Namangan Travel Guide
The Fergana Valley's largest city: the Mullah Kyrgyz madrasah, Babur park, the flower festival, and how to use Namangan as a base for Chust and Chartak.
Namangan is the third or fourth largest city in Uzbekistan depending on the year's figures, the biggest in the Fergana Valley, and almost entirely absent from tourist itineraries. There is no Registan here, and that is the point.
What it offers is an ordinary working Uzbek city with good bazaars, a strong craft tradition in the towns around it, and a reputation, even among Uzbeks, for flowers and for religious conservatism in roughly equal measure.
What to see in the city
The Mullah Kyrgyz madrasah is the main monument, built around 1910 by a local master known as Usto Kyrgyz. It is unusual in plan, an irregular polygon fitted to an awkward plot rather than the standard rectangle, and it carries good tilework and carved wood. It has been used as a museum and a craft centre at various times, so check whether the interior is open when you arrive.
Babur park is the centre of the city's public life: a large green space on the site of the old governor's gardens, named for Babur, who was born in Andijan nearby and founded the Mughal empire. Come in the evening, when families walk, the fountains run and the teahouses fill.
The regional museum, near the park, covers the valley's history from antiquity through the khanates to the Soviet period. Small, cheap, and useful if you are travelling the valley properly.
The bazaars are the real attraction. The main market and the daily bazaar around the madrasah are where you see the valley's agriculture: apricots, cherries, melons, grapes, walnuts, and in autumn the quince and pomegranate that the region is known for.
The flower city
Namangan's nickname in Uzbekistan is the city of flowers, and this is not a tourist-board invention. Commercial flower growing has been a local industry for generations, and the annual flower festival in late spring turns the parks into competitive displays.
If you happen to be in the valley in May, it is worth timing a day around. Outside the festival, the legacy is visible anyway in the number of nurseries on the outskirts and the flower sellers in the centre.
Using Namangan as a base
The best reason to stay here is what is within an hour's drive.
- Chust, 40 minutes west, is where the doppi is made, the black-and-white embroidered skullcap that Uzbek men wear. It is also a knife-making town: Chust blades, with their distinctive handles, are a standard Uzbek gift. Workshops will let you watch.
- Chartak, northeast, is a small spa town built around mineral springs, with sanatoria that are a very particular post-Soviet experience.
- Kasansay and the hills towards the Kyrgyz border give you reservoirs, orchards and mountain views within an hour.
- Andijan is about two hours southeast; our Andijan guide covers Babur's birthplace.
Shared taxis to all of these leave from the city's stands when full, cost very little, and are the normal way people travel here.
A little history
Namangan grew in the 17th century after a nearby settlement, Akhsikent, was ruined by an earthquake and its people moved here. Akhsikent had been a serious place: a walled city on the Syr Darya, known in the medieval period for the steel it produced, and the childhood home of Babur's family. Its mounds can still be visited, about 25 kilometres away, though there is little standing.
Through the 18th and 19th centuries Namangan belonged to the Khanate of Kokand, the valley's own state, and it prospered on cotton, silk and the trade routes into the Kyrgyz highlands. The Russians took it in the 1870s, laid out a new quarter beside the old one, as they did across the region, and turned the valley into a cotton supply.
The 20th century added canals, factories and apartment blocks. The 1990s gave the city a reputation for religious politics that outlived the events themselves, and it is worth saying plainly that travellers report Namangan as safe, hospitable and entirely unremarkable in that respect today.
What survives of the older city is mostly the shape of it: the mahalla quarters, the bazaar in the middle, the madrasah beside it, and the enormous appetite for gardens that gave the city its nickname.
Practicalities
- Getting there: shared taxi from Tashkent over the Kamchik pass, four to five hours. There are also flights, and trains via the tunnel line to Andijan and Fergana with connections onward.
- Staying: a handful of business hotels and a growing number of small guesthouses. Nothing luxurious; everything cheap by Uzbek standards.
- Eating: the valley's plov is distinct and worth ordering; our plov guide explains the regional differences. Street food around the bazaar is excellent and cheap.
- Language: less English than Tashkent or Samarkand. A translation app earns its keep here.
- Dress: this is a conservative city. Modest clothing avoids attention, particularly for women.
How it fits a valley trip
Most travellers do the Fergana Valley in two or three days from Tashkent and base themselves in Fergana city or Margilan, which are closer together and better set up for visitors. Namangan sits on the northern side of the valley and is usually skipped.
The case for including it is a day, not three. Arrive from Tashkent over the pass, spend an afternoon in the bazaar and the park, take a morning in Chust for knives and caps, then continue south to Margilan for silk and Rishtan for ceramics. That gives you the craft towns in a logical line rather than doubling back.
Our Fergana Valley guide sets out the full route and the transport between the towns. If you have only two days for the valley, skip Namangan and use Fergana city instead.
A final note on expectations. Nobody comes here for monuments, and anyone who does will be disappointed within an hour. What Namangan gives you is the valley as it actually is: agricultural, busy, conservative, generous with food, and almost entirely untouched by tourism. Whether that is worth a day of your trip is a question about what you travel for.
Featured image: Axadjon1 (CC BY 4.0) via Wikimedia Commons.