Silk Road Tour: A History-Led Journey from Xi’an to Tashkent

Most people picture the Silk Road as a single caravan track. On the ground it reads more like a chain of problems the old traders had to solve: a desert to cross, a mountain range to climb, a frontier to pass and an oasis to reach before the water ran out. A Silk Road tour that runs overland from Xi’an to Tashkent lets you see those problems, and the cities and monasteries that grew up around their solutions, in the order the caravans met them. This guide walks through the 29-day route of our Silk Road small group history tour leg by leg, through China, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, and explains what each stop adds to the larger story.

Reading the Silk Road tour route: corridors, passes and oases

This article is about one route, not the whole network. For the origins of the trade, the goods that moved along it and how the name “Silk Road” came into use, start with our account of the wider history and legacy of the Silk Road. What follows is narrower: why this particular journey runs the way it does, and what each stop shows.

The logic of the route is geographical. From Xi’an the road climbs west through Gansu, along the narrow strip of oases known as the Hexi Corridor, squeezed between mountains to the south and desert to the north. Beyond Dunhuang it skirts the Taklamakan Desert to reach the Turpan basin and, eventually, Kashgar at the far western edge of China. There the Tian Shan mountains stand in the way, and the road crosses them into Kyrgyzstan, then drops through the mountain valleys to the plains of Central Asia, where the great oasis cities of Uzbekistan grew up along the rivers.

Much of the first half of that route is recognised by UNESCO. In 2014 the World Heritage Committee inscribed “Silk Roads: the Routes Network of Chang’an-Tianshan Corridor”, a serial listing of 33 sites shared by China, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan along a section of about 5,000 kilometres. UNESCO describes the corridor as taking shape between the 2nd century BC and the 1st century AD and remaining in use until the 16th century. Several of its sites lie on this itinerary, including the Big Wild Goose Pagoda in Xi’an, the ruined city of Gaochang near Turpan and the medieval city of Balasagun at Burana in Kyrgyzstan. The Uzbek cities at the western end have their own World Heritage listings.

How long is the Silk Road tour, and how are the 29 days divided?

The tour runs for 29 days, and roughly half of them are spent in China. Following the itinerary on the tour page, Days 1 to 14 cover Xi’an, Gansu and Xinjiang; Day 15 crosses the Torugart Pass into Kyrgyzstan; Days 15 to 19 take in Naryn, Issyk-Kul, Karakol, Burana and Bishkek; and from the evening of Day 19 to Day 29 the group is in Uzbekistan, finishing in Tashkent after breakfast on the last day. Most nights are spent in stays of two or three nights, with single overnights on several of the travel days.

China: from the imperial capital to the edge of the Taklamakan (Days 1 to 14)

The China leg is the longest and the most varied, and it has its own companion guide: our article on the China leg of the Silk Road from Xi’an through Gansu and Xinjiang goes into it in more detail. In outline, it moves from a capital city to a frontier, and from Chinese to Tibetan, Buddhist and then Turkic and Islamic worlds, all within one country.

Xi’an: the eastern terminus (Days 1 to 3)

Xi’an was Chang’an, the capital the tour page describes as seat of more than ten Chinese dynasties, and at its height under the Tang the destination for envoys, merchants and monks from across Asia. Our guide to Xi’an’s story as the start of the Silk Road covers the planning and population of the Tang city, so here it is enough to say what the itinerary does with it. Day 2 is given to the Terracotta Warriors guarding the tomb of Qin Shi Huang, discovered by well-diggers in 1974, and the Neolithic village of Banpo, a site of the Yangshao culture. Day 3 is a full day in the city, from the Ming city wall to the Forest of Stone Steles, the Great Mosque and the Muslim Quarter, the Drum Tower and the provincial history museum.

Two of Xi’an’s monuments set up themes that run through the whole journey. The Big Wild Goose Pagoda was built around 652 to hold the Sanskrit texts the monk Xuanzang carried home from India, a reminder that the Silk Road moved religions as well as goods; it is one of the Xi’an components of the 2014 World Heritage listing. The Great Mosque and the Muslim Quarter, which the itinerary traces back to Muslim merchants who settled in Chang’an in the Tang period, show the same traffic running the other way. Read together, Xi’an’s museums, markets and places of faith tell the story of the eastern terminus better than any single monument.

