March 11-25 2027
Uzbekistan & Tajikistan
This solo female group tour is designed by women, for women and in collaboration with local women! This tour takes you through two fascinating and very different Central Asian countries, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, but it's not like every other group tour you'll find.
It's an intimate journey along the ancient Silk Road that untangles the past and explores how women live, work, and create, intertwining traditional practices with modern skills. Visiting in March means you'll experience Navruz traditions, Persian New Year celebrations that have continued for thousands of years.
You'll have plenty of opportunities for cultural exchange and learning, including cooking and artisan classes, as well as chances to meet local women entrepreneurs and guides in each city. This tour goes beyond traditional group tours by involving local women at every stage, for a more equitable and responsible experience.
The journey is overland because we like to keep things as sustainable as possible, so no short flights. Instead, you'll see the landscape's diversity roll by, the mountains' sheer vastness, and memorable interactions along the way.
You might be wondering why you'd go to Central Asia. Maybe you haven't heard much about this part of the world, which is all the more reason to visit. There's something for everyone, from historic heritage sites to pristine lakes.
We encourage women from all backgrounds to come along, so if you have any specific requirements or hesitations, please feel free to ask.
Daily Itinerary
Day 1 | Arrival in Tashkent (11 March 2026)
The journey begins with fresh fruit.
Arrive in Tashkent and take a private transfer to your boutique hotel. Enjoy an afternoon orientation walk: Independence Square, Amir Timur Museum, and the extraordinary Chorsu Bazaar – a domed cathedral full of spices, dried fruits, and warm bread pulled from tandoor ovens. In mid-March, the bazaar transforms in preparation for Novruz (the ancient Persian New Year): the first almond blossoms are placed in vases behind the stalls, and the first spring herbs and greens arrive in baskets. Local Expert: The Entrepreneur: Welcome dinner at a restaurant in the historic centre. Your guest is a Tashkent-based female entrepreneur who will share her story of building a business, navigating tradition, and what the new generation of Uzbek women is creating. Accommodation: Mirzo Boutique Hotel (or similar), Tashkent | Meals: Dinner
Day 2 | Tashkent → Fergana Valley
Through the mountain pass to the cradle of craftsmanship.
Take the morning train from Tashkent to Margilan (departs at 08:05, arrives at 12:59, with reserved seating and panoramic views through the snow-dusted Kamchik Pass). The afternoon visit to Kokand includes the ornate Khudayar Khan Palace and the serene Jami Mosque. Cultural Exchange: The Ceramicist of Rishtan: Late afternoon visit to Rishtan, where a female ceramicist welcomes you into her family workshop. She will demonstrate the thousand-year-old tradition of blue-and-white glazing, explain the symbolism of the patterns, and share tea with you while talking about being a woman in a craft traditionally dominated by men. Train: Tashkent → Margilan | 08:05–12:59 | Accommodation: Hotel Asia (or similar), Fergana | Meals: B, L, D
Day 3 | Fergana Valley – Silk and Secrets
From cocoons to fine cloth: witness the hands of talented artisans,
The morning starts at the Yodgorlik Silk Factory, where you can watch the entire journey from silk cocoon to finished fabric. Your visit focuses on the women artisans who work at each station: the reelers, the binders, the dyers and the weavers. Take the time to sit beside them, ask questions, and witness the astonishing precision of hand-dyed ikat patterns passed down for centuries. Hands-on Workshop: Ikat Tie-Dyeing. In a home workshop, a local artisan guides you through a hands-on ikat tie-dyeing session using natural pigments including pomegranate, walnut, and indigo. These colours are from the same palette used centuries ago. You will bind, dip, and unwrap your own piece of silk to take home. Afterwards, enjoy free time in Margilan’s bazaar, which is one of the most bustling markets in Central Asia. In November, you'll see the results of October's harvest, including melons, grapes, persimmons, and plenty of warm bread (a staple during your trip). Accommodation: Hotel Asia (or similar), Fergana | Meals: B, L, D
Day 4 | Fergana Valley → Tashkent → Bukhara
From the green valley to the Noble City.
