Uzbekistan by Train Only: A No-Car Itinerary
A 14-day Uzbekistan by train only route: Fergana, the Termez sleeper, Samarkand, Bukhara and Khiva on rails, plus what drops out and the Nukus problem.
Nukus is the city that breaks a train-only trip through Uzbekistan. There's no direct train to it from Khiva, the connection through Urgench arrives late in the evening, and the only through train back to Tashkent runs on roughly two days a week and takes somewhere between 17 and 22 hours, depending on which timetable listing you believe (last checked: September 2026). Everything else in the country, including the far south and the Fergana Valley, works surprisingly well on rails. So this itinerary is a 14-day core that never needs a hired car, plus an honest three-day Nukus extension.
The rules we set: trains between cities, and only walking, metro, city buses or the occasional app taxi inside them. No drivers for the day, no shared taxis across the desert. Where the rule costs you something, we say what.
What drops out when you won't get in a car
Four places people expect to see don't fit a rail-only plan, or fit only on a timetable you can't control.
- Shakhrisabz. Technically reachable. A fast train runs from Tashkent to Kitab station, the railhead for Shakhrisabz, but third-party listings show it only once a week, at about 4 h 40 for the 622 km (last checked: September 2026). Unless it lines up with your dates both ways, you're left with the 90 km taxi over the pass from Samarkand, which breaks the rule.
- The Nuratau villages and the Aydarkul yurt camps. No station anywhere near. Out.
- Moynaq and the ship cemetery. No passenger rail north of Nukus to the old port. The 9am public bus from Nukus is the only non-car way in, and it gives you around three hours on the ground.
- Rishtan and Chust. The Fergana craft towns sit off the line. You'll see Margilan's silk and Kokand's palace; the potters need a road trip.
What you keep: Tashkent, Margilan, Kokand, Termez, Samarkand, Bukhara and Khiva, all by train.
The legs, and the days they run
Uzbek rail is mostly daily. The exceptions shape this route, so the table flags them.
| Day | Leg | Train | Time | Runs |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3 | Tashkent → Margilan | Andijan-bound service via the Kamchik tunnel | About 4–5 h | Several daily |
| 5 | Margilan → Kokand | Any westbound morning train | About 1 h | Several daily |
| 5 | Kokand → Tashkent | Express 729, 16:43 → 19:53 | 3 h 10 | Daily |
| 6–7 | Tashkent (South) → Termez | Overnight sleeper | About 14 h | Twice daily |
| 8–9 | Termez → Samarkand | Evening train via Karshi | About 9 h 15 | Daily |
| 11 | Samarkand → Bukhara | Afrosiyob or Sharq | Afrosiyob about 1 h 40 to 2 h; Sharq about 2 h 50 | Several daily |
| 13 | Bukhara → Khiva | Jaloliddin Manguberdi, 10:54 → 14:31 | 3 h 37 | Tue, Thu, Sat only |
| 14–15 | Khiva → Tashkent | Overnight sleeper | About 14–16 h | Daily |
Times are from Seat61, Kun.uz, Spot.uz and the timetables shown on booking aggregators (last checked: September 2026). Aggregators don't always agree with each other, and one popular Russian site lists Moscow time rather than Tashkent time, which puts every departure two hours early. Confirm each train on eticket.uzrailpass.uz, the official booking site (the old eticket.railway.uz redirects there), before you pay.
Why the whole plan hangs on a Saturday
One train dictates everything. The Jaloliddin Manguberdi high-speed service started in May 2026 and, according to Kun.uz, leaves Tashkent at 07:00 on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, reaching Khiva at 14:31. It comes back on Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays, leaving Khiva at 07:20. Seat61's Uzbekistan page has it calling at Bukhara at 10:54 westbound (last checked: September 2026).
The catch: because it runs west on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday and east the day after each, you can ride it both ways and spend one night in Khiva, or three or more depending on the day, but never exactly two. Two nights in Khiva means taking the overnight sleeper in one direction (what the berths, bedding and samovar are like is in our night-train guide).
