Treasures of Uzbekistan

Day 1 – Arrival to Tashkent
Fly to Tashkent either from Istanbul or another city, you will be met and be transferred to your hotel. Overnight in Tashkent.

Day 2 – Highlights of the city
After breakfast, we will start our tour with a visit to the Abdul Khasim and Khast Imam Barakhan Madrasa artisan workshops. We will meet artists expert in a wide variety of handicrafts, from tin covered wooden book stands, to lake paintings, to miniature paintings, to wood work, and to metalwork and Ikat weaving. After lunch, a visit to Sanat – Art Museum, an important museum for traditional Uzbek textiles, as well as for other objects of art. Later we will explore the Uzbekistan National History Museum. Here we will see artifacts ranging from the BCE period to the present, including a good textile art collection. Later, we go to the Chorsu – Bazaar, the old market of Tashkent, including the Dome market, from the Russian era, where we will see all sorts of local products from dried yogurt to the many types of grains to all sorts of spices and dried foods. Overnight in Tashkent.

Day 3 – Tashkent – Fergana Valley
We leave our hotel for our morning flight to Fergana (1 hr), and check into our hotel. Drive to Margilan (15 min.). We will start our tour with a visit to the town of Margilan. Its most famous son is the founder of India’s Moghul Empire, Zaheruddin Mohammed Babur. Margilan has been famous for its wonderful and fine silks. Via the Great Silk Road traders brought Marghilanian silk to Baghdad, Cairo and Athens. It is still the most important silk production center in Uzbekistan. We will visit a workshop where original handmade methods of silk ikat production are still used. This is one of the best places that Ikat weaving still survives as in the old days. We will visit Yodigarlik silk processing factory and Saidahmad Hoja Ehsan Madrasa where famous velvet ikat, adrasikat, silk rugs and block print masters are still working like in the old days. After lunch, we return to our hotel rest and relax in the afternoon. (Optional walks in the town before dinner or optional visit to another local master’s workshop and a local market) Overnight in Fergana.

Day 4 – Fergana Valley – Rishtan& Kokand – Tashkent (360 km)
We will drive to Rishtan (1 hr.) and visit the master potter Rustam Usmanov. He has an impressive workshop where he produces excellent copies of old ceramics. He has a one-room museum of old ceramic pieces collected over a period of many years. After lunch, we will drive to Kokand (1 hr.) to visit Khudayar Khan’s late 19th century Palace, which is a museum now housing various artifacts, including textiles, metal objects, books, and woodwork – including old hand – drawn carts. Possible visit to a master knife maker’s workshop. Later we drive to Tashkent (3 – 3.5 hrs.) Overnight in Tashkent.

Day 5 – Tashkent – Nukus flight
We will fly to Nukus in the morning. We will have a short drive to the Karakalpakistan Museum around noon. We shall explore the exhibits with her as our knowledgeable guide, and then have the chance to see some special pieces. After lunch, we will have an afternoon drive in town and a possible visit to a local market. We will stay in a small hotel in Nukus. Overnight in Nukus.

Day 6 – Travel around Karakalpakistan
We shall drive through the countryside for an hour and visit some Karakalpak yurt builders who build to order in the Karakalpak, Mongolian and Kazak styles. We will watch the masters to discover how they bend heated tree branches into the ribs of nomad homes called “Yurts”. After lunch, we will have some cultural contact with Karakalpaks in the famous Gjavur Kala and ancient graveyard where many women still come for sleepless overnights and roll themselves from one of the old Saint’s tomb, believing that they will have a child or get married or have other prayers answered. We will have a chance to wash our hands in the famous Amudarya River on the way back. Overnight in Nukus.

Day 7 – Drive to Khiva – Ichan Kala visit
We will drive to Khiva (120 mi.; 3 hrs.) and have lunch on arrival in Khiva in early-afternoon. Check into our hotel and go for a walk to stretch our legs in the Ichan Kala, where all the important historical monuments are still intact. There is also a small museum which has some Chapans and textiles along with objects of ethnographic art. Overnight in Khiva.

Day 8 – Khiva – Ichan Kala
After breakfast, we will continue our exploration of the rest of Khiva including a visit to the mausoleum of Pakhlavan Makhmud and the Islam Khodja minaret, from the top of which criminals used to be thrown to their deaths. We will then make short visits to a local museum, to the Jumi Mosque, the Tashauli palace, the Kalta minaret, and the textile center, “Operation Mercy”, in the Ichan Kala. At Operation Mercy, local ladies weave Timurid design silk rugs and embroider traditional suzane textiles with silk dyed in natural colors. We will also see Adrasikat weaving and the process of preparing and dyeing with natural dyes. This is a project founded by Christopher Arslan, who helped the locals in the revival of weaving traditions. Dinner at a local restaurant. Overnight in Khiva.

Day 9 – Drive to Bukhara
Our day begins with an early drive to Bokhara through the desert (285 mi.). It is an interesting drive as we will have box lunches which we will eat among the sand dunes. We will check into our hotel on arrival, and after a short rest, we shall possibly attend a puppet show in a local theatre, an art that is disappearing as hereditary families decline to continue their family traditions. We will see an episode of a legend or an Uzbek marriage. Overnight in Bukhara.