Take the morning train back to Tashkent (departs 08:00). Then connect to the Afrosiyob high-speed train to Bukhara (approximately 4 hours through the heart of Uzbekistan). Arrive in Bukhara by late afternoon. Relish an evening stroll around Lyab-i-Hauz – the ancient reflecting pool shaded by 600-year-old mulberry trees. After which you can have dinner together as the city glows in the evening light. In October, Bukhara’s evenings are warm enough to sit outside but cool enough to enjoy each day without feeling overwhelmed by the heat. Trains: Fergana → Tashkent, then Afrosiyob Tashkent → Bukhara | Accommodation: Komil Boutique Hotel (or similar), Bukhara | Meals: B, L, D
Day 10 | Samarkand – The Day of Sumalak
Prepare for the largest celebration of the year...
Sumalak is one of the oldest surviving rituals in Central Asia. In the days before the spring equinox, wheat is sprouted in every home. On Navruz eve, the women of a mahalla (a neighbourhood) bring their sprouted wheat to a shared courtyard, mash it, mix it with flour, and set it to simmer over a slow fire in an enormous pot. And then, for twenty-four hours, they stir, in turns. Through the day and into the night, through stories and laughter. Morning at the Mahalla Fire You will be welcomed into a courtyard in Samarkand's old city where the sumalak has been simmering since dawn. Meet the women tending the pot and take a turn with the long wooden spoon if you wish. Learn the songs. Hear the stories that come out when women sit around a fire long enough to remember them. Chairs and cushions throughout for those who prefer to sit. Midday: The Haft-Sin Table Visit a family home to see the ceremonial table being set for Navruz. Seven sacred items, each beginning with the letter S in Persian: sumalak, sabzi, sib, senjed, seer, serkeh, samanoo. The traditions will be explained in the context of health, fertility, wisdom, patience, longevity and love. Afternoon: Bazaar of Blossoms and Rest Take a slow walk through Siyob Bazaar, which by mid-March overflows with the first spring produce and the flowers of the season: almond blossoms, tulips, the earliest herbs. This is the atmosphere of Uzbekistan preparing itself for its most important day. For those who prefer to rest, transfer back to the hotel any time. Evening: Navruz Eve Feast A private dinner with a family from Samarkand. The last supper of the old year. Sumalak brought to the table, still warm from the fire. Blessings from the grandmother of the house. Music, if the family is musical, and stories if they are not. Accommodation: Amira Boutique Hotel (or similar), Samarkand | Meals: B, L, D
Day 5 | Bukhara – The Noble City
The weight of centuries is still here, in every brick and every stitch.
Take a morning walking tour through the Poi-Kalon complex (the great minaret, the Kalon Mosque, the Mir-i-Arab Madrasa), the covered trading domes where silks and carpets have been traded for a thousand years, and the Ark Citadel, which was the seat of power for emirs through the centuries. ✦ Cultural Exchange: The Gold Embroiderer Visit a zarduzi (gold embroidery) atelier behind the old bazaar. Meet the women artisans who stitch these extraordinary pieces and hear about practising an ancient art in a modern economy. The afternoon is free to explore independently. Lose yourself in the maze of alleys, drink chai by the hauz, browse the textile bazaars for suzani, ikat, and handwoven silk. Accommodation: Komil Boutique Hotel (or similar), Bukhara | Meals: B, L, D
Day 11 | Samarkand – Navruz Celebrations
Witness an ancient celebration contined for thousands of years...