We've pinned day 13 to a Saturday, so day 1 is a Monday. That Monday start also puts day 4 on a Thursday, one of the two days (with Sunday) that Kumtepa Bazaar outside Margilan trades.
Fare listings in September 2026 put the full Tashkent–Khiva run on this train at about 780,000 som in economy, with Bukhara–Khiva a fraction of that; check the live price on the booking site.
Days 1–5: Tashkent and the Fergana Valley
Days 1–2: Tashkent
This is the easiest city in the country to do without wheels. The metro reaches Chorsu Bazaar, the old city around Hazrati Imam and most of the Soviet-era centre, and a ride costs a few thousand som. Use day 2 to buy a SIM and check that eticket.uzrailpass.uz accepts your card (foreign cards go through Trainhub, so your statement shows TRAINHUB.IO).
Days 3–4: Margilan
The line into the valley doesn't climb the Kamchik pass; it goes under it, through the 19.2 km Qamchiq tunnel that opened in June 2016. From 10 September 2026 a new CRRC-built train runs Tashkent to Andijan, stopping at Angren, Kokand, Margilan and Pap, with Spot.uz putting the full trip at 4 hours 15 minutes.
Get off at Margilan. There's no useful station in Fergana city itself, so Margilan is both the silk town and your railhead, and the Yodgorlik silk factory is within reach on foot or by a short city-bus ride. Day 4, Thursday, starts at Kumtepa by 8am, before the ikat traders pack up. Our day-by-day plan for the valley has the workshops and entry fees.
Day 5: Kokand, then back to Tashkent
Take a morning train one stop west to Kokand. The Khudayar Khan palace (built 1871, finished around 1873) is a walk from the centre. Then board express 729, which in September 2026 left Kokand at 16:43 and reached Tashkent at 19:53 for about 213,000 som in its cheapest class. Sleep in Tashkent.
Days 6–8: the Termez sleeper and the long way to Samarkand
Is the south worth two nights of trains? For a rail purist, yes. Here the train is the obvious choice, because the alternative is 805 km of road.
Day 6 is slack. Then go to Tashkent South (Toshkent Janubiy, sometimes listed as Yuzhnyy), not the main station, because every Termez sleeper leaves from there. Departures currently sit at around 21:15 and 23:45, arriving about 14 hours later; fares run roughly $17–26 depending on berth (last checked: September 2026). Our comparison of the Termez train against the flight has the classes.
You arrive around 13:30 on day 7, in time for the archaeological museum. Day 8 morning is for the Kushan-era Buddhist sites at Fayaz Tepe and Kara Tepe, and this is where we bend the rule: they're outside town near the Afghan border, so a city taxi via Yandex Go is the reasonable exception. Carry your passport.
Then the awkward bit. The daily train north to Samarkand leaves Termez in the late afternoon and takes about 9 hours 15 minutes via Karshi, which lands you in Samarkand somewhere around 2 to 2:30am. Book a guesthouse that will let you in at that hour and pay for the night of day 8. It isn't elegant. It still beats going back through Tashkent.
Days 9–12: Samarkand and Bukhara
Day 9 starts late, obviously. The main sites sit in a rough line from the Registan to Shah-i-Zinda, so two days on foot is plenty, with a city bus for the Ulugh Beg observatory.
Day 11: Afrosiyob or the slower Sharq to Bukhara, about 1 h 40 to 2 h on the fast train (about 2 h 50 on the Sharq). Seat61 lists Tashkent–Samarkand at 311,000 som on Afrosiyob economy and 200,060 som on the Sharq (last checked: September 2026). One thing that trips people up: Bukhara's station is actually in Kagan, about 12 km from the old town. City minibuses run the route.
Bukhara is the most walkable of the four big cities. Day 12 covers the Ark, Po-i-Kalyan, the domes and the Samanid mausoleum on foot.
