Uzbekistan tours from China: flights, visa-free entry and the road of Xuanzang

Nonstop flights to Tashkent leave from Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Xi’an, Chengdu and Urumqi, flown by Chinese and Uzbek airlines. This is how the main routes look in the 2026 timetables:

• Beijing. Air China has flown to Tashkent since July 2025, three times a week.
• Shanghai. China Eastern, four times a week, on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday; about eight hours on an Airbus A330.
• Guangzhou and Shenzhen. Uzbekistan Airways flies once a week to each city; the Shenzhen route opened on 30 March 2026, Guangzhou followed in May.
• Xi’an and Chengdu. Loong Air flies to Tashkent, and from Xi’an also straight to Samarkand.
• Urumqi. China Southern flies between Urumqi and Tashkent.

Timetables change with the season, so check the days of operation for your dates before you buy. From other cities, the easiest way is to connect in Beijing, Shanghai or Urumqi. Tashkent is on UTC+5 all year, three hours behind Beijing time. More on airports and connections: flights to Uzbekistan.

You book the flight, and we take care of everything on the ground. For an easy arrival after a long flight we arrange fast-track passport control at Tashkent airport and a transfer to your hotel.

Xuanzang (602–664) set out for India in 629 and crossed the land that is now Uzbekistan on his way south. His disciple Bianji wrote down his account in 646, in twelve volumes: the Great Tang Records on the Western Regions. Four places from its first volume can be seen on one trip.

Tashkent. Xuanzang called this land Zheshi: more than a thousand li around, with dozens of towns, each with its own ruler. Today it is the capital, and the start of almost every trip.

Samarkand. The richest city on his road, and the subject of the next section.

The Iron Gate. South of Samarkand the road ran through a narrow pass between steep mountains. Xuanzang describes rock walls on both sides the colour of iron, gates reinforced with iron and many iron bells hanging on the doors. Historians usually place the Iron Gate in a gorge west of Baysun, in the Surkhandarya region.

Termez. On the Amu Darya he counted about ten monasteries and more than a thousand monks. Buddhism had come here centuries before him, and the oldest monasteries still stand on the hills outside the city: the cave sanctuaries of Kara Tepe, begun in the 2nd century AD, and Fayaz Tepe, which dates mostly from the 1st to the 3rd centuries. The Buddha found at Fayaz Tepe in 1968 is now in the State Museum of History of Uzbekistan in Tashkent. Everything about the city is in our guide to Termez, and our five-day Buddhist South tour covers it in full.

The Sui and Tang histories call Samarkand Kang; Xuanzang wrote its name as Samojian. He found a strong, crowded city where precious goods from foreign lands gathered, with fertile fields, fine horses, and craftsmen more skilled than in any other country.

The city he saw stood on the hill of Afrasiyab, on the northern edge of today’s Samarkand, where people lived from about 500 BC until 1220. In the museum on the hill is the Ambassadors’ Painting, made around 648–651 for King Varkhuman. One of its scenes shows a Chinese embassy bringing silk and a string of silkworm cocoons to the ruler of Samarkand. Ask your guide to show you this scene first.

From Afrasiyab it is a short walk to the turquoise domes of Shah-i-Zinda, and about two kilometres to the Registan. Our walking tour of Samarkand with a guide links them in one day; how we plan one, two or three days is in Samarkand in 1, 2 and 3 days.

Uzbek food is built on mutton, bread and tea. Plov, rice cooked with meat, carrots and onions, is the dish you will meet everywhere; lagman, hand-pulled noodles with meat and vegetables, will feel familiar. Every meal comes with non, the round bread from a clay tandir oven, and green tea, poured unsweetened into small bowls. Our guide to Uzbek cuisine explains the rest, and plov has its own article.

When you miss home food, Tashkent has Chinese restaurants, and some of them are popular with locals too. Tell us about your food preferences when you book, and we take them into account when we plan the meals.