Skiing at Amirsoy and Chimgan
Uzbekistan has real skiing two hours from Tashkent. Amirsoy and Chimgan compared, the season, lift prices, rental, and how to get there.
Two hours from Tashkent there is a gondola running to 2,290 metres, eleven pistes, and a lift pass that costs less than a restaurant meal in most European resorts. Nobody comes to Uzbekistan to ski, which is precisely why the mountains behind the capital are worth a day in winter.
Amirsoy
The modern resort, opened in recent years and the one to go to if you only pick one.
Around 15.7 kilometres of pistes across eleven runs, six lifts including a gondola topping out near 2,290 metres, chalets, restaurants and a spa. It's built to an international standard in a way nothing else in the country is, and it runs as an all-season resort rather than just a winter one (last checked: September 2026).
Prices are the headline. Lift passes here cost a fraction of what comparable access costs in the Alps, children under seven ski free, and the system runs on a reusable electronic card. One reported example: a family of five with a mix of adult and children's passes plus a gondola ride came to around 415,000 so'm.
The official site is amirsoy.com and it publishes current prices, which is the only figure worth relying on.
Chimgan and Beldersay
The older resorts, and a different proposition.
Chimgan has been the Tashkent weekend mountain since Soviet times, with a chairlift, a village, and a long-standing local following. Beldersay sits nearby with a longer, steeper run. Both are cheaper and rougher than Amirsoy, with older infrastructure and a good deal more character.
There have been plans discussed for linking Amirsoy with Beldersay and Chimgan into a single area. Treat that as ambition rather than timetable.
Our Chimgan and Charvak day trip guide covers the area outside the ski season, which is when most visitors see it.
Season and conditions
Broadly December to March, with the reliable window in January and February. This is a continental range with cold, dry winters, so the snow is generally good and the cover at the top more dependable than at the base.
Set expectations sensibly. This is not the Alps or the Caucasus: the vertical is modest, the pisted area is small by European standards, and a strong skier will have covered everything by lunchtime on day two. What it is, is genuinely good snow in genuinely beautiful mountains with almost nobody on it, ninety minutes from a capital city.
Getting there
Around 65 kilometres from Tashkent in a straight line, roughly two hours by road through the Ugam-Chatkal country.
A taxi for the day is the simplest approach. Negotiate a return with waiting time rather than hoping to find a car back, which is the standard mistake. Shared transport runs from Tashkent in season, and the hotels at Amirsoy can arrange transfers for guests.
If you're staying in the capital, this works comfortably as a day trip with an early start. If you'd rather not do four hours of driving in a day, the chalets at the resort solve that.
Rental and gear
Skis, boards, boots and helmets are all rentable on site, and lessons are available. Standards are reasonable rather than excellent, and the range of sizes is narrower than at a large European resort.
Bring your own gloves, goggles and base layers. Those are the things people assume they can rent and can't always, and a Central Asian winter at 2,000 metres is properly cold. Our winter guide covers what the season is like at ground level.
The other winter mountain: Zaamin
South of Jizzakh, in the juniper forests of the Turkestan range, Zaamin has a small ski area and a set of sanatoria that Uzbeks have been visiting since Soviet times for the mountain air.
It is a long way from Tashkent and does not compete with Amirsoy for facilities. What it has is altitude, forest and quiet, and if you are already travelling between Samarkand and the south it is far more convenient than doubling back to the capital. Our guide to Zaamin National Park covers the wider area.
Worth knowing mainly because it shows the pattern: Uzbekistan’s mountains sit in a ring around the edges of the country, and almost every one of them has a modest ski operation attached that nobody outside the country has heard of.
Who this is actually for
Three groups, and if you're not in one of them, skip it.
Anyone spending a winter month in Tashkent for work, for whom a Saturday on snow is worth more than another museum. Families, because the cost of a ski day here is trivially low and the resort is set up for children. And skiers who collect countries, for whom the point is the passport stamp rather than the terrain.
If you have two weeks and you're doing the Silk Road cities, this is a day you don't have. Samarkand, Bukhara and Khiva in winter are the real prize.
The summer case
Amirsoy runs year-round, and a gondola ride to 2,290 metres in August is a more useful thing for most travellers than the skiing is.
Tashkent in high summer is punishing, the mountains are ten degrees cooler, and the ride up takes an hour of your day. That plus the reservoir at Charvak makes an excellent escape from the heat. See our guide to summer in Uzbekistan for how to schedule around it, and hiking in Uzbekistan for what's walkable up there.
Uzbekistan's national tourism portal keeps a page on the Amirsoy resort with official details.
Featured image: Iplossusvulpes19 (CC BY-SA 4.0) via Wikimedia Commons.