Uzbekistan Airways flies from Tashkent to Termez in about an hour and twenty minutes. If you prefer the train, the overnight service leaves Tashkent’s South station at 21:13 and arrives at 11:17 the next morning. Either way, your guide and driver meet you on arrival.

We start at the Archaeological Museum of Termez, opened in 2002 for the city’s 2,500th anniversary; you will know it by its turquoise dome. Inside are around 27,000 items: Bactrian and Kushan sculpture, coins, wall paintings and finds from the Buddhist monasteries you will see over the next two days. Give it an hour: after the museum, the bare mud-brick walls on the hills are much easier to read.

In the late afternoon, the Zurmala stupa. It was built in the 1st–2nd centuries AD from about 1.2 million mud bricks and still stands around 13 metres tall. In 1927 the scholar Alexander Strelkov suggested it was a Buddhist stupa, and excavations led by Galina Pugachenkova some fifty years later proved him right: it was the first Buddhist building identified in Central Asia. The low sun picks out the rows of brick.

Good to know: We plan the first day around your flight or train times.

Overnight in Termez

We leave early for Kara Tepe, a hill with three peaks that the monks turned into a monastery town. They cut sanctuaries into the slopes and built courtyards and stupas in front of them. Corridors run round some of the caves, so that monks could walk around the sacred image, a ritual called pradakshina. Hermits lived in some of the half-ruined cells as late as the 12th century. From 2014 to 2017 a team from Rissho University in Japan excavated the northern hill with Uzbek colleagues every September.

Next door is Fayaz Tepe, found after a Buddha carved from alabaster turned up in the dunes in 1968. The monastery was founded in the 1st century AD and abandoned around the 5th. Its plan is easy to follow: a temple with a courtyard of 33 by 20 metres, the monks’ cells to the north-west, service rooms to the south-east, and the stupa standing apart. Restoration began in 2000 with UNESCO, and the original stupa now sits inside a new protective dome: you look at it through a glass window.

Lunch and a break in the heat of the day. In the late afternoon, Old Termez, a few kilometres west of the modern city along the Amu Darya. It was a city before the 3rd century BC and lasted until 1220, when Genghis Khan’s army took it after a two-day siege. On its edge stands the shrine of Al-Hakim at-Termezi, a 9th-century Sufi and the author of The Seal of the Saints. The complex grew over six centuries, from a single domed chamber covered in carved ganch by the end of the 11th century to the khanaka built in 1405–1409 by Khalil Sultan, Timur’s grandson. Look first for the white marble tombstone of the early 15th century over the grave.

Good to know: There is almost no shade at Fayaz Tepe and Kara Tepe: bring a hat and water. We arrange the visit to Kara Tepe in advance and confirm it for your dates. Al-Hakim at-Termezi is a working shrine: cover shoulders and knees, and women may want a scarf. More in our guide to the shrines of Uzbekistan.

Overnight in Termez

In the morning we drive about 30 km north-west along the Amu Darya to Kampyr Tepe. Building began in the 4th century BC, at the time of Alexander the Great’s campaign in Central Asia, and the town lived for about four hundred years. It was a river port: a mud-brick citadel with rounded towers stood on a terrace above the harbour, and a lighthouse guided the boats. One gate copies the design of a gate at Sillyum in Pamphylia, which is one reason why Edvard Rtveladze, who discovered the site in 1972, sees it as Alexandria on the Oxus. The site has been excavated, not rebuilt: you walk among real walls and streets.

After lunch, the north-east of the city. Sultan Saodat is the family necropolis of the Termez sayyids, a dynasty that traced its line to the Prophet Muhammad. It grew from the 10th to the 17th century along one long passage: two square domed mausoleums of the 10th century joined by a 15th-century iwan, then rows of later tombs, mosques and a khanaka, about 120 graves in all.

Nearby are Kokildor-ota, a khanaka with a domed hall and carved ganch inside, and Kirk-Kiz, “forty girls”, a large square building of mud brick. From outside it looks built for defence, but archaeologists think it was a caravanserai or a summer palace.

Good to know: We confirm the visit to Kampyr Tepe for your dates when we plan the programme.

Overnight in Termez

Baysun lies about 141 km north of Termez, a little over two hours by road, where the plain gives way to the Baysuntau range. In 2001 UNESCO proclaimed the cultural space of Boysun District a masterpiece of intangible heritage, and in 2008 it was inscribed on the Representative List. When the Silk Road faded, the district’s isolation kept old customs alive: ritual songs, epic poetry and dances are still part of life here.

We walk through the town with its market and drive out into the mountains for the views, and are back in Termez for the evening. Every May the district hosts the Boysun Bahori international folklore festival; if your dates are close, tell us and we plan around it.

The Teshik-Tash cave, where a Neanderthal child was found in 1938, and the Sangardak waterfall need a 4×4 and more time. They are in our six-day Wild Expedition: Baysun, which also starts and ends in Termez.

If you would rather not spend the day on the road, it is a free day in Termez.

Overnight in Termez