Morning: Take in the Registan Celebrations including public Navruz festivities at the great square. Witness bakhshi bards, dancers in bright silks, women singing lapar couplets, children reciting Rudaki and Navoi. Take in the collective joy while Rukhshona guides you through the crowd with plenty of stopping points to take it all in and take part! Late Morning: The Navruz Table Return to a Samarkand family home for the Navruz feast. This is the meal of the year: the seven-item table set for luck, plov made specially for Navruz, warm bread pulled from the tandoor and sweets made from the family recipe book. This is not a demonstration; instead, it’s a family opening its most important day to you. Afternoon: Home Visits On Navruz, families visit each other to renew ties, forgive old grievances, and wish each other well for the year ahead. You will be welcomed as guests into two or three homes in the mahalla for tea, sweets to experience Uzbek hospitality. Evening: Farewell to Samarkand A quiet dinner at Amira Boutique, in the courtyard if the weather is kind. Accommodation: Amira Boutique Hotel (or similar), Samarkand | Meals: B, L, D
Day 6 | Bukhara – Scholars, Stitches, and Sufis
The intellectual tradition that once drew students from Baghdad to Cordoba
The morning excursion is to the Bakhautdin Naqshband complex, one of Central Asia’s most important pilgrimage sites, named for the 14th-century Sufi master whose order spread from here to Istanbul to Delhi. The Local Expert: You will meet a local professor at Bukhara State University to discuss education, identity, and what it means to be a woman shaping the next generation in Uzbekistan. Learn about the challenges and triumphs of young women navigating the tension between tradition and ambition. Hands-on Workshop: Suzani Embroidery. A master embroiderer hosts a workshop where you will learn the basic stitches, choose your colours, and begin a small piece to take home. She will tell you about the tradition: a mother begins stitching a suzani for her daughter at birth, completing it by the time the daughter marries. Three years of patience, stitched into cloth. Enjoy your last dinner in Bukhara, possibly in a restored madrasa courtyard, with music and the scent of autumn in the air. Accommodation: Komil Boutique Hotel (or similar), Bukhara | Meals: B, L, D
Day 12 | Samarkand → Border → Penjikent
The journey continues across the border...
Free morning for one last walk in Samarkand, enjoy a coffee at the hotel, take a last look at the Registan, or make a final visit to a favourite workshop. The city carries the afterglow of Navruz: petals still on the ground from yesterday's celebrations, families still visiting one another, sumalak still warm in the kitchens. Afternoon transfer to the Uzbekistan–Tajikistan border at Jartepa (approximately 1 hour from Samarkand). Cross the border on foot (a simple, well-organised process with full luggage assistance). Meet your Tajik driver on the other side and transfer to Penjikent (30 minutes). Evening arrival in Penjikent, a small, peaceful town in the Zerafshan Valley, still carrying the Navruz spirit (Tajiks celebrate Navruz for a full week). Dinner at your guesthouse. Transfer: Samarkand → border → Penjikent | ~2 hours total | Accommodation: Guesthouse, Penjikent | Meals: B, L, D
Day 7 | Bukhara → Samarkand
The city gives way to silence and mountains
Take the late-morning Afrosiyob high-speed train from Bukhara to Samarkand (approximately 1 hour 30 minutes with comfortable reserved seating). Watch the Kyzylkum desert gliding past in the window. Arrive in Samarkand around midday and transfer to the Amira Boutique Hotel, a thirteen-room family-run boutique three minutes from the Registan, where you will be warmly welcomed in the courtyard. Enjoy a light lunch at the hotel and settle in before you experience the Registan. Witness the three colossal madrasas framing the most photographed square in Central Asia. In November, with the tour groups largely gone, the late-afternoon light brings the square to life and takes you back in time without the crowds. It's an opportunity to take your time without a schedule. So you can sit, walk, take pictures or just take it all in. Take an evening stroll through the old quarter and have dinner in a courtyard restaurant nearby. Train: Bukhara → Samarkand | Afrosiyob, ~1h30 | Accommodation: Amira Boutique Hotel (or similar), Samarkand | Meals: B, L, D
Day 13 | Penjikent — The Ancient Sogdian City
Ruins and poetry...
