Khiva is a remarkably preserved medieval walled city in western Uzbekistan whose inner city Itchan Kala is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and one of Central Asia’s most atmospheric and architecturally stunning destinations on the historic Silk Road.
Uzbekistan: Bukhara Uzbekistan’s Living Silk Road Legend
Walking the Old City of Bukhara on the Silk Road
Bukhara deserves a proper introduction before any walking starts. It is the sort of place you shouldn’t just wave at as you go past. It also makes you feel slightly inadequate. People have lived in the city continuously for about 2,500 years, which puts things like Milton Keynes in perspective. It sits in the valley of the Zeravshan River, in what is now Uzbekistan, and it was already a settlement of some importance by the 5th century BC. By the 9th century AD the Samanid dynasty had made it their capital. At that point it was one of the great cities of the Islamic world, a centre of scholarship, trade, religion and the arts, and it rivalled Baghdad and Cairo.
The physician and philosopher Ibn Sina, who the West calls Avicenna, was born in a village close by around 980 AD. He spent his youth reading in the city’s libraries and went on to write a medical textbook that European doctors were still using centuries later. I once spent three weeks reading a book about gardening and felt rather pleased with myself. The bazaars drew merchants from China, Persia, India and the Byzantine Empire. Bukhara sat on the Silk Road like a well-dressed toll booth, and anyone who wanted to get from one end of the known world to the other more or less had to come through it.
Then Genghis Khan turned up in 1220 and knocked a good part of it down, which was the sort of thing he did. The city recovered, as Silk Road cities always seemed to manage. By the 16th century the Shaybanid dynasty had rebuilt it on a grand scale, with mosques, madrasas and mausoleums of really quite breathtaking ambition. The Manghit emirs ruled from 1785, and the Russians made Bukhara a protectorate in 1868. In 1920 the Bolsheviks arrived and had their own ideas about things. I’ll come back to that, because it kept cropping up all week.
All of this was sitting in my head in a jumbled heap when Karen and I came down to the hotel lobby and met our guide, Kamol. He was an engaging, quietly enthusiastic man who knew an enormous amount about Islamic architecture. He also had the knack of handing it over in small, digestible portions, rather than flattening us with one long lecture. Our driver, Ishmael, was waiting outside. We had met him the day before and already liked his cheerful reliability. He drove us across the city to our starting point, which gave me a few minutes to look at modern Bukhara through the window. It’s mostly a Soviet-era city of wide boulevards and blocky apartment buildings. It was perfectly functional and entirely charmless. The old city, as we were about to find out, is another matter altogether.
🎡 A Ferris Wheel, a Founder and a Spring Belonging to Job
We began, rather unexpectedly, in a pleasure park. It was the kind of green space Soviet planners loved, with broad paths, mature trees, benches at sensible intervals and an air of slightly gloomy respectability. The centrepiece, and I use the word generously, was a Soviet Ferris wheel. It was still standing and, as far as I could tell, still working, though on the morning we visited it had no customers and showed no sign of wanting any. It looked like something from the 1970s, the sort of thing you might find in a provincial town in East Germany, all faded paint and confident engineering. There is something oddly sad about a Soviet Ferris wheel in the middle of Central Asia. It stands for one particular idea of progress and leisure that events have since rather overtaken. Kamol didn’t linger, which was probably wise.
Kamol didn’t linger, which was probably wise, because the real reason for the park was a short walk away.
That was the Samanid Mausoleum, and it’s a far more inspiring subject than any fairground ride. It’s the tomb of Ismoil Samani, sometimes spelled Ismail Samani, who founded the Samanid dynasty and is the man most responsible for Bukhara’s golden age. He ruled from around 892 to 907 AD, and under him the city became the capital of an empire that stretched from the Caspian Sea to the Hindu Kush. He backed Persian culture at a time when Arabic was the language of government and religion. The Samanids made it respectable to write poetry and scholarship in Persian again, and that mattered enormously for everything that came after. His court was full of scholars and poets, and the great poet Rudaki, who is often called the father of Persian poetry, spent much of his career in Bukhara. As a boy, Ibn Sina was allowed into the royal library. He later wrote that he found books there he had never seen before and never saw again. Any tourist board would kill for an endorsement like that. His name is still so respected that both Uzbekistan and its neighbour Tajikistan claim him. The Tajiks named their currency the somoni after him, along with their highest mountain, which the Soviets had previously called Communism Peak. That’s a considerable promotion for a man who died in 907.
The mausoleum is a brick box. I say that with great affection. It’s a cube about ten metres on each side, topped with a large shallow dome and four small domes at the corners, and it was built in the first half of the 10th century. Work is generally dated between 892 and 943 AD. It was started for Ismoil’s father, Ahmad, and Ismoil himself was buried here, along with his grandson Nasr II. It’s one of the oldest Islamic buildings in Central Asia and quite possibly the finest piece of early brickwork in the world. It looks like a very good garden shed, if your garden shed had been designed by a genius with a thousand years to spare.
What makes it remarkable is what the builders did with the bricks. There’s no tile, no paint and no glaze. Every wall is made of plain baked brick, laid in patterns that look like woven cloth or basketwork. The bricks are set at different angles and stick out to different depths, so that the light creates shadows and the surface seems to shimmer as the sun moves. Small circles of brick on the walls are said to echo sun symbols from the older, pre-Islamic religion of the region. There is a doorway on each of the four sides, so the building looks the same from every direction. The walls are nearly two metres thick, which accounts for how well it has lasted. Inside, it’s plain and cool. There’s a single bare chamber with a dome overhead, and the only decoration is the brickwork itself. After the crowds I had been expecting, it was oddly peaceful.
The story of how it survived is a good one. The Mongols didn’t destroy it in 1220, and the usual explanation is that it had been buried. Over the centuries silt, sand and mud built up around it, and the city’s cemetery grew over the top, until it was almost hidden. Soviet archaeologists dug it out in the 1930s and found it in remarkably good condition. If it hadn’t been buried it might not have been there at all. I find that rather appealing. A building that survived the Mongols by being forgotten has something in common with the way I get through most family occasions.
The city walls came next, or what’s left of them. The original defences were enormous. The outer circuit was said to run for nearly 20 kilometres, and it enclosed not just the packed town centre but the farmland around it, so that the people inside could sit out a siege without starving. It was a very sensible idea. Most walled towns in Europe made do with the town and hoped the harvest wouldn’t be burned. There were fortifications here from at least the 5th century BC, and they were rebuilt and extended many times over the next two thousand years, usually after somebody had knocked them down. Genghis Khan’s army broke through in 1220, and after that various rulers patched things up as money and enthusiasm allowed. At its height the city had eleven gates, and all the trade of the Silk Road had to funnel through them. Officials checked loads, collected taxes and kept out anyone they didn’t like the look of. The Soviets, who were very good at deciding that old things were in the way of new things, knocked down most of what had survived into the 20th century. They wanted roads and housing and had little interest in mud brick. What remains is patchy, with long stretches of baked clay that tell you how ambitious the original was without quite delivering the punch. A gate, or something standing roughly where one used to be, does survive. You can see from it how carefully the city controlled who and what came and went. It looked like a small and rather solid customs house, and I suspect people in the Middle Ages complained about it just as I complain about airport queues.
