Uzbekistan tours from France: the Paris flight, visa-free entry and Samarkand’s French archaeologists

Uzbekistan Airways flies nonstop between Paris-Charles de Gaulle and Tashkent. In the winter timetable 2026/27 the flight leaves Paris on Tuesdays and Fridays at 18:50 and lands at 05:45 local time, after 6 h 55 min. The return leaves Tashkent at 13:55 and lands at Charles de Gaulle at 18:20 the same day, 7 h 25 min later. The route stays in the summer 2027 timetable, with a later departure from Paris, at 19:50.

A dawn landing means the first day starts early. Book the first hotel night from the evening before, or ask us for early check-in, and sleep a few hours before your first walk. We also arrange fast-track passport control and a car to your hotel.

From Brussels, Geneva or Zurich there is no nonstop flight. You connect in Paris, or in Istanbul, from where Turkish Airlines flies to Tashkent, Samarkand, Bukhara and Urgench, the airport for Khiva. More routes are in our guide to flights to Uzbekistan.

Tashkent is on UTC+5 all year, with no summer time: four hours ahead of Paris, Brussels and Geneva in winter, three hours in summer.

Until the Mongols took it in 1220, Samarkand stood on the hill of Afrasiyab, on the northern edge of today’s city. The Franco-Uzbek Archaeological Mission of Sogdiana has excavated there since 1989, led from its creation by the historian Frantz Grenet, and from 1995 it has also worked at other sites of ancient Sogdiana.

The museum on the hill keeps the Ambassadors’ Painting, a wall of the mid-7th century where envoys from many lands arrive at the court of Samarkand. In the winter of 2022–2023 it travelled outside Uzbekistan for the first time, to the Louvre, for the exhibition Splendeurs des oasis d’Ouzbékistan, from 23 November 2022 to 6 March 2023: 130 works and some 300,000 visitors, with Grenet as chair of the scientific committee. At the same time the Institut du monde arabe showed Sur les routes de Samarcande, with suzani embroideries and robes of silk and gold from the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

The thread continues near Bukhara. Since 2009 Rocco Rante, an archaeologist of the Louvre, has directed the Franco-Uzbek mission in the Bukhara oasis, and its work includes Paykend, a Sogdian merchant town about 40 km from the city. You can walk among its ruins and see the finds in the small museum beside them; see our day trips from Bukhara.

We have built a private tour around these places: Sogdiana Unearthed, eight days with Afrasiyab, Shah-i-Zinda, Paykend and the museums of Bukhara, timed to the Paris flights.

You book the flight, and we arrange everything on the ground: hotels, train tickets, guides and transfers. With flights on Tuesdays and Fridays, Tuesday to Tuesday or Friday to Friday makes eight days, and we fit the route to your dates.

Archaeology and art, 8 days. Tashkent, Samarkand and Bukhara on our Sogdiana Unearthed tour. With more time, add Khiva, the desert fortresses and the Savitsky Museum in Nukus with our Karakalpakstan tour; the museum itself is in our guide to the Savitsky Museum.

The classic route, 8 or 11 days. Tashkent, Samarkand, Bukhara and Khiva on the 8-day classic tour, or at an easier pace on the 11-day classic tour. How we lay out such trips is in Uzbekistan in 7 days and Uzbekistan in 10 days.

Crafts and wine. Paper, silk and ceramics on the crafts of Bukhara and Samarkand tour; two wineries, outside Tashkent and outside Samarkand, on Wine Uzbekistan. On any route through Samarkand you can add a tasting at the Bagizagan winery.

Your guide speaks French, and that is included in the price of our tours: tell us when you book, the earlier the better. For what applies to all of Europe, see our general guide to Uzbekistan tours from Europe; not sure which route fits, try our tour finder.

Spring holidays. Spring is the best season in the cities, and the French spring school holidays of 2027 fall right in it: zone C, which includes Paris, from 3 to 19 April, zone A from 10 to 26 April, zone B from 17 April to 3 May. Easter Monday is 29 March.

The May bridges. Ascension falls on Thursday 6 May 2027, and with the Friday off you have a four-day weekend; Whit Monday is 17 May. Both shorten the leave you need for an eight-day trip. In Tashkent and Samarkand the average May afternoon is 27–28 °C.

Summer and autumn. 14 July falls on a Wednesday. From June to August afternoons reach 35–37 °C, so if summer is your only window, we plan the sightseeing for mornings and evenings. September and October are among the best months; Toussaint, Monday 1 November, and Armistice Day, Thursday 11 November, give two long weekends. Month by month: April, May, October and when to go.

Belgium and Switzerland. In the French-speaking schools of Belgium, the spring break of 2027 is planned for 26 April to 7 May. In Switzerland each canton sets its own school holidays, so check yours.

Uzbek food is built around meat, mostly mutton, and around rice and bread. Plov, the national dish, is rice cooked in a cauldron with meat, carrots and onions, and it is a midday dish: by evening the best cauldrons are empty. Non, the round bread from the clay tandir oven, comes with every meal, and green tea is poured all day. Our guides to Uzbek cuisine and plov explain what is on the table.

Tell us about allergies, diets and what you would rather not eat, and we take it into account when we plan your meals. In Bukhara, a dinner with a local family is the easiest way to taste home cooking.