Uzbekistan Family Tour

You arrive in Tashkent and are met by our driver, who takes you to your hotel; rooms are ready from noon. The rest of the day is free to let everyone sleep off the flight and adjust. If the children are still going strong in the evening, the fountains and open space of Amir Timur Square are an easy first outing, and there are ice cream stands all along the avenue. Your guide will drop by the hotel to introduce themselves and go through the week. Overnight in Tashkent.

At 09:00 you meet your guide and start in the Old City at the Khast-Imam Complex, with the Barak-Khan Madrasah, the Tillya-Sheikh Mosque and the mausoleum of Abu Bakr Kaffal Shashi. You then ride the Tashkent Metro — a hit with most children — to the Polytechnical Museum, the only one in Central Asia, where the exhibits on optical illusions, simple physics and the history of the motor car are all hands-on. In the afternoon your driver takes you to the Magic City park for the aquarium, the fairy-tale castle and the fountains.

At 07:00 you transfer to the railway station for the Afrosiyob high-speed train, which leaves Tashkent at 08:00 and reaches Samarkand at 10:10. Your guide and driver meet you and you head straight to Konigil village, where mulberry bark is pounded by water wheel into Samarkand paper; everyone gets to pull a sheet. There is a pottery workshop on the same site, and you can choose a master class on the wheel, on sculpting a figurine, or on painting a fired piece to take home. In the afternoon you visit Registan Square and the Bibi-Khanym Mosque.

The day starts at the Ulugbek Observatory, where the huge sextant arc cut into the hillside makes medieval astronomy suddenly concrete. You continue to the tiled alley of the Shakhi-Zinda Necropolis and to the Gur-Emir Mausoleum, tomb of Amir Timur, then browse Siab Bazaar for dried apricots, halva and warm Samarkand bread. In the late afternoon you join a cooking master class in a family guest house and make plov together in the kazan — chopping, layering and finally eating the result. Overnight in Samarkand.

In the morning you drive out into the Kyzylkum desert (270 km, about 5 hours). You stop in the town of Nurata to see the holy spring, where fish swim in clear water beside the mosque, and the hilltop ruins of the fortress said to have been founded by Alexander the Great. You arrive at the yurt camp in the afternoon and settle into your yurt. There is camel riding before sunset, then dinner around the campfire with a Kazakh akin singing folk songs. The night sky out here is extraordinary. Overnight in the yurt.

After breakfast you go down to Aydarkul Lake, a huge sheet of water in the middle of the desert, with free time on the shore and a swim if the weather allows. You then take a short camel ride to the nearby village of Dungalak, where a local family shows you how to slap rounds of non dough onto the wall of a clay tandoor and pull them out golden. In the afternoon you drive to Bukhara (250 km, about 5 hours). In the evening you watch a national folk show in the courtyard of the Nadir Divan-begi Madrasah.

This morning you drive to Gijduvan for a pottery master class with one of the dynasties that has worked there for six generations, painting your own piece to bring home. Back in Bukhara you take a walking tour of the old city: the Lyabi-Hauz pool with its mulberry trees, the four odd towers of the Chor-Minor Madrasah, the covered trading domes, the Kalyan Minaret and Mosque, and the great mud walls of the Ark Fortress. The day ends with a traditional puppet performance, still made and worked by hand in the old quarter.

You check out in the morning and drive a few kilometres out of town to Sitorai Mokhi-Khosa, the summer palace of the last Emir of Bukhara, where peacocks wander the garden and the mirrored White Hall usually stops children in their tracks. You then transfer to Bukhara station for the Afrosiyob train back to Tashkent, and on arrival continue to Tashkent International Airport for your flight home. This is the end of your Uzbekistan Family Tour with Naseem's Travel.