Nurata & Aydarkul Yurt Stay

You are met on arrival at Tashkent International Airport and transferred to your hotel. Once you have checked in, your guide takes you out for a first look at the capital: the Courage Monument, the old city with the Mausoleum of Kaffal Shashi and the Khast-Imam Complex, and the crowded domes of Chorsu Bazaar. You then ride the decorated Tashkent Metro into the modern centre, look in at the Museum of Applied Arts and end the day at Amir Timur Square. Overnight in Tashkent.

This morning you transfer to the railway station for the high-speed Afrosiyob train to Samarkand, a journey of two hours and ten minutes. Your guide and driver meet you at the station and the city tour begins at the Ulugbek Observatory, where part of the fifteenth-century sextant survives underground. You continue to the Shakhi-Zinda necropolis and its alley of tiled tombs, the vast remains of the Bibi-Khanum Mosque and the stalls of Siab Bazaar, before reaching Registan Square and, finally, the Gur-Emir Mausoleum, where Timur is buried. Overnight in Samarkand.

After breakfast you leave the city behind and drive north-west into the Kyzylkum, roughly 270 km and five hours on the road. You break the journey in the town of Nurata to visit the mosque and the Chashma holy spring, where fish swim in the clear water, and to climb to the earth ramparts of the old fortress traditionally credited to Alexander the Great. In the afternoon you continue to the yurt camp and settle into your yurt. There is time for a first camel ride before dinner around the fire, with a Kazakh akyn singing folk songs. Overnight in the yurt.

You spend the morning at Aydarkul itself, an improbable sheet of blue water in the middle of the desert, with time to swim if the weather is kind. You can ride a camel out to the lake across the dunes, a trip of about 8.5 km, or take a shorter ride to the neighbouring village of Dungalak and try your hand at baking non in a clay oven. In the afternoon you leave the sand behind for a guesthouse in a village in the Nuratau mountains, far from any main road, and walk through its orchards and lanes before dinner with the family.

People have farmed these slopes since the time of Alexander the Great, and the morning is yours to see how: a walk up the valley to look for petroglyphs on the rocks, a donkey ride, or simply watching bread being baked and yarn being spun. After lunch with your hosts you drive back to Samarkand, about 220 km and four hours, and continue by high-speed Afrosiyob train to Tashkent, where you are transferred to the airport or to your hotel. This marks the end of your Nurata and Aydarkul yurt stay.