Getting around Uzbekistan: trains, flights and drivers
High-speed trains link the main cities in a few hours. When to take the train, when to fly, and when a car with a driver is the better choice.
Uzbekistan is larger than it looks on the map, and the distances between its cities are the first thing a journey has to solve. Tashkent to Samarkand is a comfortable morning. Bukhara is a further step west. Khiva and the Aral Sea are far enough that the way you travel there shapes the whole itinerary. Three kinds of transport cover the country, and a good journey uses each where it fits.
The train between the big cities
The high-speed Afrosiyob links Tashkent, Samarkand and Bukhara, and for that stretch there is nothing better. Tashkent to Samarkand takes about two hours; Samarkand to Bukhara about an hour and a half more. The carriages are quiet and air-conditioned, tea is brought to your seat, and the window gives you the cotton fields, the orchards and the long line of the Zerafshan hills without the effort of the road. You leave after breakfast and arrive in time for lunch in the next city, which is the pace the old towns deserve.
The one difficulty is demand. Seats on the Afrosiyob sell out days ahead in spring and autumn, and further ahead on the busiest weekends. We book them the moment your dates are fixed, which is one of the quieter reasons to settle your dates early. Slower trains run the same line and continue beyond Bukhara. They take longer and are plainer, but they exist, and on the rare day the fast train is full they are a serviceable alternative.
Flying to save a day
Khiva and Nukus lie in the far west, on the other side of the Kyzylkum desert. From Bukhara the drive to Khiva is a long day; from Tashkent it is longer. A domestic flight from Tashkent turns that day into about an hour in the air. Urgench, the airport for Khiva, and Nukus, the city for the Savitsky museum and the Aral Sea, both have regular services from the capital.
Our usual practice is to fly one way and drive the other. Flown both ways, the west becomes a detached excursion. Driven both ways, two full days go to the road. Flown one way and driven the other, you cross the Kyzylkum once, stop at the desert fortresses of Ayaz-Kala and Toprak-Kala on the way, and still have the days you came for. Which direction to fly depends on your dates, the season and where you want the journey to end.
A car with a driver for the rest
Between the smaller towns, over the mountain passes and out to the yurt camps, a private car with a driver is the simplest answer and often the only one. The road from Samarkand to Shakhrisabz crosses a pass with a view worth stopping for. The Fergana Valley is reached by road over the Kamchik pass, and the towns within it, Kokand, Rishtan and Margilan, are best strung together by car. The yurt camps near Aydarkul and the spring at Nurata lie away from any railway. Chimgan and the mountains above Tashkent are under two hours by road.
A car also changes the character of a day. You stop when something catches your eye: a roadside bakery, a melon stall, a view over a river. You arrive at a monument when you choose rather than when a timetable allows. Your private guide travels with you, so the day’s conversation continues from the car to the courtyard and back. The driver knows the road, the fuel stops and the better tea houses, and handles all of it without being asked.
Inside the cities
Within the old towns you walk. Samarkand is the exception, because its monuments are spread across a modern city and a car between them keeps the middle of the day for something better. In Tashkent the metro is worth a ride for its own sake, for the stations as much as for the journey. Taxis are plentiful and inexpensive, and your guide arranges them when needed. In Bukhara and Khiva the old town is compact, and the pleasure is in walking it at different hours of the day.
Putting it together
A typical route runs east to west: Tashkent, then the train to Samarkand and on to Bukhara, then the road across the desert to Khiva and a flight back to Tashkent from Urgench. Reversed, it starts with the flight and ends with the train, which suits travellers who want the great cities at the end. Either way, moving around the country is easier than most people expect. The trains are punctual, the roads well travelled and the flights short. What remains is choosing, for each leg, the way of moving that gives the day its best shape. That is part of what your travel designer does, and the reason we ask about your dates before anything else.