A short walk took us to the Chashma Ayub Mausoleum, whose name means the Spring of Job. The story is a good one. Job, the biblical Job of the boils and the catastrophic run of bad luck, is said to have struck the ground near here with his staff, and a spring of pure water came out. The water is apparently still there. People believed for centuries that it was holy and could cure illness, and the well was a place of pilgrimage. In a city built on the edge of a desert, water that appeared when asked was clearly a miracle.
The building over the spot is particularly interesting. It has a tall, conical, ribbed dome in the style of the Khwarezm region far to the northwest, a form you’d normally expect to see about 900 kilometres away. That raises the obvious questions of who ordered it and why. One theory is that craftsmen were brought in from Khwarezm after one of the conquests, since rulers of the period often did that. The mausoleum was built and rebuilt between the 11th and 16th centuries, and several different rulers left their mark. It has a pleasing accumulated look, like a house that’s had several owners with strong opinions. The domes are different from the usual Bukharan ones, and from outside it looks more like a chimney than a tomb, which we agreed was no bad thing.
Inside there’s a small museum about water, covering the history of supply and irrigation in this part of Central Asia. That sounds dull, but it isn’t. The whole civilisation here was built on careful management of scarce water in a desert. The canals, the pools, the covered cisterns and the people employed to keep them running were as important as the army. Standing at the actual spring made the point rather well. The city’s famous pools were once its drinking water, and they were also its worst health problem, as we found out later in the day. If the spring really is ancient, the spot would have been special long before anyone thought to build on it, and I think that’s probably the real story.
🛍️ Dried Apricots, Walnuts and Karen at Full Speed
After all that earnest looking at architecture, the green market made a welcome change. Markets are much the same the world over, noisy and a bit chaotic, with everyone trying to catch your eye at once. But what’s on the stalls varies a great deal, and this one was a delight. There were dried fruits in quantities that would have staggered a medieval merchant. We saw apricots in a dozen varieties, from small and wrinkled to large and soft, sun-dried mulberries, raisins from small and tart to plump and sweet, figs and prunes. Uzbekistan is famous for its dried fruit, and the climate, with hot dry summers and a lot of sun, does most of the work. There were walnuts, pistachios and almonds in sacks, and the sellers pressed samples on us with such generosity that it was hard to move on without buying.
The spices stood in neat colourful pyramids: cumin, coriander, turmeric, paprika and dried chillies. Cumin and coriander are the backbone of Uzbek cooking. The national dish is plov, a rice dish with lamb, carrots and onion, and the spices go in with a very free hand. The bread stalls sold non, the round, dimpled Uzbek flatbread that comes out of a tandoor oven with a puff of steam and a slightly charred bottom. Each baker presses a pattern into the dough with a little stamp before it goes in. The bread is a staple, and there’s an Uzbek custom of never putting a loaf upside down or throwing it away, which I found rather touching. It’s better than it looks, and it looks very good.
Karen was in her element at once, as she is in markets anywhere from Northumberland to Uzbekistan. She tasted things and talked to stallholders as if she has known them for years. I followed behind holding the bags and trying not to be run over by the porters, who steered their flat trolleys through the crowd at improbable speed and did not slow down for Englishmen. The noise was tremendous. Everything was in Uzbek, Tajik or Russian, with the occasional “very good price” in English for our benefit. We bought things. Quite a lot of things, as it turned out, which matters later.
🏰 The Emir’s Mosque and the Citadel That Was a City
We next went to the Bolo Hauz Mosque, which stands opposite the great Ark fortress. It was the private mosque of the emirs of Bukhara, so the ruler had his own place of worship a short stroll from his palace gates. He would cross the square for Friday prayers with his court, which must have been quite a procession. Most of the present building dates from 1712, when it was built under the Ashtarkhanid ruler Abu al-Fayz Khan, though earlier buildings stood on the site. The name means “children’s pool”, and the pool in front of it is the original water feature.
Its great feature is the wooden porch facing the square. Twenty slender, tapering columns of carved wood hold up a ceiling painted in elaborate patterns, and they’re a rare survival, because wood doesn’t last in this climate. On a calm morning the whole thing is reflected in the long pool in front. The columns look as if they’re floating. The ceiling is painted in rich reds, blues and golds. The interior is painted in vivid blues, greens and golds as well, with a wooden ceiling that rewards a long look. A tall minaret stands apart from the mosque on the other side of the road. It’s a later addition from the early 20th century. The mosque was open to visitors, and we went in, which felt like luck rather than something we were owed. I’m not sure the pool was ever as peaceful as it looked, given that it sat across from a prison.
And then we got to the Ark. It takes a minute to take in. It’s a vast fortified citadel, a city within a city, rising up to 20 metres on an artificial mound in the middle of Bukhara. The mound is made up of layers of earth and debris built up over centuries, which is part of why the whole thing feels more like a hill than a building. People have lived and ruled on this spot for somewhere between two and three thousand years, so the walls you see today, mostly from the 17th and 18th centuries, sit on foundations of almost unimaginable age. A local legend traces the place back to a hero from Persian mythology. I couldn’t say whether the legend is accurate, but the Ark is certainly older than anything near it. The Ark was the palace, government office, treasury, barracks, mint, workshops and prison of the emirs of Bukhara all in one. It held thousands of people at its height, with courtiers, soldiers, servants, craftsmen and the rest of the household. The walls are up to 20 metres thick in places. The entrance is through a pair of towers and a ramp, designed so that anyone approaching came under fire from above the whole way up.
The square outside, called the Registan, was where the emirs held public ceremonies and also public punishments. Anyone who displeased the emir might be punished there, and everyone in Bukhara could watch. The Ark has a darker connection with Britain. In the 1840s the Great Game was in full swing, with Britain and Russia manoeuvring for influence in Central Asia. Two British officers, Colonel Charles Stoddart and Captain Arthur Conolly, came to Bukhara. Stoddart was sent to persuade the emir to ally with Britain, and Conolly came later to try to help him. Emir Nasrullah, who was a suspicious man and perhaps not an easy one to deal with, had Stoddart thrown into a deep pit in the Ark. Both men were finally executed in the square in 1842. A clergyman called Joseph Wolff came to Bukhara to find out what had happened, and he was lucky to escape himself. Nobody in London was much amused. Whenever anyone tells me the British have always been good at diplomacy, I think of those two.
The last emir, Alim Khan, lived in the Ark until 1920, when the Red Army under Mikhail Frunze besieged and stormed the city. The bombardment set the interior on fire, and large parts of the palace were wrecked. He fled to Afghanistan and spent the rest of his life in exile in Kabul. That was a rather deflating end for a man who had ruled as an absolute monarch in the time-honoured fashion.
