Our driver meets you at Tashkent airport and takes you to your hotel. The flight from Milan lands at dawn, so we book your room from the night before on request, and you can sleep first.

In the afternoon your guide takes you to the Museum of Applied Arts. In 1896 the diplomat Alexander Polovtsov bought a merchant’s house and had it rebuilt in the Central Asian style; the best masters of painting, woodcarving and carved ganch plaster decorated its rooms, and it has been a museum of crafts since 1937. Look up at the ceilings as often as into the cases: the building is part of a collection of more than 7,000 pieces of folk craft.

Then underground. The Tashkent metro opened in 1977, the first in Central Asia. At Alisher Navoi station, domes rest on tapered columns, and turquoise ceramic reliefs show scenes from the poems of Navoi; at Kosmonavtlar, ceramic medallions line the walls.

Good to know: We check the museum’s opening days for your dates. If you land later in the day, the metro moves to the evening.

Overnight in Tashkent

In the morning the Afrosiyob high-speed train takes you to Samarkand in about 2 h 10 min. The station is more than 6 km from the centre, and your car is waiting.

In the afternoon, the Registan: three madrasahs facing one square, Ulugh Beg (1417–1420), Sher-Dor (1619–1636) and Tilla-Kari (1646–1660). Over the gate of Sher-Dor, tigers chase deer under suns with human faces, a rare image in Islamic architecture. Inside Tilla-Kari, walls and dome are covered in kundal, painting in low relief finished with gold leaf on a deep blue ground; much of it is the work of restorers, completed in 1979, and an exhibition in the building tells the story of the restoration of the square.

At the end of the day, Gur-e-Amir, the mausoleum of Timur, completed in 1404. Its portal mosaic carries the name of the builder, Muhammad ibn Mahmud of Isfahan. Inside, onyx panels line the lower walls, and above them relief ornament of papier-mâché, painted blue and gilded, makes the chamber glow.

Good to know: Afrosiyob seats sell out, so we book the tickets as soon as your dates are fixed; we need the passport details of every traveller. After dark, if you wish, we drive you to see the Registan lit up.

Overnight in Samarkand

We go to Shah-i-Zinda in the morning, when the light on the tiles is soft. Along one short lane of mausoleums you find every technique of Timurid tilework: carved and glazed terracotta, where the pattern is cut deep into the clay before glazing; majolica, painted on the glaze, which covers almost the whole interior of the Shadi Mulk Aka mausoleum of 1372; and mosaic, tiles glazed in single colours and cut into small pieces. The masters signed their work: Shams ad-Din and Barr ad-Din of Samarkand in a portal niche, the potter Zayn ad-Din of Bukhara on the base of a carved column. The restoration of 2004–2005 replaced many old tiles; your guide shows you how to tell them apart: old tiles have softer colours, worn glaze and slightly uneven edges.

Then Timur’s Friday mosque of Bibi-Khanym, built in 1399–1405 by craftsmen from India, Iran, Khorezm and the Golden Horde. On the towers of its gate, glazed and plain bricks form inscriptions in square Kufic script.

In the afternoon, Konigil, about 13 km from Samarkand. At the Meros mill, Samarkand paper is made from mulberry bark the way it was before the craft died out in the 19th century: the bark is soaked, boiled and beaten into pulp by wooden poles that a water wheel lifts and drops, and you lift a sheet out of the vat yourself. More in our article on Samarkand paper at Konigil.

Good to know: Shah-i-Zinda is a place of pilgrimage: cover shoulders and knees, and women bring a scarf. Before you go, read our guide to Shah-i-Zinda.

Overnight in Samarkand

The road climbs over the Takhtakaracha pass, at around 1,700 m, and in about 90 km, an hour and a half to two hours without stops, it brings you to Shahrisabz, Timur’s home town. Stop at the top of the pass for the view.

Ak-Saray, the White Palace, was begun in 1380. What survives is its gate: two towers that still rise about 38 metres, on either side of an arch of 22.5 metres, once the widest span in Central Asia. The builders were craftsmen brought from Khorezm, and one inscription in the tilework names a master, Muhammad Yusuf Tabrizi. In 1404 Ruy González de Clavijo, ambassador of the King of Castile, saw the work still going on and described walls panelled with gold and blue tiles. The gold has gone; look up, and the blue is still there, in geometric panels of dark and light blue glazed brick against plain brick.

Then a walk south through the park: Kok-Gumbaz, the Friday mosque that Ulugh Beg built in 1437, and the tomb of Jahangir, Timur’s eldest son, in Dorus Saodat. Back in Samarkand by evening.

Good to know: From December to March snow can close the pass for a while; the detour around the mountains takes about three hours one way, so we check the road the day before. The full story is in our article on Ak-Saray.

