3 days in Tashkent
A three day Tashkent route that spends its days on bazaars, metro halls and food rather than hunting monuments that are better elsewhere.
Last updated . Transport access rules, ticket prices, opening times and booking windows change, and several of the facts on this page are recent enough that they changed once already. Recheck the official sources below before travelling.
Book the trip
Start with Tashkent, dates and travellers
Compare the travel services first, then use the itinerary below to plan each day.
- Flights
Choose your airports, travel dates and passenger count.
Search flights - Hotels
Search stays near the places in this route.
Search Booking.com - Activities
Check tours and tickets for the stops you want to keep.
Find activities
You book each service directly with its supplier. These separate bookings do not form a RoamWeek package.
Tashkent is where an Uzbekistan trip starts and ends, and the common mistake is spending its days looking for the Silk Road. That is in Samarkand, Bukhara and Khiva, and you will see a great deal of it. What Tashkent has instead is bazaars, a metro built as a series of underground halls, and the widest and best food in the country.
How many days do you need in Tashkent?
3 days, usually split as 2 at the start and 1 at the end, because the international flights land and leave here.
Travellers who gave it a day and a half did not feel short changed. Four is where people start running out of things they actually want to do, and a local will tell you the same.
When should you book the train to Samarkand?
The day your dates are fixed. The high speed Afrosiyob trains sell out weeks ahead, and the booking window opens roughly 1 month before departure.
Buy direct from Uzbekistan Railways. Travellers who leave it until they arrive routinely end up flying instead, at several times the fare, or riding a slow train that takes hours longer with no air conditioning.
Is the Tashkent metro worth riding just to look at it?
Yes. The fare is the same for any distance, so 1 journey covers a loop of the most decorated stations.
You tap a bank card at the gate rather than buying a token. The stations on the two oldest lines are the reason the metro appears on itineraries at all.
Can you walk around Tashkent?
Not really. The city is far larger than its centre suggests, and in the 3 hottest months you are limited to early mornings and evenings outdoors.
Yandex Go is the taxi app and fares are very low. Locals are blunt about it: walking around at midday in July and August is not a plan.
The plan at a glance
- Day
- 1
- Where
- Chorsu and the old city
- What needs booking
- Nothing fixed
- Day
- 2
- Where
- The metro and the modern centre
- What needs booking
- Centre of Islamic Civilisation entry
- Day
- 3
- Where
- Plov at noon, then onward
- What needs booking
- The train west, bought weeks earlier
| Day | Where | What needs booking |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Chorsu and the old city | Nothing fixed |
| 2 | The metro and the modern centre | Centre of Islamic Civilisation entry |
| 3 | Plov at noon, then onward | The train west, bought weeks earlier |
The route at a glance
4 mapped stops · 3 days
Live route map
OpenStreetMap tiles
Loading the OpenStreetMap map.
Route stops
Follow the numbered order through each day.
Day 1: Chorsu and the old city
- 1Chorsu Bazaar · about 2 hours
- ·Kukeldash Madrasah · about 45 minutes
- 2Khast Imam complex · about 2 hours
Day 2: The metro and the modern centre
- ·A loop of the metro stations · about 2 hours
- 3Independence Square · about an hour
- 4Amir Timur Square · about an hour
- ·Centre of Islamic Civilisation · about 2 hours
Day 3: Plov at noon, then onward
- ·Tashkent Railway Museum · about 90 minutes
- ·A plov centre · about an hour
Day 1: Chorsu and the old city
The market in the morning while it is still trading, and the Khast Imam complex late, once the heat has broken.
- On foot
- About 3 km on foot, with a taxi between the two areas
Morning
Chorsu Bazaarabout 2 hours
The domed central market and the best single hour in Tashkent. Go early. The dome has more than one entrance and they are not equivalent: one side is the meat hall.
Kukeldash Madrasahabout 45 minutes
Directly beside the bazaar, which is the only reason it is here. Fifteen minutes of looking, not an hour of study.
Late afternoon
Khast Imam complexabout 2 hours
The religious centre of the old city, largely rebuilt within the last few years, and the one place in Tashkent that genuinely rewards being seen at sunset rather than at noon.
Day 2: The metro and the modern centre
Treat the metro as the attraction rather than the transport, and put the one ticketed interior in the afternoon.