Parts of the Ark were wrecked in the fighting and have never been restored. What’s left gives you a fair idea of how an emir arranged his affairs. There’s a throne room, reception chambers, stables, a jail and a small mosque for days when he couldn’t face the walk to Bolo Hauz. None of the rooms are huge, and the decoration, though careful, isn’t showy. These were practical, powerful men who seem to have saved their displays of wealth for the public buildings of the city rather than their own living quarters. I found that oddly reassuring. It’s more than you can say for most people with a lot of money. The Ark is now partly a museum, and the displays tell the story of Bukhara from ancient times, with coins, weapons, costumes, documents and old photographs. I was most struck by the photographs. They showed a city that looked in 1900 almost exactly as it had in 1600, and then, within about twenty years, everything changed.
🗼 The Tower of Death and the Two Blue Domes
Coming out of the Ark you find yourself looking straight at one of the great sights of Central Asian Islamic architecture. The Kalon Mosque and its minaret fill the far side of the square and have been at the centre of religious and civic life in Bukhara since the 12th century. The whole ensemble is called Poi Kalon, which roughly means “the foot of the great one”. The great one is the minaret, and the foot is everything crowded round it. The minaret is sometimes called the Tower of Death, and I’ll explain why shortly. The Karakhanid ruler Arslan Khan built it in 1127. It stands about 47 metres tall, narrowing elegantly from a broad base to a lantern at the top. It was the tallest building in Central Asia for a long time. The base is deeply set into the ground, which may be why it has stood for nearly nine hundred years in a part of the world with regular earthquakes. I’d rather not know how many.
It’s decorated with bands of baked brick, fourteen in all, each in a different pattern from the one above and below it. The brickwork has a mesmerising quality, and the surface looks different as the light moves round it during the day. After the Samanid Mausoleum, it was a pleasure to see how far the same material had been pushed in two centuries. A spiral staircase of about a hundred steps winds up the inside to the lantern, which has arched openings on all sides. The tower was used as a lighthouse for caravans, and a fire lit at the top could be seen for miles over the desert. It’s the Silk Road equivalent of a lighthouse, and it was needed more than the lantern on a rock off Cornwall.
When Genghis Khan burned and flattened most of Bukhara in 1220, the minaret is said to have been spared on his personal orders. The story goes that he looked up at it so intently that his hat fell off, and when he bent down to pick it up he said that the tower had made him bow. He then told his soldiers to leave it alone. I can’t say whether that’s reliable, but the tower is still there nearly 900 years later, which fits. He is also said to have ridden his horse into the great mosque and pronounced himself the scourge of God. I think I prefer the hat.
The name Tower of Death comes from a grimmer use. In medieval times, and right up to the early 20th century, convicted criminals were reportedly thrown from the top, which was one way of making sure a public execution had a decent audience. The Soviets stopped the practice, and I suppose that’s one thing in their favour.
The Kalon Mosque next to it is a Friday mosque, built for the communal prayers of the whole city. An earlier mosque stood on the site, and it was destroyed and rebuilt more than once, including in the Mongol invasion. The present building mostly dates from 1514 and was built under the Shaybanid dynasty. It can hold up to 10,000 people in its enormous courtyard, which gives you some idea of the population it was meant to serve. An arcade of 288 arches runs round the courtyard, and the prayer hall is covered by 288 small domes, a pleasing coincidence. The blue-tiled portal at the entrance is among the finest pieces of tilework in Uzbekistan. In the Soviet years the mosque was reportedly closed and used as a warehouse, which seems a poor use for a building of this size, although I suppose it had plenty of room.
Directly opposite stands the Mir-i-Arab Madrasa, and together the two buildings are one of the defining views of Bukhara. The Shaybanid ruler Ubaydullah Khan built the madrasa in the 1530s, supposedly paid for with the ransom money from Persian Shia prisoners. I suspect the Persians enjoyed that detail rather less than the Uzbeks did. It’s named after a Yemeni sheikh, Mir-i-Arab, who had a lot of influence over Ubaydullah Khan and is buried inside, which was a fairly direct way of making sure the place got looked after. A madrasa, for readers who don’t know, is a religious school where students traditionally lived in small cells round a courtyard while they studied the Koran, law and theology. This one was designed for just that.
The two pale blue domes are among the most photographed things in the country, and they deserve it. The colour moves from pale turquoise to deep blue depending on the hour and the light, and it looks like glazed fruit. The Mir-i-Arab was also one of only two madrasas in the whole Soviet Union allowed to carry on as a religious school. I’d guess that had as much to do with its value as a tourist attraction as with any real religious tolerance. Because it’s a working school, we admired it from the square rather than wandering round the inside, and the students walked in and out in their robes. It made a pleasant change from places that are only museums.
🏫 Rival Madrasas and the Covered Bazaars
A short way off is the Abdulaziz Khan Madrasa, built in 1652 by the Janid ruler whose name it carries. It faces the older Ulugh Beg Madrasa of 1417 across a narrow street. Ulugh Beg was Timur’s grandson, and he ruled Samarkand. He cared more about mathematics and astronomy than about conquest, and this madrasa was the first of three he built. Over the doorway is an inscription that says the pursuit of knowledge is a duty for every Muslim. It’s a fine sentiment, and he was later murdered by his own son, which I think says something about parents and children. The building is simple and dignified, with geometric patterns of tiles and brick.
Compared with the restrained elegance of its older neighbour, the Abdulaziz Khan is an architectural extravagance. The decoration inside is some of the richest in Bukhara. There are extraordinarily detailed stalactite carvings, called muqarnas, in the main portal and round the courtyards, along with tilework and painted panels of unusual richness. Some people see influences from further east, including India, in the patterns. People have suggested it was meant to outshine the Ulugh Beg opposite, which sounds entirely plausible given how loudly it goes about it. The two stand almost face to face across a street that can’t be more than ten metres wide, and they make a very good comparison of two different attitudes to ambition. One says knowledge is a duty, and the other says look at me.
Kamol next led us through the old covered bazaars, some of the best-preserved medieval trading architecture anywhere in Central Asia. The domed trading halls are called toki in Uzbek. They were built in the 16th century where the main commercial streets crossed, so merchants could do business under cover in a climate that could be brutally hot in summer and bitterly cold in winter. The domes aren’t there for show. They’re practical devices for managing ventilation and temperature in buildings that had to work all year round. The hot air rises and escapes through the openings in the top, and the thick brick keeps the inside cool. It’s a design that British builders could use, with our weather swinging from one extreme to the other, if we had the sense to copy it.
There were originally five of these covered crossings, and three survive. Toki Zargaron, the jewellers’ bazaar, is the largest. Toki Sarrofon was for money-changing, and it must have been the busiest and most nervous of the three. Toki Tilpak Furushon sold hats. Each trade had its own street and its own dome, which meant that a buyer knew where to go and a seller knew his neighbours. Today the shops sell carpets, silk, ceramics, embroidered suzanis and souvenirs rather than the goods of the Silk Road, but the buildings haven’t changed, and it still feels remarkably like stepping into a working medieval marketplace. Karen found a number of things she liked, and I found a number of things I could not afford to carry. Carpets sold in Bukhara used to be traded in the West as Bokhara rugs, whatever their origin. Plenty of British sitting rooms have one on the floor, and I suspect we had one when I was a boy.