Morning visit to the ruins of ancient Penjikent, once a flourishing Sogdian city, now an archaeological site revealing frescoes, temples, and market halls from a civilisation that predated Islam on the Silk Road. Visit the Rudaki Museum, dedicated to the father of Persian poetry, who was born in a village nearby. In the days after Navruz, his verses linger. Afternoon walk through Penjikent's small bazaar, a world away from the grand bazaars of Uzbekistan, but full of character: dried fruits, honey, mountain herbs, and handwoven textiles. The pace is unhurried; benches and tea houses are throughout. Cultural Exchange: Meet the Women of Zerafshan In a nearby village, women host you for a traditional Tajik post-Navruz lunch. The food is different to what you tried in Uzbekistan; qurutob (bread soaked in yoghurt sauce), oshi Sharif (a spring rice dish made only around Navruz), fresh mountain herbs, and flatbread baked in a stone oven. Sumalak, still. The conversation flows easily: life in the valley, what Navruz means in these mountains, and the difference between Uzbek and Tajik traditions. Accommodation: Guesthouse, Penjikent | Meals: B, L, D
Day 8 – October 2026 | Samarkand – Enter the Hammam
A day designed around the rituals women have shared for centuries.
This day is all about switching off from the world. There's no guided schedule and no rush. Instead, it's all about immersing yourself in Samarkand and a slower rhythm. The day consists of enjoying the hammam and garden, and a long lunch, all in time for a late-afternoon nap. It is the rhythm the women of Samarkand have built into their own lives for generations, and one travellers rarely get to share. ✦ Morning at the Hammam The day begins in a private, traditional hammam, open only to the group. Marble warmth, rising steam, and a kese scrub by the hands of a woman who has done this work for thirty years. A massage with rose oil pressed in nearby villages. The hammam is a centuries-old centre of women's social life across the Silk Road, where weddings were planned, gossip was exchanged, and brides were prepared by their grandmothers. ✦ Garden Lunch and Traditional Beauty Rituals After the hammam, the group gathers in a private garden with pomegranate trees overhead, low cushions on a wooden takht, and autumn light filtering through. Have a long lunch of fresh herbs, seasonal fruit, warm bread, and tea. Over the meal, optional traditional beauty rituals: henna patterns on the hands, usma (a deep-green local plant) for the brows, walnut oil combed through the hair. There are no obligations; rather, it's all a part of the practices of sharing. The women leading the rituals have practised these arts since girlhood. ✦ Afternoon Rest, Evening Bazm Rest in the afternoon at Amira Boutique. You can swim, read, walk in the courtyard or wander outside. In the evening, the group gathers for a bazm, the traditional women's gathering of Central Asia, hosted by one of Samarkand's most respected matriarchs, savour tea, dried fruit, sweets, music, and indulge in conversation that drifts. Women have gathered like this in this city for a thousand years. This is the day many women later say they remember, not because it was performative, but because they got to witness another side of Uzbek traditions. Accommodation: Amira Boutique Hotel (or similar), Samarkand | Meals: B, L, D
Day 14 | Iskanderkul → Dushanbe
Tajikistan in one road trip.
Morning departure from Penjikent for Dushanbe (approximately 5 hours via the Anzob tunnel). The route climbs through spectacular mountain scenery: the Fann Mountains still snow-capped in March, alpine passes, rushing rivers high with spring melt, and the earliest green appearing on the lower slopes. The vehicle is comfortable, and we will stop for photographs, tea, and rest whenever the group wishes. A lunch stop at a mountain restaurant partway. Afternoon arrival in Dushanbe. Time to settle at the hotel, then a gentle city walk: Rudaki Park, the colossal Ismoili Somoni statue, and the tree-lined avenues that give Dushanbe its surprisingly leafy character. Dushanbe means Monday in Persian, it was once a small village with a Monday market. Today it is a warm, walkable capital of 800,000 people. Farewell dinner at a Dushanbe restaurant. Enjoy Tajik cuisine, toasts to the journey and to the women who opened their homes to you across two countries. Transfer: Penjikent → Dushanbe | ~5 hours with lunch stop | Accommodation: Atlas Hotel (or similar), Dushanbe | Meals: B, L, D
Day 9 | Samarkand – In Timur’s Shadow
Architecture You Won't Forget.
