Tashkent
You can be here in October for about €602, 3 days, direct.
Why now
Prime time in October: 22°C days, fares below average.
The season is spring and autumn, which is also when the Silk Road cities are fullest and the fast trains sell out days or weeks ahead, so book seats before hotels. Summer heat empties the Registan at noon and winter is cold, cheap and almost empty.
Best months here: May, September, October. Daytime highs, sea temperature and rainy days from three years of Open-Meteo reanalysis; a rainy day is one with at least 1 mm of rain, which is the WMO threshold and not the same as "it drizzled".
The place
Tashkent is a Soviet city rebuilt after the 1966 earthquake, all wide avenues, plane trees, marble metro stations and a mud-brick old quarter that survived around the bazaar. It is the door to the Silk Road rather than the destination: Samarkand, Bukhara and Khiva are a fast train or a night train away. It suits people who like their history in tile and their evenings in a teahouse.
What you can do
- 01Eat plov at Besh Qozon, the plov centre by the TV tower, at noon; it is lunch only and gone by two.
- 02Ride the metro for its stations: Kosmonavtlar, Alisher Navoi and Pakhtakor, legal to photograph only since 2018.
- 03See the Uthman Quran at the Khast Imam complex, then walk down to Chorsu Bazaar for non bread and dried apricots.
- 04Take the Afrosiyob train to Samarkand, two hours, and see the Registan at dusk and Shah-i-Zinda early the next morning.
- 05Go on to Bukhara, under two hours beyond Samarkand by train, where the old town is still lived in and walkable.
Where to stay · neighbourhoods
For a first visit stay near Amir Timur Square or in the quieter streets of Yakkasaray, both a short taxi from anywhere; the old city has almost no hotels. Along the Silk Road, sleep near the Registan in Samarkand, inside the old town in Bukhara and within the walls of Ichan Kala in Khiva.
Unusual things
- ◦The Museum of Applied Arts, in the house of the Tsarist diplomat Alexander Polovtsev, decorated by Uzbek craftsmen in carved plaster and painted ceilings.
- ◦Yangiabad flea market on weekend mornings: Soviet medals, cameras, samovars and old suzani among the household junk.
- ◦The Savitsky Museum in Nukus, a day's travel west, a collection of banned Soviet avant-garde painting kept safe in the Karakalpak desert.
Day trips
Flight options
Routes come from OpenFlights (historical) and a 2026 route reference compiled from public timetables. Durations are the published schedule where we have it, otherwise a block-time model fitted on measured nonstop flights. Verify schedules with the airline before booking.
Entry requirements · IT passport
Source: passport-index-data, March 2026 (coarse indicator), covering 258 of our 268 destinations for each of 199 passports. Always confirm with the destination's official site.
Airports
Distances are centre to airport derived · nonstop counts are our route reference for 2026, not every flight that exists.
Local transport
- Airport to city
- Taxi, 20 min, ~€3; high-speed train to Samarkand
- Car needed?
- No — walkable or good public transport
- Getting around
- Yandex Go taxis are cheap and everywhere, the metro covers the centre until midnight, and the airport is 20 minutes from Amir Timur Square. The Afrosiyob fast trains link Tashkent, Samarkand and Bukhara; slower night trains reach Khiva and the Fergana Valley.
- Clock
- 4 hours behind Tokyo (Asia/Tashkent) derived
- Daylight
- 11.2 hours of daylight in October · sunrise 06:33, sunset 17:44 derived
- Currency
- UZS
Good to know
Hotels register foreign guests and hand over slips that can be asked for on departure, so keep them; summer heat above 40°C at unshaded sites is a real hazard in the Silk Road cities.
Alternatives at a similar price
Whole trip per person for 3 days from Tokyo in October, then the flight time; estimates, like the total above.
Shanghai
Kyoto
Seoul
Guangzhou
Beijing
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