Caravanserais went with the bazaars. These were big inns where travelling merchants could stable their animals, store their goods and sleep in some safety. The Tim Abdullah Khan caravanserai, from the late 16th century, is one of the best survivors. It follows the standard plan of a large central courtyard with cells on two levels, shops on the ground floor and rooms above. The animals were housed in the courtyard, or in rooms on the ground floor, and the merchants slept upstairs, which can’t have been pleasant in August. A merchant arriving after weeks on the road could find everything he needed under one roof. He paid a toll, and part of that went on keeping the building up. It was a sensible arrangement that kept the Silk Road economy going for centuries. I’ve stayed in hotels with worse organisation and no camels.
🧵 A Buried Mosque, the Jewish Quarter and the Puppet Show I Missed
The Magoki Attori Mosque is one of the oldest in Bukhara, and its history has more layers than most. The name means roughly the buried mosque of the perfume sellers, which immediately raises questions. The buried part is literal. The mosque sits several metres below the present street, because centuries of rubbish and rebuilding have raised the ground around it. Archaeologists dug it out in the 20th century and found a pre-Islamic fire temple on the site, which later became a Zoroastrian and then a Buddhist place of worship before being turned into a mosque around the 10th century. A medieval historian of Bukhara, Narshakhi, mentions an idol market held near here in pre-Islamic times, which tells you the site has been a place of trade as well as worship for a very long time. The perfume sellers were presumably the stallholders whose shops filled the area, and I like the idea that a holy place smelt of attar.
The present façade is from the 12th century with later additions. The southern portal is thought to be among the finest examples of 12th-century carved terracotta in the region. The brickwork has been worked into patterns of astonishing delicacy, and from inside the mosque you look up at it from below, which is a strange way to see a building. These days the mosque houses Bukhara’s carpet museum, which seemed a sensible use of the space. We had a good look at the local traditions. Bukharan carpets use a distinctive geometric vocabulary, with repeating octagonal medallions called guls, woven in a careful palette of deep red, dark blue and ivory. They can take months to make, and the best are now very expensive. I did the sensible thing and admired them without enquiring about the price.
From there we walked into the Jewish Quarter, which was for me one of the more unexpectedly moving parts of the day. Bukhara has had a Jewish community, the Bukharan Jews, with their own traditions, liturgy and culture, for somewhere between 2,000 and 2,500 years. They were here before Islam arrived, before the Silk Road reached its full development and before most of the buildings we’d spent the day admiring were built. They have their own language, Bukhori, which is a dialect of Tajik, and they developed a classical musical tradition of their own. They were well known as traders and as dyers of silk and cloth. Under the emirs there were restrictions on how they could dress and where they could ride, but they were a fixture of the city and part of its character.
In the 19th century there were somewhere between 7,000 and 10,000 Jewish residents in the city. Emigration to Israel in Soviet times, and more after independence in 1991, has cut that to only a few hundred today. Many went to Israel, and large numbers also settled in New York, particularly in Queens. The narrow lanes of the quarter, with their high mud walls and carved wooden doors, are what’s left of a bigger world.
The synagogue was closed, which was a disappointment. Karen, being from the North of England and therefore not put off by a locked door, spotted a puppet shop a few doors along and disappeared inside. The family who ran it knew exactly what they were doing in the hospitality department. Puppetry has a long tradition in Central Asia, with street shows and tent theatres going back for centuries, and these people were clearly proud of it. They put on an impromptu show for her, working their elaborate hand-made puppets with real skill and evident pleasure.
Meanwhile I had wandered off down the street to look at something else entirely. I can’t now remember what. In hindsight this was a tactical error of the first order. Karen’s phone had died. There was nobody to film it. When she came out into the street, glowing from the performance, and found that I’d been nowhere near it and the moment was lost to posterity, she wasn’t what you’d call delighted with me. I offered the defence that I hadn’t known there was going to be a puppet show. This was entirely true and entirely beside the point.
⛲ Mulberry Trees, a Pool and a Man on a Donkey
Round the corner from the Jewish Quarter lies Lyab-i-Hauz, a handsome 17th-century square built around a big rectangular pool, shaded by ancient mulberry trees. The name means roughly “by the pool”. The pool dates from 1620 and was one of the last of Bukhara’s many public water tanks. At one time there were hundreds of them across the city, and people drew their water from them for drinking, washing and cooking. The water was also home to disease, including a parasitic worm that got into people’s legs, and Bukhara was notorious for it. The Soviets filled most of the pools in during the 1920s and 1930s on health grounds, as over the centuries they had become rather unpleasant. This one was spared, presumably because it photographed well, and now it’s the best-loved spot in town. The pool is roughly 45 by 35 metres, and steps lead down to the water on all sides.
Three buildings from the 17th century surround it. The Kukeldash Madrasa on the north side, built in 1568 and 1569, is the biggest madrasa in Bukhara. It’s a large, plain building, and it was named after a courtier of the ruler Abdullah Khan. There’s also the Khodja Nasr Divan-Begi Khanaka, a hostel for travelling dervishes, which sits on the east side. Dervishes were wandering Sufi holy men, who lived on charity and arrived in town from all over the Islamic world, and the khanaka gave them a bed, a meal and a place to pray. And finally, the Nodir Devonbegi Madrasa.
The Nodir Devonbegi needs a closer look. The vizier Nadir Divan-Begi built it in 1622, devonbegi being a court title roughly equal to chief minister. He was the uncle of the ruler, Imam Quli Khan, and he was clearly a man of ambition. The decoration over the main doorway is not what you’d expect on a madrasa. Islamic art traditionally avoids showing living creatures, especially on religious buildings. Yet above the entrance are two large simurghs, mythical Persian firebirds, each gripping a white deer in its talons. Between them is a human face in the middle of a sun. The tilework is in rich blues, golds and whites, and the birds are the size of eagles. None of this is remotely orthodox, and people have come up with various explanations over the years. The most likely is that the building was meant to be a caravanserai and was converted into a madrasa after the work was done, without anyone ordering the doorway to be changed. Whether or not that explains it, the birds have looked down on this square for 400 years and show no sign of leaving. I would like to have been present when someone first noticed.
In front of the madrasa sits the statue of Khodja Nasreddin, better known in the West as Nasrudin. He’s the wise fool whose stories are told all over the Islamic world, from Morocco to China. The statue is from the late 1970s. He belongs to everyone and so to nobody in particular. Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkey, Iran, Azerbaijan and about a dozen other countries all claim him. He’s usually shown as a simple man who gets the better of the pompous and powerful through a mixture of apparent stupidity and real wisdom. In one of the best-known stories he searches for a lost key under a street lamp rather than in the dark where he dropped it, because the light is better. I’ve known engineers like him. In Bukhara he sits on his donkey with a look of great self-satisfaction, which seems exactly right. Frankly he was the most cheerful figure we met all day. After 2,500 years of rather serious history, that was no small achievement.
