Silk Road Classic

Eight days, four cities, one direction of travel. The journey flies you west to Khiva, on the far edge of the country, and then brings you back overland: across the Kyzylkum by road to Bukhara, by train to Samarkand, and by train again to the capital. Taken in this order, the scale grows with every move. Khiva is a walled town you can walk across before breakfast. Bukhara is a living city of courtyards and domes. Samarkand is the stage of an empire.

The days have a rhythm. A morning of looking, a long lunch, an hour of rest in the heat, and then the light of late afternoon, when the tilework does what it was made to do. Your private guide sets the pace and knows when to say nothing. In Khiva you sleep inside the walls, so the town is yours before the day visitors arrive and after they leave. In Bukhara the evening belongs to the pool at Lyabi-Hauz. In Samarkand the Registan is kept for the end of a day, when the square empties.

The one long day, across the desert from Khiva to Bukhara, is part of the point. The road follows the old caravan line, with a stop on the bank of the Amu Darya, and it gives the two cities their proper distance from each other. The hotels, the flight and the trains are arranged before you arrive, and your travel designer in Tashkent stays reachable throughout. This itinerary is a starting point. Add a night in Bukhara, or a day in Shakhrisabz on the way back, and it becomes yours.