Mountains and Valleys

Tashkent sits at the foot of the western Tian Shan, and the change comes quickly. Within an hour and a half the road leaves the orchards, climbs past the dam at Charvak and opens onto a lake the colour of turquoise glaze, with snow above it for much of the year. Chimgan and Beldersay are the two valleys that climb from its shore. In winter they are where the city goes to ski. From April the snow gives way to wild tulips and grass, and the chairlift at Beldersay carries walkers up towards the ridge for a day among the peaks before dinner back in the capital. October brings the colour: maple, poplar and walnut turning along the streams. It is the easiest mountain day in the country, and one of the best.

The Nuratau range is a different mountain altogether. It runs east to west between the Kyzylkum and the Zarafshan valley, a few hours from Samarkand, and its northern valleys hold villages that have hardly changed their shape in a century: stone-walled houses among walnut and mulberry trees, water led from the stream along channels, bread from a clay oven. In villages such as Sentob and Hayat, families keep rooms for walkers, and a day here means exactly that: a walk over the pass to the next village with a local guide, lunch in someone’s courtyard, and the evening on a tapchan, the raised platform under the trees where meals are eaten. From the ridge you look north across the desert towards Aydarkul. The range is a reserve for the Severtsov argali, a wild mountain sheep, which you are more likely to hear about than to see.

Neither place is on our published routes, and both are easy to add. Chimgan is a day or a night from Tashkent at the beginning or end of any journey, and a welcome one after a week of cities; the road to the Fergana Valley crosses the same mountains at the Kamchik pass, so a morning up high can be built into that journey too. The Nuratau villages sit naturally beside the desert: a night with a family in the mountains, a night in a yurt by the lake, and Bukhara or Samarkand at either end. Spring and autumn are the seasons for walking. Summer is for the water at Charvak and the shade of the walnut trees. Tell your travel designer how far you like to walk, and the days will be measured to your pace.