By now my feet were giving opinions I preferred not to hear too closely. Karen’s probably were too, though she hid it better than I did, or she was still quietly furious about the puppet show. We said goodbye to Kamol and walked back to the hotel, which in the late afternoon was quite pleasant. The old city feels different when you’re wandering with no plan. The streets that had been full of tourists earlier were quieter, and the light came in lower and did very flattering things to the old mud brick. We stopped at a small café and sat outside with a cold beer. After a day among the accumulated centuries of Islamic architecture this felt mildly ironic, but the beer was perfectly good and the chairs were comfortable. We said very little, because there was rather a lot to sit quietly with.
Back at the hotel we ate dinner from the bags we’d filled at the green market that morning, which is why I told you it mattered. There was dried apricot, walnuts, a round of non that had survived the day considerably better than I had, some cheese, a handful of pistachios and a few things Karen had picked out and I had simply carried without asking what they were. It was an excellent dinner. Bukhara, it turned out, even fed you well.
Day 2
🌙 The Mecca of Central Asia
For our second day we decided to leave the city, which in practice meant getting into a car and letting someone else do the worrying. Our driver was a quiet, cheerful man who drove the way most people in Uzbekistan do, with complete confidence and only a loose interest in which lane he was in. I grew up thinking a roundabout was something to argue with, so I felt right at home. I sat in the back and studied the scenery very hard so I wouldn’t have to look at the road. Outside the city the land was flat and green with cotton fields and irrigation channels, and the desert was never far away.
Our first stop was the Bahouddin Naqshband Memorial Complex, seven or eight miles north-east of the old city in a village called Kasri Orifon. The name means something like the castle of the knowers. The village was once called something less flattering and was renamed after Naqshband lived there, which is a handy thing for a village to have. Before we planned the trip I’d never heard of Bahouddin Naqshband. That’s rather like going to Canterbury and never having heard of Thomas Becket, because to a great many Muslims across Central Asia, Turkey, India and beyond he is a very big name indeed.
He was born in this village in 1318 and died here in 1389, so he lived through much the same years as Geoffrey Chaucer. While Chaucer was writing rude stories about pilgrims, Naqshband was becoming someone that pilgrims would travel to see for the next six hundred years. I think it’s fair to say one of them came out ahead. He founded the Naqshbandi order of Sufis, a mystical branch of Islam, and it grew into one of the largest and most influential Sufi orders in the world. It spread to Turkey, India and Indonesia, and it’s still active. In the 19th century members of the order led the long resistance to the Russian conquest of the Caucasus, which tells you it isn’t only about quiet prayer. His name is usually taken to mean the engraver or the pattern maker. Some say his family embossed patterns onto cloth, and others say it refers to him engraving the name of God on the heart. Our guide said both were true, which is the sort of answer guides give when they’d rather not take sides.
What struck us was how down to earth his teaching was. He didn’t go in for hermits starving in caves or dervishes whirling about. The Naqshbandis are known for silent prayer, rather than loud chanting, and for the idea of being alone with God while in the middle of a crowd. His famous saying was “Dil ba yor, dast ba kor”, which roughly means the heart with God and the hands at work. In other words, pray all you like, but you’ve still got to earn a living. Being a Londoner I thought this very sensible. Karen said it sounded like her grandmother, only without the bit about God.
The complex grew up bit by bit over several centuries. The first big building went up in 1544, when the Shaybanid ruler Abdulaziz Khan built a large khanaqah, a sort of hostel and prayer hall for Sufis and pilgrims. Later rulers added to it, and some of them were buried there so they could rest near the holy man. A mosque was put up in 1720 by a man called Hakim Kushbegi, with a lovely wooden porch on tall carved columns, and the 19th century brought more buildings, including a small minaret. In Soviet times the place was closed as a religious site, which the Soviets did to a lot of places, because they disapproved of most things. Pilgrims came anyway, quietly. After independence in 1991 it was thoroughly restored, finishing in 1993 to mark the 675th anniversary of Naqshband’s birth. That explains why parts of it look remarkably fresh for somewhere supposedly there since the 1500s. It has the slightly scrubbed look of a place that has been done up, but it didn’t spoil it.
The tomb itself surprised us. We’d expected a great domed mausoleum like the ones in the city. Instead it’s a low stone platform called a dakhma, with a stone railing round it, sitting in the open courtyard. It’s said that Naqshband himself asked for a simple grave, and the simplicity was impressive in a land where rulers built vast tombs to themselves. It was very simple and rather moving. It was also clearly a working shrine rather than a museum. Families had come from all over, with women in bright headscarves and old men in long padded coats. They walked slowly round the tomb, praying, touching the stone and murmuring. Children were hushed by their mothers, and a few of them were not hushed at all. There’s an old local saying that three pilgrimages to Naqshband’s tomb count as one to Mecca, and that’s why the place is called the Mecca of Central Asia. As I said to Karen, it’s a good deal cheaper to get to.
Karen had brought a scarf to cover her hair, as visitors are asked to, and we both kept our voices down. In the courtyard an old, dried-out tree trunk lay on its side, propped up so people could pass under it. Legend says it grew from Naqshband’s walking staff. Walking under it is supposed to bring luck, cure your ailments and grant your wishes. We did it too, mostly on the grounds that it couldn’t hurt. I can’t say I noticed any change, and my knees still complained on the steps afterwards. But there was a queue, and you don’t argue with a queue.
There’s also a sacred well, a burial ground for local rulers and holy men, and the tomb of Naqshband’s mother a short walk away. We sat for a while in the shade by the pool and watched the pilgrims come and go. It was peaceful in a way that a lot of famous sights aren’t. Nobody was selling anything, at least not near the tomb, and nobody seemed in a hurry. It was the first place in two days where I had no urge to take a photograph. I just sat there, which isn’t like me.
🌟 The Palace of the Moon and Stars, and a Screaming Peacock
We drove back towards the city to the Sitorai Mohi Khosa, the summer palace of the last emirs of Bukhara. The name is usually translated as the Palace of the Moon and Stars, which raises your hopes rather high. It stands two or three miles north of the old city, which in the days before air conditioning was the whole point. Bukhara in summer is hotter than a London bus in August with the windows jammed shut. Temperatures go well above 40 degrees, and the emirs reasonably wanted somewhere cooler.
There’s a lovely story about how they picked the spot. Amir Abdulahad Khan, who ruled from 1885 to 1910, is supposed to have told his wise men to find the coolest place near the city. They slaughtered four sheep and hung the carcasses at the four corners of the city, and the one that stayed fresh longest showed where the air was coolest. That was the winner. I can’t tell you whether it’s true, but it’s a much better story than we had a surveyor round.
The older part of the palace dates from Abdulahad’s time. The main building that most people come to see was put up between about 1912 and 1918 for his son, Amir Alim Khan, the last emir. Alim Khan had been educated in St Petersburg, and Bukhara had been a Russian protectorate since 1868, so he had developed a real taste for European things. A famous colour photograph of him from 1911, taken by the Russian pioneer Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky, shows a man in a gold-embroidered robe and a turban, looking a little tired, as if he had been told to hold still. He had Russian architects design the outside, which looks like a fairly grand Russian country house. For the inside he called in the best local craftsmen, led by a master called Usto Shirin Muradov. The result is a building that can’t quite decide whether it’s in Moscow or Central Asia, so it settles for both at once, as loudly as possible.