- On foot
- About 4 km on foot, and several metro rides
- Book before you go
- Entry to the Centre of Islamic Civilisation, which limits numbers
Morning
A loop of the metro stationsabout 2 hours
Ride the two oldest lines and get out at the decorated stations. One fare covers any distance, so the cost of doing this properly is a single ticket.
Independence Squareabout an hour
The civic centre of the modern city and a short walk from the metro. More useful as a sense of scale than as a sight.
Afternoon
Amir Timur Squareabout an hour
The green heart of the centre, ringed by the buildings that define the city's Soviet and post Soviet layers. Good for the walk between rather than a stop in itself.
Centre of Islamic Civilisationabout 2 hoursbook ahead
The large new museum beside the Khast Imam complex, open to foreign visitors and operating with capacity limits that mean slots do run out. Book before the day.
Day 3: Plov at noon, then onward
A short final day built around one meal that has to happen before the afternoon.
- On foot
- About 2 km on foot
- Book before you go
- Your onward train or flight, bought weeks earlier
Morning
Tashkent Railway Museumabout 90 minutes
An open air collection of Soviet locomotives beside the main station, and a genuinely good hour if you are catching a train anyway.
Midday
A plov centreabout an hour
Plov centres cook a fixed quantity each morning and are finished by early afternoon, which is why this is lunch and cannot be dinner. Regulars are clear that these beat restaurant plov by a wide margin.
Tashkent in outline
Bazaars, vaults and the road west
Tashkent is the arrival and the eating rather than the monuments, and the trains out of it are what to book first.
Illustrations generated with FLUX for RoamWeek, August 2026. Stylised artwork rather than photographs of the places named.
One honest note on the list below. RoamWeek has no booking partner for Uzbek rail, so the train is not among these options and we would rather say so than send you somewhere worse: buy it from Uzbekistan Railways directly, at the official site listed in the sources. Read how RoamWeek chooses and orders suggestions.
Book the separate parts
Book the parts that need booking
Flights, a bed and the days you would rather not assemble yourself. The train is deliberately absent for the reason given above.
You book each service directly with its supplier. These separate bookings do not form a RoamWeek package.
- Flights
Tashkent is where nearly every Uzbekistan trip has to begin and end, so the arrival and departure dates here set the shape of everything in between.
Search on Aviasales
- Stays
The city is too spread out to walk and the metro is both the cheapest way across it and one of the things worth seeing, so proximity to a station does double duty.
Search on Booking.com
- Activities
The food is the strongest thing this city has and it is the hardest part to find alone with no Uzbek, which is exactly the case where a guided half day earns its price.
Search on GetYourGuide
What is worth the time, and what is not
Worth your time
- The metro as a sight in its own right. One flat fare buys a loop of the decorated stations, which makes it the cheapest genuinely memorable thing in the city.
- Khast Imam late in the day. It is the one complex here that changes completely with the light, and the heat has usually broken by then.
- Buying the Afrosiyob ticket early. It is the single decision that determines whether the rest of your Uzbekistan trip works as planned or gets rebuilt around flights.
Skip it
- Hunting madrasahs in Tashkent. You will see far better in Samarkand, Bukhara and Khiva, and several travellers report deliberately skipping them here with no regret.
- Walking the centre at midday in summer. Locals do not do it, the distances are longer than they look, and taxis cost very little.
- A fourth day. A resident asked what to see with four days in Tashkent could name two places. Take the extra day west instead.
Why this order
The shape follows the flights rather than the map. Two days at the front and one at the back is what an Uzbekistan trip naturally produces, and building the itinerary that way means the last day can be short and near a station without feeling truncated. Within the days, the ordering is about heat and about trading hours: the bazaar in the morning because that is when it is a market rather than a display, Khast Imam late because the light does the work, and plov at noon because the places that make it properly have sold out by two.
Read next
- 4 days in Almaty
The usual Central Asia pairing, and a four hour flight or a long train away.
- 2 days in Astana
Short, and easy to bolt onto a Tashkent trip through Kazakhstan.
What we checked
- Uzbekistan Travel, official Tashkent city guide read 29 August 2026
- Uzbekistan Railways read 29 August 2026
- Uzbekistan Railways, official ticket booking read 29 August 2026
Why this page exists. This is the only RoamWeek route that tells you to buy the Afrosiyob train ticket before the flight, because in Uzbekistan the trains west sell out before the hotels do.