Day 10 – Highlights of Bukhara
This morning, we shall explore the Sitorai Makhi Hoja Emir Summer Palace Museum. It has a selective Suzane collection as well as other artifacts. Next, we will visit the Ark fortress, the home of the rulers of Bukhara for a millennium. Now it is a museum displaying all kinds of artifacts. We will walk through the surviving Jewish part of the old city, then stroll around the ancient domes which have interesting shops featuring new and old pieces of art, from hand-made shoes to local-style ceramics, and traditional metallic embroidery still being done in small madrasas. Our next stop will be the forty-eight-meter-high Kalon minaret, one of the defining symbols of Bukhara and then the Miri Arab Madrasa, the most prestigious educational establishment in Bukhara for centuries which is still active. We will visit the early Sogdian-influenced Ismael Samani Mausoleum, the oldest and the best preserved and most breathtakingly original building in Bukhara. The perfect brick cube was built at the beginning of the tenth century. Ismael Samani was the founder of the Samanid Dynasty in Bukhara in 875 CE. His tomb is one of Uzbekistan’s architectural highlights, built in basket-weave brickwork set in a series of complex patterns. If time permits, we will also visit the house museum of Faizullah Khodjaev who was a rich Bukhara merchant condemned to death by Stalin in 1938. He was the rebellious leader of Uzbeks in Soviet times. Overnight in Bukhara.

Day 11 – Drive to Samarkand via Shakhrisabz
This morning, we will have an early drive to Shahri Sebz (165 mi.). Shahri Sebz (Green Town) is the home town of Central Asia’s foremost conqueror, Tamerlane. After lunch, we will first visit Aq-Sarai, the Summer Palace of Tamerlane. After capturing Kunya Urgench in 1379, Tamerlane dispatched its craftsmen to his home town to build his greatest palace, Aq-Sarai (the White Palace). With its 66-meter-high towers, flanking a portal arch 40 meters high and 21 meters wide, Aq-Sarai was one of the most stunning architectural structures of its period. Today, the monumental piers that support the masonry portal arch remain and are definitely one of the highlights of Shahri Sabz. We will also visit the ladies who embroider skullcaps in cross stitch in the Iroqi style. Here, we will also see Suzane embroidery in the courtyard of Gok Gumbaz Mosque which was built by Tamerlane’s grandson, Ulug Beg, near Jumi mosque. Later, we will drive to Samarkand, (55 mi.), check into our hotel and overnight in Samarkand.

Day 12 – Highlights of Samarkand
Our entire day will be spent visiting the incomparable Registan Square. Our first visit will be to the Shir Dor Madrasa. Shir Dor (lion-bearing) Madrasa was commissioned by the Governor Yalangtush Bahadur between 1619-36. The striped beasts decorating the spandrels resemble tigers, and from their backs rise ray-fringed suns with human faces. It is believed that the powerful lion-tiger is perhaps Yalangtush himself, or perhaps the animal-sun illustrates the tenacity of pre-Islamic Zoroastrian solar symbolism. Next, we will visit Ulug Beg Madrasa. Built in the 15th century, this madrasa once housed more than 100 students. Ulug Beg’s legacy is primarily educational, consisting of more than just his monumental mosques and mausoleums. His madrasa in Samarkand is the largest and most architecturally significant of the three madrassas Ulug Beg commissioned in Uzbekistan. Our last visit in Registan will be to the Tillya Kari Madrasa. Tillya Kari (gold-covered) Madrasa was also commissioned by Yalangtush Bahadur in the 17th century, and built originally as a theological seminary with smaller corner turrets rather than minarets. The mosaic feast here is absolutely lavish with its sprightly solar symbols and interlacing floral motifs. Sha-i Zinda, the holiest site in Samarkand, is the imperial necropolis filled with mausoleums. We will visit Gur Emir, Amir Timur’s Mausoleum, Bibi Khanum Mosque which is famous for the lectern which used to hold the Holy Koran of Caliph Osman, and stroll through the local market around it. Overnight in Samarkand.

Day 13 – More Samarkand visits
Today, our tour of the Afrosiab Archaeology Museum will include a walk to the nearby archaeological site and the local historical museum. It has been proven that the first Afrosiab settlement was a town that dates back to 600 BCE. Afrosiab is the name of the mythological king of Turan who is a heroic character in the poem “Shakh-name” by the great Persian poet Firdawsi. Afrosiab consists of a great number of lifeless hillocks on the north side of Samarkand. Archaeological excavations of Afrosiab began after Central Asia had been annexed to Russia at the end of the 19th century and are still going on. The museum of Afrosiab which was founded to preserve and display artifacts taken from the excavations, today illustrates for us the different layers of civilization found at Afrosiab. We will also explore the Observatory of the 15th century astronomer, Ulug Beg, with its underground section of a vast meridian vault. He also developed the largest 90-degree quadrant the world had ever seen, although it is called a sextant since it encompassed only 60 degrees. We then drive to a nearby village to see the traditional process of making paper from mulberry bark. Overnight in Samarkand.

Day 14 – Drive to Tashkent (330 KM)
After breakfast we will drive to Tashkent 4 hrs. Upon arrival have lunch, check into our hotel. Free time in the afternoon. Overnight at hotel.

Day 15 – Drive to Tashkent
Early in the morning transfer to the airport for your departure flight.