The highlight is the White Hall. Every surface is covered in carved white plaster, called ganch, laid over mirrored glass so the whole room glitters. The plaster is carved into flowers, niches and tiny stalactites, and the mirrors behind it catch the light. Usto Shirin Muradov and his team spent about two years on it, and it’s extraordinary. Karen stood in the middle with her mouth slightly open and said, “Well, you wouldn’t want to dust it.” She was right, but you could still see that it was a masterpiece of craftsmanship.
The other rooms were full of the odds and ends of a royal household that had gone shopping with enthusiasm. There were Chinese and Japanese vases, Russian porcelain, heavy European furniture, chandeliers and enormous mirrors. Many had been gifts from the Russian court, and the emir had plainly wanted to show he was up to date. In one room our guide proudly pointed out one of the first refrigerators in the region, which I found more exciting than I probably should have. Karen, the practical Northerner, wanted to know whether it still worked. It didn’t. There was a lot of the sort of decoration you get when someone has unlimited money and nobody brave enough to say that’s probably enough now.
Sadly for Alim Khan, he didn’t get much use out of his new palace. In September 1920 the Red Army, under Mikhail Frunze, attacked Bukhara. After a few days of fighting the emir fled, first east into the mountains and then over the border into Afghanistan. He never came back. He lived in exile in Kabul and died there in 1944. His family and his people never quite agreed on whether he had been a tyrant or a victim, and I suspect he was a bit of both. The Bolsheviks took over his palace, which is how these things generally went. Since 1927 it has been a museum of decorative and applied arts. Whatever you think of the Soviets, they were at least good at turning other people’s palaces into museums.
The harem was in a separate building across the gardens. It’s a long, low building beside a large pool, and today it houses a very good display of suzanis, the big embroidered wall hangings Uzbekistan is famous for. Traditionally a bride’s family would spend years stitching them as part of her dowry, and the patterns of flowers, suns and moons are all symbols of luck. Some were enormous, and the colours were still bright after a century or more. Karen can’t pass a craft shop without going in, and she spent a lot longer in there than I did. I stood in a corner and read the labels twice.
Beside the pool stands a wooden pavilion, and it comes with another story. They say the emir would sit up there and watch the ladies of his harem bathing in the pool, and when he’d made his choice for the evening he’d throw an apple to the lucky lady. Karen’s view was that if a man threw an apple at her she’d throw it straight back, and harder. I decided to keep my thoughts on the matter to myself, which over the years I’ve found to be the wisest policy.
The gardens are pleasant enough, with old trees, paths and flower beds, though a bit tired in places. The best thing about them is the peacocks, which strut about as if they own the place. In a sense they do, having outlasted the emirs by over a century. They spread their tails for no one in particular. One of them sat on a wall and screamed at us for no reason at all, which I think was the most authentic royal welcome we got all day.
🗼 Four Little Towers and One Last Evening
By late morning we were back in the old city for our final stop, the Chor Minor. The name means four minarets in Persian. It’s tucked away down a little side street in a residential neighbourhood, and you’d walk past it if you didn’t know it was there. A rich Turkmen merchant called Khalif Niyazkul built it in 1807 as the gatehouse to a madrasa. Most of the madrasa has long gone, apart from a few bits of wall and a pool, but the gatehouse is still there and it’s a real charmer. I think the merchant wanted people to notice him, and two hundred years later they still do.
It’s a squarish building with a little tower at each corner, and each tower is topped with a turquoise dome. The main room under the central dome is a small chamber, and a staircase leads up to a roof with views over the neighbourhood. Look closely and you’ll see the towers aren’t identical, because each has slightly different decoration. One explanation is that they stand for Niyazkul’s four daughters. Another is that they represent four religions, or the four corners of the world. People point to details such as a fish, a wheel and what looks like a cross, and everyone sees something different. Our guide gave us all three explanations and let us pick. There’s also a theory that Niyazkul had seen the Charminar in Hyderabad in India, built in 1591, and liked it so much he wanted one of his own. He was a trader and may well have travelled that far. I can sympathise, having once come home from Spain wanting a patio. Strictly speaking the towers aren’t real minarets, as nobody ever called the faithful to prayer from them. They were mostly for storage, and just for show.
One of the towers collapsed in 1995 and had to be rebuilt, and in bright sun you can just about tell which. The rebuilding is careful, and unless you were looking for it you would miss it. It’s a small building and you can see all of it in about ten minutes, but it’s far more photogenic than it has any right to be. It also had the great advantage of being nearly empty when we got there. After the crowds at the Kalon, that felt like a luxury.
Opposite was a small café, which suited us down to the ground. We sat outside with a coffee and looked at the four little blue domes against the sky, and agreed it was the most relaxing ten minutes we’d had all day. Karen said the coffee was “proper”, which from her is about as high a compliment as you can get. A cat wandered over to see if we had anything worth eating, decided we didn’t, and went back to sleep in the shade.
By then it was about lunchtime, the sun was getting serious and our touring was done. We went back to the hotel and did what sensible people in hot countries have always done in the middle of the day, which was to lie down and do nothing at all. I’d like to say we read improving books about Central Asian history. In fact we both fell asleep.
In the evening, when it had cooled down, we walked out to see the old city one last time, as we were leaving for Samarkand the next morning. We went back to Lyab-i-Hauz, built in 1620 by Nadir Divan-Begi, the grand vizier of the day. Before piped water, pools like this one were where people got their water, and also where diseases spread, which is why the Soviets drained most of them. This one survived, and it’s now lined with old mulberry trees, some reckoned to be getting on for five hundred years old. They’re held up with props and a fair bit of optimism. The tables of the cafés spilled out around the pool, and the light was soft and gold. Families strolled and children ran about. We had another look at Khoja Nasreddin on his donkey, grinning at everybody. Karen said he reminded her of an uncle of hers, though she wouldn’t say which one.
Then we strolled through the covered bazaars, where traders have been doing business since the 16th century. Most of the stallholders were packing up, though not so fast that they couldn’t have one last go at selling us a hat. We ended up, as everyone does, at the Kalon Minaret, built in 1127 and nearly fifty metres tall. It’s so solid that Genghis Khan, who flattened most of the rest of Bukhara in 1220, is said to have left it standing because he was impressed. That’s more than can be said for most things he came across. Lit up against the night sky, with the Kalon Mosque and the Mir-i-Arab Madrasa on either side, it was a very fine sight to finish on. The two blue domes had turned dark, and the brick bands of the tower glowed.
We stood there for a while without saying much, which for a Londoner and a Northerner is something of a record. Then we walked slowly back through the quiet lanes, past old men playing cards under a streetlight, to pack our bags.
💭 Reflections
Looking back, what stays with me about Bukhara is how many layers it had, and how easily they sat on top of one another. A fire temple became a mosque and then a carpet museum. A citadel became a prison and then a museum. A royal mosque faces a square where men were once executed and where tourists now eat ice cream. Empires, invaders and ideologies had all come through, and the city outlasted every one of them, usually by being too useful or too beautiful to knock down completely. Genghis Khan managed to leave a minaret standing. The Samanid tomb got through the Mongols by being buried and forgotten. The Soviets, for all their enthusiasm for demolition, left a pool, a Ferris wheel and a working madrasa. I found that oddly cheering.