Lanzhou and Xiahe: the Yellow River and Labrang (Days 4 to 6)

A high-speed train carries the group west to Lanzhou, capital of Gansu, where the Silk Road crossed the Yellow River. The afternoon visits the White Pagoda on the north bank and the Lanzhou Ancient Water Mill, a wooden irrigation wheel that the itinerary dates back to the Ming dynasty. Day 5 climbs into the ethnically Tibetan town of Xiahe for Labrang Monastery, founded in 1709 and still a working monastery of the Gelug school of Tibetan Buddhism. It is a detour from the trade road, but a telling one: the Silk Road ran past mountain communities whose faith and culture looked south to Tibet rather than east to the imperial court.

Back in Lanzhou on Day 6, the Gansu Provincial Museum holds the bronze known as the Flying Horse of Gansu, found in 1969 in an Eastern Han tomb at Leitai near Wuwei and dated to around the 2nd century AD. The itinerary uses it to tell the story of Zhang Qian, the Han envoy whose reports from Central Asia in the 2nd century BC included the powerful horses of the Ferghana region that the Han court came to covet. Zhang Qian’s tomb at Chenggu is itself one of the components of the 2014 World Heritage corridor.

Jiayuguan: the western gate of the Ming wall (Day 7)

Another fast train crosses the Gobi to Jiayuguan, where the pass at the western end of the Ming Great Wall still stands as a complete fortress of rammed earth and brick. It was built in the early Ming period, around 1372, at a narrow point of the Hexi Corridor, and our article on the long history of the Great Wall of China sets it in the context of the wall as a whole. The itinerary adds the Overhanging Great Wall, a steep section climbing a ridge near the fort, and the Great Wall Museum. The fortress at Jiayuguan marked the western gate of the Ming frontier, and the tour page describes the pass as a vital passageway on the Silk Road.

Jiayuguan is a good place to see that the Silk Road was also a frontier. One thread links it to the far end of the route: in December 1404 Timur, the conqueror whose capital was Samarkand, set out to campaign against Ming China, and died at Otrar, in present-day Kazakhstan, in February 1405, before his army got anywhere near the wall. You will meet him again in Uzbekistan.

Dunhuang and the Mogao Caves (Days 8 and 9)

Dunhuang is where the Great Wall gives out and the oasis road begins in earnest. The tour page notes that for travellers arriving from the west it was the first trading town in Chinese-administered territory. On Day 9 the group visits the Mogao Caves, inscribed on the World Heritage List in 1987. UNESCO records that the first caves were cut in 366, and that 492 caves survive, with about 45,000 square metres of murals and more than 2,000 painted sculptures made over roughly a thousand years. Our guide to the Mogao Caves and their Buddhist art, manuscripts and pilgrimage explores them in depth.

Mogao also introduces the story of what left the Silk Road. The discovery of the sealed Library Cave in 1900 uncovered tens of thousands of manuscripts, and many of them were carried off to collections abroad in the following decades. Our article on the explorers and collectors who removed Silk Road manuscripts and murals tells that story, which comes up again at Turpan. The same afternoon visits Crescent Spring and the dunes of Singing Sands Mountain.

Turpan and the karez (Days 10 to 12)

A high-speed train takes the group north-west into Xinjiang and the Turpan basin, whose lowest point, Ayding Lake, lies about 154 metres below sea level. Turpan’s ancient predecessor was Gaochang, and its ruined city walls, part of the 2014 World Heritage corridor, are one of three archaeological visits on Day 11, with the Bezeklik Thousand Buddha Caves beneath the red Flaming Mountains and the Astana Tombs. Turpan’s oasis archaeology, from Gaochang to the cave temples, shows how much of the northern Silk Road survives in this one basin.

Day 12 explains how anyone lived here at all. Before leaving for Urumqi the group visits Grape Valley, the brick Sugong (Emin) Minaret of the 1770s and the karez, the system of vertical wells linked by underground channels that brings water from the foot of the mountains to the fields without losing it to evaporation. How the karez irrigation system sustained Turpan and other Silk Road oases is one of the quieter lessons of the route. Day 13 is a full-day excursion from Urumqi to Heavenly Lake in the Tian Shan, below the 5,445-metre peak of Bogda Feng.

