Uzbekistan Jeep Expedition

You are met at the airport and transferred to your hotel, then meet your guide for a first day in the largest city in Central Asia. You start at the Courage Monument, raised for the earthquake of 1966, and continue into the Old City to the Mausoleum of Kaffal Shashi and the Khast-Imam Complex, walking on along Zarkaynar Street. You explore Chorsu Bazaar and a pottery gallery, ride the tiled metro into the centre, and finish at the State Museum of Applied Arts, the Alisher Navoi theatre and Amir Timur Square.

A driver and mountain guide collect you early for the hundred-kilometre drive towards the Paltau region, the highway giving way to winding road alongside the Charvak Reservoir. You walk the dirt track towards the Obi-Rakhmat grotto with views of the Chatkal River, then climb a rocky ridge to the cave itself, where excavation has shown people sheltering more than fifty thousand years ago, and find two further hidden caves above. You continue up the bed of the Paltau River to the waterfall before returning. Overnight near Charvak.

In the morning you drive to the Amirsoy resort and ride the cable car up to the Kumbel Ridge at 2,300 metres, where the western Tian Shan opens out and Greater Chimgan stands at around 3,300 metres to the south. You then descend and return to Tashkent for lunch before driving south to the Zaamin district of Jizzakh region, some 280 kilometres and four to five hours. The road climbs into juniper-covered mountains and clean, thin air. You check in to your hotel and the evening is free.

A full free day in the Zaamin highlands, Uzbekistan's oldest protected mountain area, at your own pace. You can walk out to the Zaamin waterfall, take the cable car up to the Suffa Plateau for the panorama and to see the site of the Suffa international radio astronomy observatory, cross the cable-stayed suspension bridge, or simply sit among the archa junipers, some of which are a thousand years old, with the Sherbuloq spring nearby. Dinner and a second night at the hotel under a very clear sky.

After breakfast you leave the mountains for Samarkand, about 160 kilometres and two and a half hours. Your guide meets you on arrival and the city tour begins at the Ulugbek Observatory, where part of the fifteenth-century sextant survives in its trench. You continue to the Shakhi-Zinda necropolis, climbing the stepped avenue of tiled tombs, and to the remains of the Bibi-Khanum Mosque. Walking on, you reach Registan Square, then Siab Bazaar and finally the Gur-Emir Mausoleum, the shrine of Timur.

You drive out to the village of Tim to see the Arab-Ata mausoleum, more than a thousand years old and standing in one of the region's oldest cemeteries. Before noon you continue to Aksay in the Sazagan hills. From the foot of the mountain at 980 metres you can climb 1,303 steps or ride a horse or donkey up to the mosque and viewing platform at 1,280 metres, with the Samarkand valley spread below. From there you descend to the Hazrat Daud cave and walk its tunnel to the handprints at the end, then return to Samarkand.

In the morning you drive into the Khatyrchi district of Navoi region to the Sangijuman stones, a strange landscape of huge boulders with a spring of clear water rising from beneath the ground, a place locals come to in spring. You then continue to Nurata and on to a safari yurt camp on the edge of the Kyzylkum. You are shown to your yurt and the rest of the day is free. Dinner is taken in the camp, and the evening usually ends around a fire with the sky wide open above the sand.

After breakfast you go down to Lake Aydarkul, a desert lake with free time on the shore. You may add a camel ride across the sand to the lake, about eight and a half kilometres, or a shorter ride to the village of Dungalak to help bake non bread in a clay oven and see how people live here. In the afternoon you leave the camp and drive to Gijduvan, fifty kilometres from Bukhara, to visit the workshop of its potters, then continue to Bukhara and check in to your hotel.

A full walking day in the old city. You visit the Lyabi-Khauz ensemble around its pool and plane trees, the Magoki-Attori Mosque built over an earlier temple, and the four-towered Chor-Minor. You pass through the surviving trading domes to the Kalyan ensemble, standing beneath the twelfth-century minaret between the Kalyan Mosque and the Miri-Arab Madrasah, and see the Ulugbek and Abdulazizkhan madrasahs facing one another. The day ends at the Ark Fortress, the Bolo-Khauz Mosque and the Ismail Samani and Chashma-Ayub mausoleums.

You leave Bukhara in the morning for the long haul north-west to Khiva, some 480 kilometres and seven to eight hours. The road follows the old Silk Road route across the Kyzyl Kum, and you stop along the way to walk out into the desert and to see the Amu Darya where the highway crosses it. Lunch boxes are prepared for the journey. You reach Khiva in the late afternoon and check in to your hotel inside or beside the walls, with the evening free to walk the lanes of Ichan-Kala.

You spend the day inside Ichan-Kala, the walled inner town and a UNESCO World Heritage site. You visit the Mukhammad Aminkhan and Mukhammad Rahimkhan madrasahs, the squat tiled Kalta-Minor, the Juma Mosque with its 213 carved wooden columns, Tash-Khovli Palace and its harem courtyards, and the turquoise-domed Pakhlavan Makhmud mausoleum. You climb the Islam-Khoja minaret, the highest in Uzbekistan, for the view over the rooftops. The afternoon is free for photography and the craft workshops.

In the morning you set off for Nukus, about 200 kilometres and four to five hours, stopping at the archaeological monuments of ancient Khorezm on the way. You visit the Zoroastrian dakhma of Chilpyk on its hill above the Amu Darya, the frontier fortress of Ayaz-Kala, and Toprak-Kala, capital of Khorezm in the third century AD. In Nukus you visit the Savitsky Karakalpakstan Art Museum, which holds the world's second largest collection of Russian avant-garde painting. Overnight in Nukus.

A long expedition day of some 450 kilometres and eight to nine hours to reach the water line of the Aral Sea. You pass through the Kungrad district, once a Silk Road trading centre, see the remains of an old lighthouse and the abandoned settlement of Urga, and stop for photographs at Sudochie Lake. You call at Kubla-Ustyurt, a Soviet-era village with an old runway, then drive out onto the vast Ustyurt Plateau. Picnic lunch on the way. You reach the sea in the late afternoon, pitch camp and eat outdoors.

You wake early for the sunrise over the water, then start back, stopping to photograph the canyons and the collapsed edge of the plateau and driving for a stretch on the dried seabed. At Moynaq you walk among the rusting trawlers of the ship cemetery, stranded where the port once was, and visit the local history museum. After a picnic lunch you stop at the Mizdakhan memorial complex and the Gyaur-Kala fortress before reaching Nukus and flying to Tashkent.

Your last morning is free in the capital. Depending on your flight there may be time for the State Museum of Applied Arts, for the Islamic Civilisation Centre, or for a final round of the ceramic and textile stalls at Chorsu Bazaar to fill any gaps in what you have collected along the road. You are then transferred to Tashkent International Airport for your departure. This is the end of the fifteen-day Uzbekistan Jeep Expedition.