The thing I hadn’t expected was how much of it was still in use. Plenty of famous places feel like exhibits, but in Bukhara people were still praying at the shrine, buying bread at the market, studying at the madrasa and playing cards under the streetlight. It’s the difference between looking at history and being allowed to sit in the same room as it.
I also learned, again, that I’m a poor judge of what’s worth my attention. I wandered off from a puppet show and I’m still hearing about it. I’d never heard of Naqshband and ended up sitting in the shade at the shrine of one of the most important figures in Central Asian history. The best moments weren’t on any list I’d made. They were a plain brick box that was a thousand years old, a coffee next to a cat, a quiet evening at a floodlit minaret and a dinner of market leftovers.
Planning a Visit to Bukhara
Bukhara is one of Central Asia’s most extraordinary cities — a UNESCO World Heritage Site and a living museum of the ancient Silk Road. With more than 2,000 years of history, its dazzling mosques, towering minarets, grand madrasahs and labyrinthine bazaars make it one of the most evocative and best-preserved historic cities in the world.
📍 Location
Bukhara lies in south-central Uzbekistan, in the fertile valley of the Zeravshan River. It sits in a largely arid, semi-desert landscape at an altitude of roughly 225 metres above sea level, about 270 kilometres west of Samarkand and around 550 kilometres from the capital, Tashkent. The city operates on UTC+5 — five hours ahead of the UK.
The historic Old City (known as the medina) is compact and walkable. Almost all the major monuments are clustered within a relatively small area, making it one of the most pleasant Silk Road cities to explore on foot.
🛫 Getting There
By Air
Bukhara International Airport (BHK) is situated just under 5 kilometres from the city centre. It currently handles a modest number of routes, with the busiest being domestic flights to Tashkent (approximately one hour). International connections operate to Istanbul with Turkish Airlines and to several Russian cities including Moscow and St Petersburg. There are no direct flights from the UK, so most travellers route via Istanbul, Dubai or Tashkent. A new, much larger international airport is planned for completion in 2027 and will significantly expand capacity and connectivity.
From the airport to the Old City, a taxi costs roughly 20,000–50,000 Uzbekistani som (UZS), equivalent to around £1.50–£3.50. Agree a price before you get in, or use the Yandex taxi app for a metered fare.
By Train
Many travellers find the train the most enjoyable way to reach Bukhara. Uzbekistan’s Afrosiyob high-speed rail service connects Tashkent to Bukhara in approximately four hours, and Samarkand to Bukhara in around one hour forty minutes. Slower services run from Khiva (around seven hours). Tickets can be booked through the Uzbekistan Railways website, though seats sell out quickly in the peak travel months and it is wise to book in advance. Note that Bukhara’s railway station is around 12 kilometres outside the city centre; from there, take a taxi (around 25–35 minutes) or a minibus to the Old City.
By Bus
Shared buses and marshrutkas (minibuses) run between Tashkent and Bukhara roughly every two hours and take around nine hours. Tickets cost approximately 100,000–110,000 UZS (around £7). This is the slowest option but a practical fallback if trains are fully booked.
Visas
British passport holders do not currently need a visa for Uzbekistan and can stay for up to 30 days. You will need a valid passport with at least six months’ validity beyond your entry date, and proof of onward or return travel.
🚶 Getting Around
On Foot
Walking is by far the best way to explore Bukhara’s Old City. The main landmarks — the Lyab-i Hauz ensemble, the Poi-Kalyan Complex, the Ark Fortress, the Trading Domes and the Bolo Hauz Mosque — are all within comfortable walking distance of one another. Flat and generally free of heavy traffic in the historic core, the old streets are a pleasure to wander, with frequent unexpected courtyards, workshops and teahouses to discover along the way.
Taxi
Taxis are plentiful and inexpensive. For journeys within the city, expect to pay 10,000–25,000 UZS (roughly 70p–£1.75). If you do not use a taxi app, always negotiate and agree the fare before setting off, as metered taxis are rare. The Yandex Go app works reliably in Bukhara and gives a fixed price upfront.
Rickshaws and Horse-Drawn Carts
A charming and characteristically Bukharan way to get around, horse-drawn carts and cycle rickshaws are available in the Old City. These are primarily for short distances and tourist routes, and prices should be agreed in advance.
Trains and Buses for Day Trips
For excursions outside the city — such as the Chor Bakr Memorial Complex or the Naqshbandi pilgrimage complex at Bahouddin — taxis are the most practical option, as public transport is limited and infrequent on these routes.
The Best Time to Visit Uzbekistan
🌸 Spring (March to May)
Spring is widely regarded as one of the finest seasons to visit Uzbekistan. Temperatures are mild and pleasant, typically ranging from 15°C to 28°C, making it ideal for exploring the country’s legendary Silk Road cities on foot. The landscape transforms as almond and apricot trees burst into blossom, and the bazaars overflow with fresh produce. Samarkand, Bukhara, and Khiva are at their most photogenic under clear blue skies, and the air carries the scent of flowers from walled gardens and courtyards.
Nowruz, the Persian New Year celebrated on 21 March, falls at the very start of the season and is a spectacular time to witness traditional music, dancing, and street festivities. Tourist numbers are moderate in March, rising steadily through April and May, so booking accommodation in advance is advisable. The occasional spring shower can bring brief relief from the dust without disrupting plans significantly.
What to pack: Bring layers — mornings and evenings can be cool even when afternoons feel warm. Light trousers, long-sleeved shirts, a mid-layer fleece or cardigan, a packable rain jacket, comfortable walking shoes, sunscreen, and a sun hat. A light scarf is useful for visiting mosques and madrassas.
☀️ Summer (June to August)
Summer in Uzbekistan is formidable. Temperatures in the lowland cities regularly reach 38°C to 42°C, and in the Fergana Valley they can climb even higher. The desert air is intensely dry, and the midday sun beats down on the ancient tilework with unrelenting force. This is the low season for tourism, and you will find far fewer crowds at the major monuments — which can be a genuine pleasure if you are willing to adapt your itinerary around the heat, sightseeing in the early morning and late evening and retreating indoors during the afternoon.
Summer does offer its own rewards. Fruit markets are at their most abundant, laden with watermelons, apricots, cherries, peaches, and figs. The mountainous regions — particularly the Nuratau hills and the Fan Mountains near Samarkand — provide cooler alternatives at altitude and are excellent for trekking. The Aral Sea region, though sobering in its environmental decline, is more accessible in summer. If you are heat-tolerant and budget-conscious, summer offers lower prices and genuine solitude at iconic sites.
What to pack: Breathable, loose-fitting cotton and linen clothing in light colours, UV-protection sunglasses, a wide-brimmed hat, high-factor sunscreen (SPF 50+), a refillable water bottle, lip balm, electrolyte sachets, and insect repellent for evenings. A light cardigan is useful for air-conditioned restaurants and transport.