Days 13–14: Khiva, and home by sleeper
Saturday, 10:54: the Jaloliddin Manguberdi out of Bukhara, arriving at Khiva station at 14:31. Khiva got its own station in 2018, about half an hour on foot from the Ichan Qala walls.
You get Saturday afternoon and all of Sunday inside the walls. Sunday evening, take the overnight sleeper back to Tashkent; current listings show evening departures and a journey of roughly 14 to 16 hours, which puts you in the capital on Monday morning, day 15, in time for an afternoon flight home. The sleeper runs daily, so it's the safer exit.
Our take, which some will disagree with: if you're choosing where to sacrifice time, sacrifice a Samarkand day, not a Khiva one. Khiva is small enough that the second day is when you stop sightseeing and start noticing things.
The Nukus extension (add three days)
Can you reach Nukus and the Savitsky Museum without a car? Yes. Should you? Only if the rule matters more to you than a day.
Getting there means going back to Urgench first. You can take a train from Khiva, or ride the Urgench–Khiva trolleybus, Uzbekistan's last surviving trolleybus line (about 31 km, with new Yutong vehicles delivered from June 2026). From Urgench, a regional train runs to Nukus in about three and a half hours, but connections listed for September 2026 take between 5.5 and 9.5 hours door to door from Khiva, against about three hours by road. Road prices appear in the write-up of the Khiva–Nukus–Moynaq run.
Getting out is the real problem. The through train from Nukus to Tashkent (train 124 on current listings) appears on roughly two dates a week, takes around 17 hours on one aggregator and 22 on another, and a third lists a different, daily service. We couldn't reconcile them (last checked: September 2026). Plan around a two-day wait and check the real dates on eticket.uzrailpass.uz. Moynaq, as noted, is the bus or nothing.
Most purists give in here and fly. If you'd rather keep Nukus but lose the purity, our three-week route through the whole country ends exactly that way.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can you travel all of Uzbekistan by train?
Most of it. Tashkent, the Fergana Valley, Samarkand, Bukhara, Khiva and Termez are all on the network, with daily trains on nearly every leg. Shakhrisabz has only a weekly service to its own Shahrisabz station, Nukus has infrequent through trains, and the Nuratau villages, Aydarkul and Moynaq have no passenger rail at all, so they need a road trip or a bus.
How far ahead should I book Uzbek trains?
As early as the system lets you for the Jaloliddin Manguberdi and Afrosiyob legs. Seat61 reports tickets opening 60 days ahead, while other sources still quote 45, because the window has changed (last checked: September 2026). The Termez sleeper and Fergana trains rarely sell out outside holidays, but they're cheap, so booking early costs nothing.
Is there a train from Samarkand to Shakhrisabz?
Not in any useful sense. Listings show one fast train a week from Tashkent to Kitab, which serves Shakhrisabz, routed via Samarkand and Karshi. Because it runs once a week, a return by rail usually doesn't line up. The practical route is a 90 km taxi over the Takhtakaracha pass from Samarkand, about 1.5 to 2 hours.
Which Tashkent station do trains to Termez leave from?
Tashkent South (Toshkent Janubiy, also shown as Tashkent Yuzhnyy), not the main Tashkent station that handles Samarkand, Bukhara, Khiva and Fergana trains (the one with a yard of old steam locomotives beside it). They're across town from each other, so allow about an hour between them. Check the station name printed on your e-ticket before you leave your hotel.
What if the Jaloliddin Manguberdi is sold out?
Take the daily overnight sleeper to Khiva instead. It's slower, around 14 to 16 hours from Tashkent, and it calls at Bukhara overnight, so you can board there and wake up in Khorezm. Cancelled seats on the fast train also reappear on eticket.uzrailpass.uz, so check again a day before.
One last practical thing. Save every e-ticket PDF offline, because conductors check passports against the ticket at the carriage door and station Wi-Fi is unreliable. If a leg goes wrong and you need to cancel, the fees depend on how many hours out you are; our explainer on how Uzbekistan's railways work is the place to start.