Fergana Valley

The Fergana Valley lies east of Tashkent, over the Kamchik pass, and feels like a different country once you are down on the far side: flatter, warmer, thick with orchards, and more densely settled than anywhere else in Uzbekistan. Few foreign travellers make the crossing. Those who do come for the people who make things. This is where the country’s silk is woven, where its best-known ceramics are thrown and fired, and where a khan’s palace in Kokand records the last years of the Kokand khanate.

In Margilan the silk still passes through every stage by hand, from the cocoons to the tied and dyed warp threads that give ikat its blurred edges, and you can watch each of them in a single morning with someone beside you to explain what you are seeing. In Rishtan the potters work in courtyards, turning bowls and plates and glazing them in the blue and turquoise the town is known for; the best ateliers are family concerns, and three generations may be working in the same yard. The palace at Kokand, tiled and colonnaded, takes an hour and sets the crafts in their historical place.

This is a journey about people more than monuments, and it depends on introductions. We bring you to masters we know, at hours when they are working rather than performing, and there is time to buy directly if you wish, or simply to sit and watch. Three days is enough for Kokand, Rishtan and Margilan, with two nights in the valley. The road over the pass takes you in and the train brings you back, so the valley is seen from both sides. Our three-day crafts journey is the natural way into the valley; it also joins on to any longer route that begins or ends in Tashkent.