Overnight in Samarkand

In the morning, the Afrosiyob to Bukhara, under 2 hours. Bukhara’s station is in Kagan, about 12 km from the old city; your driver meets you there.

In the late afternoon, when the side light brings out the pattern, the Samanid Mausoleum: a cube of baked brick of the 10th century, about ten metres a side. Large bricks carry the weight, and small ones, set in groups, make the ornament: basketweave, chequerboard, rosettes. Because the bricks stand at different depths, the pattern shifts as the sun moves.

A few minutes away, Chashma-Ayub, whose conical dome, common in Khorezm and rare in Bukhara, is put down to Khorezmian masters. Then the Bolo-Hauz mosque, where in 1917 master Shirin Muradov added the porch on twenty slender wooden columns, 12 metres tall, with carved and painted stalactite capitals.

Good to know: More in our article on the Samanid Mausoleum and Bolo-Hauz.

Overnight in Bukhara

In the morning, Poi Kalyan, where the Kalyan minaret of 1127 stands between the Kalyan Mosque and the Mir-i-Arab madrasah. Look at its brick: band after band of a different pattern, all of baked brick. When the Venetian merchants Niccolò and Maffeo Polo, Marco’s father and uncle, spent three years in Bukhara in the 1260s, the minaret had already stood for more than a century.

Then the Ulugh Beg madrasah of 1417, the oldest preserved in Central Asia, and the trading domes of the 16th century, built over the old merchant crossroads.

In the afternoon, Lyabi-Hauz, the square around a pond of about 1620. On the portal of the Nadir Divan-Begi madrasah two simurghs, the phoenix-like birds of Persian legend, fly towards a sun with a human face, each carrying a white deer in its claws. Living creatures are rare in the tilework of Central Asian madrasahs; you saw their cousins, the tigers of Sher-Dor, in Samarkand.

Good to know: In the evening we can arrange dinner as guests of a local family (on request).

Overnight in Bukhara

Gijduvan is about 45 km north-east of Bukhara, a working town with its own school of ceramics: flower ornament combined with geometric patterns. In the town’s best-known family workshop the sixth generation of potters is at work, and their museum holds ceramics from many centres of Central Asia. You see the whole process, from the clay to the kiln, and then sit at the wheel or paint a plate with a master, subject to the master’s schedule.

In Gijduvan also stands the small madrasah that Ulugh Beg built in 1433, the third and last of his madrasahs after Samarkand and Bukhara. Lunch is in town.

In the afternoon, back in Bukhara, free time in the old town, or Chor Minor, the gatehouse with four towers, each crowned by a blue dome.

Good to know: Ask the workshop to wrap your plates well and carry them in your hand luggage.

Overnight in Bukhara

In the late morning, the high-speed Jaloliddin Manguberdi stops in Bukhara on its way from Tashkent to Khiva and reaches Khiva at about half past two, some 3 h 30 min later. Your driver takes you and your luggage to a hotel inside or right by Itchan Kala.

In the afternoon, the Kalta Minor, begun in 1852 and never finished: 29 metres tall and 14.2 metres across, and the only minaret covered entirely in glazed tiles, in bands of turquoise, green and white. Its inscriptions carry verses by the Khivan poet Ogahi; some were lost and were put back during the restoration for Khiva’s 2,500th anniversary in 1997. Then the Kunya Ark, the khans’ citadel, with its reception hall of 1804–1806 lined with blue and white tiles.

Good to know: This train does not leave Tashkent on Sundays, so this day of the tour never falls on a Sunday. The low sun turns the tiles of the Kalta Minor turquoise.

Overnight in Khiva

In the morning, Tash Hovli, the palace of Allakuli Khan of the 1830s, with more than 260 rooms. The blue and white tiles of its courtyards are the work of the master Abdullah Jin, and the wooden ceilings are painted red and yellow.

Around noon, the Juma Mosque, when light falls through the openings in its roof onto 212 carved wooden columns; carved dates on doors and columns run from 1316 to 1789. Then the mausoleum of Pahlavan Mahmud, whose double dome, the largest in Khiva, is covered in turquoise tiles, and the Islam Khoja minaret of 1908–1910, at 56.6 metres the tallest in Khiva, banded in blue, white and green tiles.

In the late afternoon, the transfer to Urgench airport, about 30 km away, and the flight to Tashkent, about 1 h 20 min to 1 h 30 min. Your driver meets you in Tashkent.

Good to know: Pahlavan Mahmud is a place of pilgrimage: cover shoulders and knees, women bring a scarf, and keep your voice down. More in our guide to Itchan Kala.

Overnight in Tashkent