How many days do you need in Uzbekistan?
The honest answer is seven to ten days for a first visit. Below is what each trip length actually buys you, based on the routes we run rather than on a map drawn from a distance.
Three to four days: one city, done properly
Enough for Tashkent and Samarkand, or for Samarkand alone at a civilised pace. The high speed train makes this realistic even on a stopover between flights.
Do not try to add Bukhara to a three day trip. You will spend the time you saved sitting on a train.
Seven days: the Silk Road classics
Tashkent, Samarkand and Bukhara, with two nights in each of the two great cities. This is the most popular length for good reason: it covers the monuments almost everyone comes for, without a single rushed morning.
A week also leaves room for the things that make the trip memorable, a ceramics workshop, a plov lunch with the family who cooked it, an evening in a caravanserai courtyard.
Ten to twelve days: add Khiva
Khiva is the walled city that most rewards the extra travel time, and the desert road or short flight from Bukhara is part of the experience. Ten days lets you reach it without cutting Samarkand or Bukhara short.
Twelve days adds Shahrisabz, Timur's birthplace, and a night in a yurt camp near Aydarkul lake.
Fourteen days and beyond: the country behind the postcards
Two weeks opens up the Fergana Valley silk and ceramics towns, the Nuratau mountain villages, the Karakalpakstan desert fortresses and the strange, moving landscape of the dried Aral Sea at Moynaq.
This is also the length at which a trip stops being a monument tour and becomes a portrait of the country.
A quick rule of thumb
Budget two nights per major city, and half a day of travel between them. Add one buffer day for every week you travel. If your dates are fixed and short, cut cities rather than nights.
Send us your available days and we will tell you honestly what fits, including when the answer is that you should see less.