Fergana Valley Crafts & Kokand Palaces

You are met at Tashkent International Airport and driven to your hotel. After a rest you meet your guide for an introduction to the capital, starting at the Courage Monument and continuing into the old city to the Mausoleum of Kaffal Shashi and the Khast-Imam Complex. You browse Chorsu Bazaar and a local pottery gallery, then ride the ornate Tashkent Metro into the modern centre for the Museum of Applied Arts, the facade of the Alisher Navoi Opera and Ballet Theatre and finally Amir Timur Square. Overnight in Tashkent.

An early transfer takes you to Tashkent railway station for the morning train through the Kamchik Pass to Kokand, arriving around midday. Your valley guide meets you and you begin at the Khudoyar Khan Palace, one of the most opulent residences in Central Asia, then visit the Jami Mosque with its long hall of carved wooden columns and the house museum of the poet Hamza Hakimzade Niyazi. In the afternoon you drive an hour to Rishtan, where you call at the home and workshop of master potter Rustam Usmanov to watch the wheel and the blue-green glaze at work. Overnight in Fergana.

After breakfast you drive the short distance to Margilan, the country's silk capital, to visit a silk factory where the whole process is laid out in front of you: cocoons unwound into thread, skeins bound and hand-dyed for ikat, and the finished cloth beaten out on wooden looms. You then visit a crafts centre producing velvet and hand-knotted silk carpets. The rest of the morning is spent in the bazaar — Kumtepa on Thursdays and Sundays, otherwise Margilan's central market — where you should try the local halva. Lunch is at a valley restaurant before you return to Fergana.

You begin with a short tour of Fergana itself, visiting the Regional Museum of Local Studies, one of the oldest in Uzbekistan, and walking in Ahmad al-Fergani Park among the leafy streets of the old Russian colonial quarter. You then drive back west to Kokand for a second, deeper look at the former capital of the khanate: the Norbut-biy Madrasah, the dynastic mausoleums of Dakhmai Shakhon and Modarikhon, and a workshop where Kokand halva is still pulled by hand. In the late afternoon you continue to Tashkent and check in to your hotel.

The morning is free, with your guide and car at your disposal. Depending on your flight time you might return to Chorsu Bazaar for spices, ceramics and dried fruit to take home, see the Islamic Civilization Center, or stroll the shaded avenues around Amir Timur Square and the fountains of Independence Square. After lunch you check out and are transferred to Tashkent International Airport for your onward flight. This marks the end of your Fergana Valley crafts and Kokand palaces tour.