Samarkand Gastronomy & Wine

You are met at the airport and transferred to your hotel, then head out with your guide for a first taste of the capital. You visit the Khast-Imam Complex with the Barak-Khan Madrasah and the Tillya-Sheykh Mosque, then walk through Chorsu Bazaar, where the dairy, spice and dried-fruit rows sit under the huge blue dome and the bread sellers stack tandoor non by the hundred. Lunch is at the plov centre, where the cauldrons are opened at midday, and the afternoon finishes with a ride on the Tashkent Metro to Amir Timur Square.

A morning transfer to the railway station for the high-speed Afrosiyob train, which reaches Samarkand in a little over two hours. Your guide meets you at the station and you begin with the Registan Square and the remains of the Bibi-Khanum Mosque before crossing to Siab Bazaar, the oldest and largest market in the city. Here you taste your way through dried apricots and raisins, walnuts and pistachios, halva, spices and the round Samarkand non, and eat a late lunch of shashlyk and lagman at the food rows.

This morning your driver takes you to a national guest house for a masterclass in Samarkand plov, cooked in a cast-iron kazan over an open fire; you help with the onions, carrots and zirvak, then sit down to eat what you have made. In the afternoon you drive out to Konigil village to see mulberry bark beaten into Samarkand paper at the Meros workshop, and stop at a neighbourhood bakery to watch non being slapped onto the wall of a tandoor and stamped with a chekich. Free evening.

You drive south-east to the small town of Urgut to walk in Chor-Chinor, a garden of enormous plane trees, some of them close to a thousand years old, and to browse the bazaar beside it for antique textiles and craftwork. Returning towards Samarkand you visit the Bagizagan winery, which farms around 400 hectares of its own vineyards and produces more than twenty wines; you follow the process from press to cellar and taste a selection with bread and cheese. The evening is free.

There is time before the train for the Shakhi-Zinda Necropolis or the Gur-Emir Mausoleum, and for a last walk through Siab Bazaar to buy spices, raisins or a stack of non to carry home; your guide will show you which stalls vacuum-pack for travellers. You then take the Afrosiyob back to Tashkent and transfer to the international airport for your onward flight, ending your Samarkand food and wine journey.