Uzbekistan Food Tour

You are met at the airport and taken to your hotel. Your guide then leads you into the old city and the Khast-Imam Complex, where you see the Barak-Khan Madrasah, the Tillya-Sheikh Mosque and the Mausoleum of Abu Bakr Kaffal Shashi. You ride the decorated Tashkent Metro into the centre for the Museum of Applied Arts, walk past the Alisher Navoi Theatre and finish at Amir Timur Square. Lunch is your first proper meal of the trip, at the plov centre where the capital's cauldrons are emptied by early afternoon. Overnight in Tashkent.

An early transfer takes you to the station for the high-speed Afrosiyob train, which covers the 300 km to Samarkand in a little over two hours. Your guide meets you and the day begins at the Ulugbek Observatory, then the tiled alley of the Shakhi-Zinda necropolis and the ruins of the Bibi-Khanum Mosque, before you reach Registan Square. The eating starts in earnest at Siab Bazaar, the city's oldest market, where the food rows grill shashlyk over firewood and sell lagman, shurpa, samsa and khanum. You end at the Gur-Emir Mausoleum.

This morning you are driven to a national guest house for a masterclass in Samarkand pilaf, which differs from the Tashkent version in that the rice, carrots and meat are served in layers rather than stirred together. You help prepare it and then sit down to eat what you have made. In the afternoon you visit the Afrasiab Museum and the Tomb of Saint Daniel, and drive out to Konigil village to see mulberry bark turned into Samarkand paper by watermill. The evening is free. Overnight in Samarkand.

You take the morning train west and are met on arrival for the short drive to Gijduvan, home to the Narzullaev family ceramics centre. Here you tour the painting workshop, see the museum of work by five generations of potters and take part in a cooking class, baking Gijduvan bread in the clay oven. In the afternoon you continue the last 48 km into Bukhara and check in before a first walk through the old town: the Kalyan Minaret and Mosque, the Miri-Arab Madrasah, the trading domes and the Lyabi-Khauz ensemble.

The second day in Bukhara begins at the Ark Fortress and the wooden-columned Bolo-Khauz Mosque, then the tenth-century Ismail Samani Mausoleum and Chashma-Ayub. You drive out to Sitorai Mokhi-Khosa, the summer palace of the last emir, and continue to the Mausoleum of Bakhouddin Naqshband. Later you take a masterclass in shurpa, the clear lamb and vegetable soup, or mampar, made with diced meat and scraps of dough, and sit down to eat it for dinner. Overnight in Bukhara.

Mid-morning you drive about 30 km to an ethno house in the village of Vabkent to spend the day with a local family. Together you cook nohat shurak, the chickpea and meat soup of the Bukhara oasis, and shape somsa to bake for lunch. Between courses you see how apricot kernels are prepared and walk out to the cotton fields at the edge of the village, which gives you a clearer sense of where the food on the table actually comes from. In the evening you return to Bukhara. Overnight at the hotel.

Today is the long haul across the Kyzylkum, some 480 km and seven to eight hours, along the line the caravans took between the two khanates. You stop for views of the desert and of the Amu Darya, the river that made all of this possible. Cafes on the route are basic, so your guide will help you arrange a packed lunch the day before. You arrive in Khiva in the late afternoon and check in near the old town, with the evening free to see the walls of Ichan-Kala turn gold at sunset.

You meet your guide in the morning for the walled town of Ichan-Kala, a UNESCO World Heritage site: the Muhammad Aminkhan and Muhammad Rahimkhan madrasahs, the fat turquoise stump of Kalta Minor, the Juma Mosque with its forest of carved columns, the Tash-Khovli Palace and the Pakhlavan Makhmud Mausoleum, with the option of climbing the Islam-Khoja minaret. In the afternoon you cook tukhumbarak, the Khivan ravioli filled with raw egg, at a family house, and stay on for dinner. Overnight in Khiva.

After breakfast you transfer to Urgench airport, about 35 minutes away, for the flight back to Tashkent. On arrival your driver takes you straight to Chorsu Bazaar, one of the oldest markets in the country, where the trip is rounded off with a very local lunch: bread still warm from the tandyr, mountains of dried apricots and raisins, pickles, sausage, halva and endless tea. You are then transferred to your hotel with the rest of the day free for shopping. Overnight in Tashkent.

You check out at midday and have free time until your transfer. If there is room in your luggage your guide can point you towards the best places for spices, tea, dried fruit and a set of the deep ceramic plates that plov is properly served on. You are then driven to Tashkent International Airport for your flight home. This marks the end of your Uzbekistan food tour.