Food and bazaars

Uzbekistan is eaten as much as it is seen. Plov, rice cooked in a kazan with lamb, carrots and onions, is the national dish and a serious matter: every city has its own version, and in Tashkent and Samarkand it is cooked in the morning in cauldrons big enough to feed a wedding, and finished by noon. The bread of Samarkand is baked in a tandoor, stamped in the centre and firm enough to travel; people carry it home across the country. The bazaars set the calendar. Cherries arrive in May and apricots in June, the first melons by the end of June, grapes and figs from late July, pomegranates and persimmons in autumn, and the dried fruit and nuts of the winter stalls are what the summer left behind.

We build days around the table. At Chorsu in Tashkent, under the tiled dome, your private guide walks you through the spice rows and to the kazans of the plov centre; at Siab in Samarkand, beside the Bibi-Khanym mosque, through the bread stalls and the dried-fruit merchants. In Bukhara the best meals are not in restaurants but in old houses with courtyards, where a family cooks for guests at a low table under the vines, and the evening ends with tea and halva. In Samarkand, where vines have been grown since before Timur, a tasting introduces the wines and brandies the region has made since the nineteenth century.

None of this needs to be arranged in advance by you. Your travel designer knows which bazaars are best on which mornings, where the plov is cooked properly and which courtyards open their doors to guests, and fits the meals to the days. Tell us what you eat and what you do not, and whether you would rather watch the cooking or take part in it. The food is one of the reasons to come. It is also the easiest way into the life of a city.