Kashgar: the western crossroads (Day 14)

A flight from Urumqi brings the group to Kashgar, which the tour page notes lies closer to Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan and Tajikistan than to Beijing. Here the routes that skirted the Taklamakan to the north and south came together before climbing into the mountains. The day’s sightseeing includes the Abakh Khoja tomb, the Id Kah Mosque, founded around 1442 and rebuilt in later centuries, the Arts and Crafts Street and the old Russian and British diplomatic missions, relics of the nineteenth-century rivalry between the two empires in Central Asia. Kashgar’s long role as a crossroads of markets, empires and cultures is written into these buildings.

How physically demanding is the Silk Road tour?

The tour is rated Level 2, Moderate, which the tour page defines as three to five hours of physical activity a day, the equivalent of walking or hiking up to 8 kilometres on uneven ground. Travellers need to be able to carry their own luggage and climb and descend stairs. In practice the China leg brings steep steps on the Overhanging Great Wall at Jiayuguan, a good deal of walking between caves at Mogao and Bezeklik, and summer heat in the Turpan basin, where the itinerary notes temperatures can reach 50°C. Porterage of one bag per person is included from Day 2 to Day 18, except at local airports.

Kyrgyzstan: over the Tian Shan (Days 15 to 19)

The Kyrgyz leg is short, but it is the part of the journey that makes the mountains real. It also changes the kind of history on show: fewer monuments, more landscape, and sites that make sense only once you have climbed to them.

The Torugart Pass and Tash Rabat (Day 15)

Day 15 is the long mountain crossing. The coach climbs from Kashgar to the Torugart Pass, which the tour page gives as 3,752 metres above sea level, for Chinese border formalities, then continues seven kilometres to the Kyrgyz border point before smaller vehicles take the group along a rough road towards Naryn. On the way the group stops at Tash Rabat, a stone caravanserai in a high side valley that gave travellers shelter from snow and cold. Tash Rabat lets you stand inside a caravanserai in the mountain setting it was built for.

Its date is still argued over. The tour page notes that it is often described as 16th-century, though many believe it is far older, and later research has suggested it may have begun as a 10th-century monastery. Built of rubble stone set in clay, at around 3,200 metres, it is a plain building, and that is the point: a caravanserai was a fortified roadside inn, not a palace, and Tash Rabat shows what one looked like where the road was at its hardest.

Issyk-Kul and Karakol (Days 16 and 17)

From Naryn the road crosses the Dolon Pass to Issyk-Kul, the great mountain lake whose Kyrgyz name, the itinerary explains, means “warm lake” because it does not freeze. It was a resting point on the northern branch of the Silk Road. At Cholpon-Ata the group sees rock drawings in the open air and visits the Petroglyphs Museum, with carvings the itinerary dates from the Bronze Age into the early medieval period. On Day 17 Karakol, at the lake’s eastern end, shows a later layer of history: the Przhevalsky Museum, a Russian Orthodox church and the Dungan Mosque, a wooden building in Chinese style made, the itinerary notes, without a single nail. Issyk-Kul brings together northern Silk Road history, rock art and mountain landscapes in a single stop.

Burana and Bishkek (Days 18 and 19)

On the way west to Bishkek, the group stops at Burana in the Chuy Valley, the site of the medieval city of Balasagun, which was founded under the Karakhanid dynasty and is one of the three Kyrgyz components of the 2014 World Heritage corridor. Its 11th-century brick tower, a minaret originally about 45 metres high, lost its upper half to earthquakes and now stands at about 25 metres, with an archaeological museum and a field of carved stone grave markers nearby. Burana Tower and the earthworks around it are what remains above ground of the medieval urban world of the Chuy Valley.

Bishkek itself is a Russian and Soviet city: it was taken by Russian forces in 1860 and, after Kokand rebuilt it, again in 1862, and became an administrative centre in the Soviet period before Kyrgyzstan declared independence in 1991. The afternoon includes the History Museum and dinner with traditional music. Day 19 begins with a walk in Ala-Archa National Park, a mountain gorge close to the capital, before an evening flight to Tashkent.

What are the long travel days like on this route?

Expect several full days on the road or rails, with the Torugart crossing the most demanding of them. The itinerary warns that there are no restrooms on the road to Naryn, so the vehicles pull over for stops, and a packed lunch is provided. Elsewhere, distances are covered by high-speed train (Xi’an to Lanzhou, Lanzhou to Jiayuguan, Dunhuang to Turpan, Samarkand to Tashkent), by domestic flights (Urumqi to Kashgar, Bishkek to Tashkent, