Your guide and driver meet you at Tashkent airport and take you to your hotel. 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 the road.

In the afternoon we visit the State Museum of History of Uzbekistan. Here are the alabaster Buddha found at Fayaz Tepe in 1968 and most of the wall paintings and reliefs from the monastery: a good first look at the Buddhist south you will reach on day 5.

Good to know: We plan the first day around your flight. If you land late, we move the museum to the last morning.

Overnight in Tashkent

In the morning the Afrosiyob high-speed train takes you to Samarkand in 2 h 15 min to 2 h 30 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). Your guide shows you the courtyards and the tilework up close; in the evening you can come back to see the square lit up.

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.

Overnight in Samarkand

Xuanzang wrote the city’s name as Samojian, and the Sui and Tang histories call it Kang. He found a strong and crowded city where precious goods from foreign lands gathered, with fertile fields, fine horses and craftsmen more skilled than in any other country. That city stood on the hill of Afrasiyab, where people lived from about 500 BC until 1220.

We start at the Afrasiyab museum with 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. Then we walk the hill, where the old city is still under the grass.

In the afternoon, Shah-i-Zinda, a street of more than twenty mausoleums from the 11th–15th and 19th centuries, then Timur’s Friday mosque of Bibi-Khanym, built in 1399–1405, and the Siab bazaar next door.

Good to know: Shah-i-Zinda is a revered place: cover shoulders and knees, and women may want a scarf. More in our guide to Samarkand in 1, 2 and 3 days.

Overnight in Samarkand

From Samarkand Xuanzang went south to Kesh, today’s Shakhrisabz, and on to the Iron Gate. We take the same direction by car. The road climbs over the Takhtakaracha pass, about 90 km and an hour and a half to two hours to Shakhrisabz, where we stop at the two surviving pylons of the gate of Ak-Saray, the palace Timur began in 1380 in the town of his birth.

Then the road runs south into the Surkhandarya region and through the mountains of the Baysun district. Xuanzang describes the Iron Gate as a narrow pass with rock walls on both sides the colour of iron, gates reinforced with iron and many iron bells hanging on the doors. Historians usually place it in a gorge west of Baysun. We stop in the mountains for the views and arrive in Termez in the evening.

Good to know: This is the longest day of the tour, most of it on the road. We start early and plan stops for lunch and rest.

Overnight in Termez

Xuanzang counted about ten monasteries and more than a thousand monks in Termez. Buddhism had come here centuries before him, and its oldest monasteries still stand on the hills above the Amu Darya.

We start at the Archaeological Museum of Termez, opened in 2002 for the city’s 2,500th anniversary, with around 27,000 items: Bactrian and Kushan sculpture, coins, wall paintings and finds from the monasteries. Then Kara Tepe, a hill with three peaks where monks cut sanctuaries into the slopes, and next door Fayaz Tepe, founded in the 1st century AD: its original stupa sits inside a new protective dome, and you see it through a glass window.

In the late afternoon, the Zurmala stupa, built in the 1st–2nd centuries AD from about 1.2 million mud bricks and still around 13 metres tall.

Good to know: There is almost no shade at Kara Tepe and Fayaz Tepe: bring a hat and water. We arrange the visit to Kara Tepe in advance and confirm it for your dates. Everything about the city is in our guide to Termez.

Overnight in Termez

In the morning, Old Termez, a few kilometres west of the modern city along the Amu Darya: a city before the 3rd century BC that lasted until 1220. On its edge stands the shrine of Al-Hakim at-Termezi, a 9th-century Sufi scholar; the complex grew over six centuries, and its white marble tombstone of the early 15th century is a masterpiece of stone carving. Then Sultan Saodat, the necropolis of the Termez sayyids, with buildings from the 10th to the 17th century.

In the afternoon, the transfer to Termez airport and the flight to Tashkent, about an hour and twenty minutes. Your driver meets you in Tashkent.

Good to know: Al-Hakim at-Termezi is a working shrine: cover shoulders and knees, and women may want a scarf.

Overnight in Tashkent