Discovery Tour to Uzbekistan

Twelve days across Uzbekistan, running from the Silk Road cities most people know to the harder-to-reach Aral Sea region and the Nurata desert. It's a private tour, so it's just you (and whoever you're travelling with) plus your guide and driver, moving through the country at a set pace but with the itinerary built around your own group.

You get the classic stops — Khiva, Bukhara, Samarkand — but also the parts that don't usually make the shorter tours: Nukus, the abandoned ships and shrinking shoreline at Muynak, a night in a yurt camp by Aydar Lake, and a side trip up into the Chimgan mountains near Tashkent.

It's an easy-paced, culture-and-history focused trip rather than an active one, with a mix of guided city time and free time built in, and it suits families as well as couples or friends travelling together.

What you'll do

• See the Soviet-era ship graveyard at Muynak and learn what happened to the Aral Sea
• Visit the necropolis at Mizdakhan and the ancient desert fortresses near Khiva
• Explore the old walled city of Khiva and the historic centre of Bukhara
• Spend a night at a yurt camp on the shore of Aydar Lake
• Walk through Registan Square and the Timurid sites of Samarkand and Shakhrisabz
• Head into the Chimgan mountains for a change of scenery near Tashkent