🍂 Autumn (September to November)
Autumn rivals spring as the best season to visit and, for many travellers, edges ahead. September and October deliver warm, settled weather — days in the mid-20s to low 30s — with cooler nights that make sleeping comfortable. The harvest season brings extraordinary abundance to the bazaars: pomegranates, quinces, grapes, walnuts, and dried fruits pile high at every stall, and the light has the golden warmth that photographers treasure.
The Silk Road cities feel vibrant without being overwhelmed. Tourist numbers are at their peak in October, particularly around the major festivals and cultural events that coincide with the harvest, so this is the season to book well ahead. November sees a noticeable cooling, particularly in the north, and some mountain passes begin to close, but the cities remain perfectly pleasant into the middle of the month. Autumn is also an excellent time for photography — the tilework glows in softer afternoon light, and the trees around Tashkent and Samarkand turn to rust and gold.
What to pack: Similar to spring — layers are essential as temperatures swing between day and night. Light to mid-weight trousers, shirts, a fleece or light jacket, a packable windproof layer, sturdy walking shoes, sun hat, sunscreen, and a small daypack. A warmer jacket becomes useful in November.
❄️ Winter (December to February)
Winter in Uzbekistan is cooler and quieter than many visitors expect, with temperatures in the cities dropping to between -5°C and 5°C, occasionally lower in Tashkent. Snow is possible but rarely heavy in the lowland cities, and the ancient monuments take on an atmospheric, almost ethereal quality when dusted with frost. This is the quietest season for tourism, and the result is an experience of Uzbekistan that feels remarkably unfiltered — locals going about their daily lives, teahouses full of warmth and conversation, and the great mosques and mausoleums largely to yourself.
Bukhara in particular is magical in winter, its domed caravanserais and narrow lanes free from the summer and autumn crowds. The skiing at Chimgan, north of Tashkent, offers a genuine winter sports option that few international visitors think to include. Indoor attractions — the State Museum of History of Uzbekistan in Tashkent, the regional history museums in Samarkand and Bukhara — come into their own. Budget-conscious travellers will find this the cheapest time to visit, with hotels and tours offering their lowest prices.
What to pack: A warm, windproof outer coat, thermal base layers, mid-layer fleece or down jacket, warm hat, gloves, a scarf, waterproof walking boots with grip, wool socks, and hand warmers. Layers remain the key strategy as interiors are often well-heated.
Weather at a Glance
🏔️ Overall Best Time to Visit
If you can visit only once, aim for April to May or September to October. These shoulder seasons share the same virtues — comfortable temperatures, magnificent light, functioning bazaars, and the Silk Road cities in their full, unhurried glory — but autumn edges ahead for sheer sensory richness. The harvest, the golden light, and the ripe abundance of the markets give October in Uzbekistan a quality that is difficult to match anywhere along the old Silk Road. Spring holds its own appeal for those who wish to witness Nowruz and the blossoming orchards, and either season will provide the conditions in which Samarkand, Bukhara, and Khiva reveal themselves most generously. Whatever time of year you travel, Uzbekistan rewards those who go with an open itinerary, comfortable shoes, and a willingness to linger.
Where to Stay in Bukhara?
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Wyndham Bukhara
The Wyndham Bukhara is the city’s best claim to international five-star standards, and it makes a reasonable fist of it. Located on Alisher Navoi Street, within comfortable walking distance of the main historical sights, the hotel occupies a sizeable modern building that blends Asian design elements with, shall we say, the sort of efficient comfort that Wyndham’s global operation reliably delivers. The 212 rooms are spacious, well-appointed with king-size beds, minibars and complimentary high-speed Wi-Fi, and the breakfast buffet is extensive enough to keep you going through a morning of intensive monument-visiting. There are two restaurants — Gusto and Ramiz — offering local and international cuisine, alongside a bar and a café if you need something less formal. The Prana Spa and Fitness Centre is open around the clock, which is either impressive or slightly alarming depending on your perspective. For business travellers or those who simply want the reassurance of a known international brand and proper air conditioning after a long day in the heat, the Wyndham delivers.
⭐⭐⭐⭐ DUSTON Boutique XIX Century Rooms
The DUSTON Boutique is one of the most consistently praised places to stay in Bukhara, and it is not difficult to understand why. Set in a beautifully restored 19th-century building in the heart of the old town, the hotel manages the neat trick of providing genuine historical atmosphere without sacrificing the comforts that make a stay actually enjoyable. The rooms are individually decorated with traditional Uzbek textiles, carved woodwork and antique furnishings — the sort of interior design that takes real knowledge and taste rather than a visit to a furniture warehouse. The courtyard is lovely, particularly in the evenings, and the breakfast has been praised by enough guests to suggest it is taken seriously. The location is excellent for exploring the old city on foot, with the major monuments within easy walking distance. Staff are consistently described as warm, knowledgeable and genuinely helpful — something that matters considerably more than the thread count of the towels.
⭐⭐⭐ Hotel Sarhad Bukhara
The Hotel Sarhad is a three-star property that consistently punches above its official rating, which is exactly what you want from a mid-range hotel. The hotel occupies a well-maintained building in a good location for the old town, and the rooms are clean, comfortable and sensibly sized. The traditional courtyard at its heart gives it a genuinely local character, and the breakfast is both generous and good — a combination that is rarer than it should be. The staff are friendly and efficient, and the property seems well run in the unglamorous but important ways that actually make a stay pleasant: hot water reliably available, air conditioning that works, Wi-Fi that connects. If your priority is being somewhere comfortable, well-located and well-regarded without spending a fortune, the Sarhad is a thoroughly sensible choice and one that independent travellers to Bukhara return to with some regularity.
⭐⭐ Khalid Boutique Hotel
Don’t be misled by the modest star rating — the Khalid Boutique Hotel on Mirzo Gafur Street is a well-regarded family-run property with genuine character. It operates in the way that the best small hotels in Central Asia tend to: with personal attention, home-cooked breakfasts and the kind of local knowledge that no amount of corporate training can replicate. The rooms are simply furnished but clean and comfortable, with private bathrooms, air conditioning and flat-screen televisions, and several have balconies or courtyard views that make them rather pleasant places to sit at the end of the day. Some rooms can accommodate families, and the hotel’s pricing is considerably lower than the boutique properties further up the scale, making it a genuinely good-value option for travellers with more interest in exploring Bukhara than in their accommodation. The twenty-four-hour front desk means that late arrivals and early departures are handled without fuss.
Dervish Hostel
The Dervish Hostel, tucked away on Kuyi Darakht Street, is Bukhara’s most consistently recommended budget option for independent travellers, and it delivers what backpackers actually need without unnecessary fuss. Clean dormitories and private rooms, a shared kitchen, a sociable common lounge and the sort of laid-back atmosphere that encourages fellow travellers to exchange notes about where they’ve been and where they’re going. Free Wi-Fi works reliably, the staff run a tour desk and can help with onward tickets and excursions, and luggage storage means you’re not chained to the building on your last morning. The location in the old town puts all the major sights within easy walking distance, which at this price point is a considerable advantage. It is exactly what a good hostel should be: simple, honest, and rather better value than it has any right to be.g.
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