Uzbekistan 8-Day Itinerary: Tashkent, Samarkand, Bukhara and Khiva

The equestrian statue of Timur, put up in 1994 at the centre of the park, replaced first a monument to Karl Marx and later one to Stalin, a neat summary of the square's changes of regime through the 20th century. Hotel Uzbekistan, a Soviet building shaped like an open book, is the visual landmark across the street.

Half an hour is enough to walk the garden and look at the clock tower next to it, a gentle first stop after checking in.

A ten-minute walk away, this is Uzbekistan's largest square, home to the Arch of Good Intentions and the Motherland statue honouring Uzbek soldiers of the Second World War. The fountains light up at night, when the square gets busiest with local families out for a stroll.

Allow an hour, ideally in the late afternoon to catch the light changing.

The market sits inside a turquoise dome that has become a landmark of the old town, with three floors of meat, spices, dried fruit and textiles. Go before 10am, while the crowd is still more local than tourist.

Try the hot samsa sold from the tandoor stalls near the east entrance. Ninety minutes is enough to work through the floors and haggle at the dried fruit stalls.

A ten-minute walk from Chorsu, this 16th century group of mosques and madrasahs holds, in its library museum, the Uthman Quran, one of the oldest surviving copies in the world, with stains attributed to the caliph assassinated in 656.

Entry costs about $3, and the complex still works as an active mosque, so shoulders and knees need covering. Seventy-five minutes covers the main courtyard and the museum.

The Afrosiyob high-speed train leaves Tashkent's central station around 8am and reaches Samarkand in 2h15, the fastest leg of the whole trip. A ten-minute walk from the hotel, Gur-e-Amir is the final resting place of Tamerlane and his descendants, including his grandson Ulugbek.

The 34-metre ribbed turquoise dome is said to have inspired the design of the Taj Mahal, built by a great-grandson of Timur married to a Timurid princess. Forty-five minutes covers the gold-leaf interior.

A ten-minute walk from Gur-e-Amir, the Registan brings together three madrasahs, Ulugbek, Sher-Dor and Tilya-Kori, built between the 15th and 17th centuries and covered in blue and turquoise mosaic.

Entry runs about 65,000 som ($5), and it is worth returning at night, when the complex is lit up from around 8pm. Allow at least ninety minutes.

A fifteen-minute walk from Gur-e-Amir, it was built between 1399 and 1404 with loot from Timur's campaign in India, and was, at the time, the largest mosque in the Islamic world.

The inner courtyard holds a huge stone Quran stand. Half an hour is enough for the courtyard.

Right next to the mosque, this is the most photographed market in the country, known for round, stamped Uzbek naan sold stacked at the entrance stalls. Sunday mornings are the busiest.

Forty minutes is enough for a loop and to try the region's dried fruit and watermelon.

A fifteen-minute walk from the bazaar, this is a corridor of more than twenty mausoleums built between the 11th and 19th centuries, each with a different mosaic pattern. The name means 'living king' and refers to Qusam ibn Abbas, a cousin of the Prophet Muhammad, whom local tradition holds never died.

An hour is the right amount of time to walk the staircase slowly.

A twenty-minute drive from the centre, this was built in 1420 by Timur's grandson Ulugbek, himself an astronomer who calculated the length of the year to within a minute of today's accepted value.

Only the half-buried base of the giant sextant survives, but the museum next door explains the original 40-metre-radius instrument. Forty-five minutes covers the site.

The Afrosiyob train from Samarkand to Bukhara takes about 1h20 and usually leaves early afternoon. The Ark, home to the emirs of Bukhara for over a thousand years until 1920, is a five-minute walk from the old town and the natural first stop after arriving.

Much of the interior was destroyed by Soviet bombardment in 1920, but the entrance gate, flanked by two towers, still gives a sense of scale. An hour covers the museum inside the walls.

Right across from the Ark, this 1712 mosque is known for a portico held up by twenty carved wooden columns, reflected in the pool in front of it, which earned it the nickname 'mosque of forty columns'.

Half an hour is enough, and it is a good spot to sit in the shade after the sun of the fortress.

A ten-minute walk from the Ark, the Kalyan minaret stands 47 metres tall and was built in 1127, tall enough to have doubled as an execution tower and to have been spared by Genghis Khan in 1220, who was reportedly struck by its height.

The mosque next to it holds up to 12,000 worshippers, and the Mir-i-Arab madrasah across the square still works as an active Islamic school. Ninety minutes covers the whole complex.

Built between the 16th and 17th centuries, the 42 by 36 metre pool is ringed by centuries-old mulberry trees and has become Bukhara's social hub, with tea tables and restaurants along its edges.

Half an hour in the morning is enough, and it is worth coming back for dinner.

A five-minute walk from Lyab-i Hauz, this 16th-century brick dome was built over the crossing of the caravan routes and once housed the city's jewellers, which is where the name comes from.

Today it works as a small market for handicrafts and carpets. Twenty minutes is enough to walk through and browse the stalls.

A hundred metres from Toki Zargaron, this 12th-century mosque was excavated five metres below today's street level, proof of how many layers the city has built up over itself.

The south facade, with its original geometric carving, is one of Bukhara's rare pre-Mongol survivals. Forty minutes covers the interior, now a carpet museum.

A fifteen-minute walk away, this small 1807 madrasah is known for the four blue-domed minarets at each corner of its roof, no two alike in mosaic pattern.

Tucked into a residential street, it is one of the most photographed and least obvious sights to find in the city. Twenty minutes is enough, including the climb to the small rooftop terrace.

The direct train between Bukhara and Khiva takes about 6h30 and leaves around midday, the only link that avoids changing vehicles; the alternative is flying into Urgench, a 35-minute drive from Khiva.

Walk through the west gate of Itchan Kala, the walled city, and the turquoise and white Kalta Minor minaret is the first thing you see. It was left unfinished in 1855, at 29 metres instead of the planned 70, after the emir who commissioned it died. Twenty minutes is enough from the outside, since climbing it is not possible.

Across the same square, this was the residence and fortress of Khiva's khans from the 17th century, with a throne room, a tiled summer mosque and a platform once used to watch for caravans in the desert.

Sunset from the top of the wall is one of the best in the city. Forty-five minutes covers the interior.

Khiva's most unusual mosque has no dome and no courtyard: it is a single hall held up by 213 carved wooden columns, some dating from the 10th century and reused from earlier buildings, with small skylights letting light in.

The main door, over 700 years old, keeps its original carving. Half an hour is enough to walk among the columns in silence.

Built in 1910, at 57 metres, it is the newest and tallest monument in Itchan Kala, with bands of turquoise, blue and white tile that narrow as they climb.

You can climb the 118 internal steps for an extra fee of about $2, with a view over the walled city and the desert beyond. Forty minutes, more if you climb.

A ten-minute walk away, this is the tomb of the 14th-century poet, wrestler and leather tanner who became the city's patron saint, which makes it the most visited mausoleum among locals, not just tourists.

The interior tiles, in a darker blue than the rest of Khiva, were redone in the 19th century. Thirty minutes is enough, and it usually has shorter queues than the other monuments.