In the morning, visit the Gur-i-Amir mausoleum, the resting place of Timur. The interiors are covered in gold leaf and jade. After, you'll head to the Ulugh Beg Observatory, a 15th-century astronomical complex built by a ruler who was also one of the finest astronomers of his age. Later, see the Shah-i-Zinda, the ‘Avenue of the Living King’, a necropolis of turquoise-tiled mausoleums climbing a hillside. In the late morning you'll go to the Konigil paper-making workshop, where artisans produce mulberry paper using methods unchanged since the Silk Road era. ✦ WOMEN’S ENCOUNTER: Cooking and Conversation In a village home outside Samarkand, you'll be welcomed into a local kitchen. Here you will learn to make plov from scratch. While the rice steams, the conversation turns to migration. What happens when husbands work abroad, and women raise children? Half of Uzbek families have been touched by labour migration. It's a complex story, told from personal perspectives, so we can go beyond news headlines and better understand what countless women actually experience. ✦ HANDS-ON WORKSHOP: Plov Cooking You don't have to love cooking, but you might start after this class. You will peel the carrots, layer the rice, tend the fire, and eat the result together. It's a dish that represents Uzbek culture in a single pot. Accommodation: Amira Boutique Hotel (or similar), Samarkand | Meals: B, L, D
Day 15 | Departure from Dushanbe
The end, or the beginning of your trip?
Enjoy a last free morning for a final stroll through Dushanbe's parks and markets, or visit the Hissor Fortress (30 minutes outside the city), one of the most important historical sites in Tajikistan, dating back 2,500 years. Transfer to Dushanbe International Airport for your flight home or onward connection. We can also arrange onward trips to Central Asia.
Meet Your Guide
Central Asia is the ultimate solo female destination
Rukhshona is a Samarkand-born guide, scholar, and cultural interpreter who divides her days between lecturing at the Silk Road International University of Tourism and Cultural Heritage and guiding travellers through the cities she knows by heart.
She's spent five years working on the ground, which informs her teaching and helps it go beyond the theoretical. Rukhshona shares stories with curiosity and passion because she's been in hospitality her whole life and is a part of the living pulse of Uzbekistan–its young people.
When she is not in front of a class or a group, Rukhshona works on her dissertation on regional development, drives long stretches of road outside the city, or lifts at the gym. You will also meet other local guides through the journey, as we want you to see local life through the eyes of women who live in each place.
What's Included
Transportation
Reserved-seating trains, Afrosiyob high-speed train, and private vehicle transfers throughout Uzbekistan and Tajikistan
Activities
Entry tickets, hikes, cultural classes and workshops ( Ceramics, ikat dyeing, suzani embroidery, and plov cooking–all materials included, private hammam ritual, garden lunch, evening bazm meetings with female artisans, entrepreneurs, professors, and hosts in both countries).
Meals
Full board (breakfast, lunch, and dinner)
Please let us know if you prefer vegetarian, vegan, halal, or gluten-free options (or have any other dietary requirements).
Accommodation
This tour is based on twin-sharing rooms. Hotels in Uzbekistan offer comfortable rooms with private bathrooms. Guesthouses in Tajikistan may be more basic. There is a single supplement if you would like your own room.
Pick Up
Airport pick-up is included
Expert Guides
Friendly English-speaking guides throughout and experienced drivers.
Countries You'll Visit
Uzbekistan
Experience the stunning architecture of historic mosques and madrasas as well as vibrant bazaars in Uzbekistan: a pearl of the ancient Silk Road.
Tajikistan
With its towering mountain peaks, pristine lakes, off the beaten path opportunities Tajikistan, is a country of wonders nestled in Central Asia.
FAQS
Travel Style: Casual
The tour requires walking, with a few hours of hiking.
Service Level: Comfortable
We will use a standard private vehicle for transportation. The tour includes comfortable hotels and guesthouses. The price is based on twin rooms. There is a single supplement for a single room.
Physical Rating: Light
This tour is not very physically demanding, plus we can make extra accommodations.
Trip Type: Small Group Tour
This small-group trip has a 4-person minimum and accommodates up to 12 people. It's perfect for those who value solo time but also enjoy chatting with other travellers and local people. Whether you're on a sabbatical or want to experience something different, this tour is designed to refresh and inspire.
Age requirement: 18+
This trip is suitable for adults only. There is no set age limit as we encourage intergenerational travel.
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