Treasures of Uzbekistan

Start in the old city at the Hazrati Imam complex — the Barak Khan madrasah, the Kaffal Shashi mausoleum and the Muyi Muborak library, which holds the Uthman Quran, one of the oldest copies in the world. Then Chorsu bazaar under its blue dome, where the spice rows and the bread ovens are worth the hour. In the afternoon, modern Tashkent: the Navoi opera house, Amir Timur square, Independence square and a ride through the metro, whose stations were built as underground galleries and were forbidden to photograph until 2018.

Morning transfer to Samarkand — by road across the Jizzakh steppe, or on the fast train if the schedule suits. Samarkand does not ease you in. Gur-e-Amir first, the ribbed turquoise dome over Tamerlane’s tomb, then Registan square — three madrasahs facing each other across a stone floor, built four centuries apart and still in conversation. Bibi-Khanym mosque was the largest in the Islamic world when it went up and collapsed under its own ambition within decades. The day ends at Shah-i-Zinda, a narrow lane of tiled mausoleums that pilgrims climb barefoot.

Siab bazaar first, while the flatbread is still coming out of the tandirs and the dried-fruit sellers want you to taste everything. Then Ulugh Beg’s observatory, where a 48-metre marble arc set into the hillside let a fifteenth-century astronomer catalogue 1,018 stars. Afterwards the Afrosiab museum, built over the pre-Islamic city, and the mausoleum of the prophet Daniel, revered by Jews, Christians and Muslims alike.

Drive west with a stop in Gijduvan at the Narzullaev ceramics house-museum, then on to Bukhara. Check in and walk out into the old town — Lyabi-Hauz is five minutes from most of our hotels.

Bukhara is walkable in a way Samarkand is not — the old town is one continuous monument. The Ark citadel, lived in for fifteen centuries; Bolo Hauz mosque with its twenty painted columns; the Poi-Kalon ensemble, where the 47-metre minaret was left standing by Genghis Khan when he levelled everything around it. Then the Samanid mausoleum, the oldest brickwork in Central Asia, Chashma Ayub, and the trading domes where silk and gold have been sold on the same corners since the sixteenth century.

The Naqshbandi shrine, the Chor Bakr necropolis and Sitorai Mokhi Khosa palace in the morning, then the afternoon train back to Tashkent.

Breakfast, then a transfer to the international airport for your onward flight.