Shahrisabz → Samarkand | Day trip over the Takhtakaracha pass, about 90 km each way |
| 6 | Samarkand → Bukhara | Afrosiyob, under 2 hours; the old town in the afternoon |
| 7 | Bukhara | The trading domes in the morning, Gijduvan ceramics in the afternoon |
| 8 | Bukhara → Khiva | High-speed train at about 11:00, in Khiva at about 14:30 |
| 9 | Khiva | A full day in Did you know? People still live inside Khiva's museum city Itchan Kala packs more than 50 historic monuments and about 250 old houses inside clay walls 8–10 m high and 5–6 m thick, and families still live and work in its lanes. Read more → |
| 10 | Khiva → Tashkent | Flight from Urgench or the 07:15/07:20 train; flight home |
That is two nights in Tashkent, three in Samarkand, two in Bukhara and two in Khiva. If you have seven days rather than ten, see Uzbekistan in 7 days: the logic is the same, with less time in each city.
Train days: one weekday rule
Only one leg depends on the day of the week: day 8. The high-speed Jaloliddin Manguberdi leaves Tashkent at 07:00 every day except Sunday, calls at Bukhara at about 11:00 and reaches Khiva at about 14:30; from Bukhara the desert crossing takes about three and a half hours. Day 8 falls on the same weekday as day 1, so if you land on a Sunday, there is no fast train on day 8.
The way back has a rule of its own. The fast train leaves Khiva at 07:15 or 07:20 every day except Monday and is in Tashkent in the middle of the afternoon. Day 10 comes two weekdays after day 1, so if you want to return by train, do not land on a Saturday either. A flight removes this rule: Uzbekistan Airways flies from Urgench to Tashkent several times a day, about 1 h 20 min to 1 h 30 min in the air, and Urgench airport is about 30 km from Khiva.
An example: land on a Thursday, and day 8 is a Thursday and day 10 a Saturday, so both trains run. We check the current timetable on eticket.railway.uz, fix the arrival day and buy the Khiva ticket first: it sells out fastest. The Afrosiyob legs run several times a day, every day. How to choose a train and buy a ticket is in our guide to trains in Uzbekistan.
Samarkand: three nights and Shahrisabz
The extra night is what makes Samarkand easy. Day 3 is the arrival and the Registan; day 4 covers Gur-e-Amir, Bibi-Khanym, Siab Bazaar and the Shah-i-Zinda necropolis on foot. Our Samarkand in 1, 2 or 3 days shows what to see at which hour.
On day 5 we drive to Shahrisabz, Amir Timur (Tamerlane, 1336–1405), founder of the Timurid empire, which had its capital in Samarkand. Born near Shahrisabz.’s home town: about 90 km over the Takhtakaracha pass at around 1,700 m, an hour and a half to two hours each way. From December to March snow can close the pass. Then we keep the day in Samarkand for the Did you know? Ulugh Beg measured the year to within 25 seconds Working at his Samarkand observatory, Ulugh Beg put the tropical year at 365 days 5 h 49 min 15 s, about 25 seconds too long, closer than Copernicus a century later. Read more → and the A village near Samarkand where paper is made by hand from mulberry bark, the old way, at a working mill on the stream. paper mill. The details are in our Shahrisabz day trip.
Bukhara: two nights and Gijduvan
Morning trains from Samarkand reach Bukhara around noon, so day 6 already has a long afternoon in the old town. On day 7 we start under the 16th-century trading domes and at the The heart of old Bukhara: the Kalyan Minaret of 1127, the Kalyan Mosque and the Mir-i-Arab Madrasah facing each other across one square. Read more → ensemble. After lunch we drive about 45 km to Gijduvan, where the Narzullaev family runs a ceramics workshop with a museum, open since 1992. In the evening you are back in Bukhara.
The train to Khiva leaves Bukhara at about 11:00, so the morning of day 8 is still yours. More about the city in our article on Bukhara and on the Bukhara page.
Khiva: two nights and a full day
The station is a half-hour walk from Itchan Kala, the walled inner town and the first site in Uzbekistan on the UNESCO World Heritage List, in 1990. You arrive at about half past two and have the evening inside the walls. Day 9 is the reason for the second night: a whole day without a train to catch. See our page on Khiva.
On day 10 there are two ways back. The early train at 07:15 or 07:20 gets you to Tashkent in the afternoon. A flight from Urgench lets you keep the morning in Khiva. Either way we book the flight home from Tashkent for the evening of day 10 or the next day, never with a tight connection.
Two variants: mountains or the Fergana Valley
- Mountains instead of a city day. Swap day 2 for Mountains of the Western Tian Shan about 80 km from Tashkent: hiking in summer, skiing in winter, the Charvak reservoir nearby. Read more → or Amirsoy, 65–85 km from the capital and about 1.5 hours by car. In July Chimgan is almost ten degrees cooler than Tashkent; from December to March the ski lifts run. See our article on the mountains near Tashkent. Our 10-day off-the-beaten-path tour builds a Chimgan day into the four cities.
- The Fergana Valley instead of Khiva. Day 8: the Afrosiyob from Bukhara back to Tashkent, a little over 4 hours. Day 9: the 09:20 train to Margilan, 3 h 40 min, and the Yodgorlik silk factory, where ikat is still woven by hand. Day 10: the ceramic workshops of Rishtan, about 50 km from Fergana, and the 16:13 train back, in Tashkent at 19:53. These trains run daily, so there is no weekday rule.
- Khiva first. Fly from Tashkent to Urgench on day 1, spend day 2 in Khiva and take the morning train to Bukhara on day 3, then continue east to Samarkand and Tashkent. Here day 3 must not be a Monday, so do not land on a Saturday.
If you prefer a ready route, our 11-day classic tour covers the same four cities, and the 12-day photo tour adds time for light and a free morning in Khiva. For budget, season, hotels and flights see our guides to the budget, when to go, where to stay and flights, or try the tour finder.
In short
- Ten days give two nights in Tashkent, three in Samarkand, two in Bukhara and two in Khiva.
- Do not land on a Sunday: the fast train to Khiva on day 8 does not run that day. Returning by train, avoid landing on a Saturday too.
- Tashkent–Samarkand is 2 to 2.5 hours by Afrosiyob, Samarkand–Bukhara under 2 hours, Bukhara–Khiva about 3.5 hours.
- Back from Khiva: several flights a day from Urgench, about 1.5 hours, or the 07:15/07:20 train.
- Variants: Chimgan instead of a Tashkent day, or the Fergana Valley by the daily 09:20 train instead of Khiva.
