Uzbekistan with kids: season, food, trains and places they will love
Places in this article: Samarkand · Bukhara · Khiva · Tashkent
In Uzbekistan a child is never a complication. Families eat out together, toddlers run between the tables of a A teahouse: green tea, plov and conversation on wide wooden beds called topchan., and strangers smile at your child, pat a small head or hold out an apricot. We live in Tashkent, raise our own children here and have been hosting travelling families for twenty years. Kids settle in fast. What does need planning is the heat, the distances and a handful of practical details, and that is what this page covers.
Pick the season, then plan around the heat
Heat shapes a family trip more than anything else. The average July high is 35.9°C in Tashkent and 37.3°C in Bukhara, and Bukhara has recorded 45.8°C. With children we suggest April–May or September–October. In Bukhara the average high is about 24°C in April and 23°C in October: weather for walking the old town all day.
If summer is your only window, it still works. See the sights before 11am, spend the middle of the day indoors or by a pool, and go out again after six, when the evening air cools and local families stroll until late. Keep babies under six months out of direct sun; give older children hats, light long sleeves, sunscreen and a water bottle each. Month by month: when to visit Uzbekistan.
Food, water and baby supplies
Most children find a favourite on the first day. Rice cooked in a kazan with carrots, onions and meat: the dish of every Uzbek celebration. Each region cooks it its own way. is rice with carrots and tender meat, filling and mild. Samsa is flaky pastry baked against the wall of a tandoor, shashlik is meat grilled on skewers, and manty are big steamed dumplings. Warm round bread, non, arrives at every table before anything else. From early summer the bazaars are piled with apricots, cherries, peaches, grapes and melons. Uzbek cooking is seldom hot, but it can be rich: for a fussy eater, order a clear soup, grilled chicken or a plate of fresh tomatoes and cucumbers.
Give children bottled water only, also for brushing teeth; it is sold on every corner. Peel fruit or rinse it with bottled water. Nappies, formula, baby food and wipes are on the shelves of supermarkets and pharmacies (dorixona) in every city on the usual route, so there is no need to pack a fortnight’s supply. Bring your child’s usual medicines, and see your paediatrician well before the trip: the CDC asks travellers to be up to date on routine vaccines, measles included, and lists hepatitis A for children from one year. More in safety and health in Uzbekistan.
Trains and transfers: tickets and car seats
With children, trains are the easiest way between cities: there is room to walk about, there are toilets, and nobody gets carsick. Tashkent to Samarkand takes about 2.5 hours on the 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 → high-speed train, Samarkand to Bukhara about 2 hours, Bukhara to Khiva about 3.5 hours. Some trains have sleeper carriages with two- and four-berth compartments, and a night in a compartment is an adventure in itself.
Children’s fares are simple. One child under five rides free on a parent’s ticket without a separate seat; when both parents travel, each can take one under-five free. Children aged 5 to 10 pay half the fare and get their own seat. From 10, a child needs a full ticket. Age counts on the day of departure, so keep the passports handy. If your under-five needs a seat of their own, or a second under-five travels with one adult, that ticket is half price. Booking step by step: trains in Uzbekistan.
On the road, Uzbek traffic rules require children under 7 to ride in a child seat and children from 7 to 12 to wear a child restraint belt. Street taxis rarely carry them, so give us your children’s ages and weights when you book transfers, and the right seat will be in the car.
Tashkent: a whole day for the kids
- Magic City. A 21-hectare park on Babur Street with rides, a castle, a lake, themed streets and an aquarium with a 20-metre tunnel where sharks swim overhead. Entry to the park is free; you pay per ride. Stay for the evening fountain show with music and lasers.
- Tashkent Zoo. On Bogishamol Street, open every day of the year. Children under 7 go in free.
- Planetarium. Opened in 2003, with two halls: one shows the Solar System and deep space on Japanese equipment, the other holds exhibits on the planets and the Earth.
- Puppet theatre. The national puppet theatre has played in its own building by Did you know? A metro station where Ulugh Beg meets Gagarin Kosmonavtlar station, opened in 1984, has ceramic medallions of Ulugh Beg, Galileo, Icarus, Gagarin and Tereshkova, and glass stars in the ceiling that hint at the Milky Way. Read more → 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 → station since 1979, with shows in Uzbek and Russian.
- Tashkent Land. An amusement park beside the Did you know? A 375-metre tower with a viewing deck at 97 m The Tashkent TV Tower, begun in 1978 and operating since January 1985, rises 375 m to the tip of its spire. Its observation deck at about 97 m looks out over the whole city. Read more →, open from late March to the end of October, with the city’s aqua park next door for the hottest afternoons.
Samarkand, Bukhara and Khiva: crafts children can touch
For a seven-year-old, one more blue dome is just one more dome. What works is giving small hands something to do.
- Samarkand, A village near Samarkand where paper is made by hand from mulberry bark, the old way, at a working mill on the stream.. In the village of Konigil, a short drive from the city, the Meros workshop makes paper from mulberry bark the old way, with a water wheel turning on the Samarkand's main bazaar, right next to Bibi-Khanym: Samarkand bread, dried fruit, nuts and halva. Read more → stream. Children follow every stage and can make a sheet of their own to take home. There is a pottery studio too.
- Samarkand, the Eternal City. In Boqiy Shahar, the Eternal City inside the A network of caravan routes between China and the Mediterranean. Samarkand, Bukhara and Khiva grew rich as stops along it. Samarkand complex, woodcarvers, metal chasers and other craftsmen work in open workshops, and visitors can try making something themselves. Between workshops runs a bazaar of dried fruit, sweets and warm Samarkand bread.
- Bukhara, the puppet workshop-museum. On the south side of Did you know? Bukhara's ponds were once its water supply Pools like Lyabi-Hauz, dug around 1620 and 46 × 36 m, were the city's main source of water. Most were filled in during the 1920s–30s because they spread disease; Lyabi-Hauz survived. Read more →, puppet maker Iskandar Khakimov keeps a museum of papier-mâché puppets 40–50 cm tall, each with its own face and costume, with his workshop upstairs. Many are modelled on real people, and photos on the walls show visitors next to their puppet look-alikes.
- Khiva and the desert. At the Silk Carpet Workshop, founded in 2001 with UNESCO, women weave carpets on wooden looms with silk dyed in pomegranate peel, walnut husk, madder and indigo, and you can stand right beside them. For a night under desert stars, the Ruins of ancient Khorezm fortresses on hills at the edge of the Kyzylkum, in Karakalpakstan. yurt camp sits in open steppe made for camel rides, and children sleep on thick cotton mattresses inside a yurt.
Routes for families are in the tour finder with the answer “family” and the tour catalogue. City by city: Tashkent, Samarkand, Bukhara and Khiva.
In short
- Children are welcome everywhere in Uzbekistan, from restaurants to bazaars; kids settle in fast.
- Go in April–May or September–October; in July, sights before 11am and after six.
- Trains: under 5 free on a parent’s ticket, 5 to 10 half fare with their own seat, 10 and over full fare.
- Bottled water only; nappies, formula and baby food are sold in every city.
- Tashkent has Magic City, the zoo and the planetarium; beyond it, paper in Samarkand, puppets in Bukhara, carpets and camels around Khiva.
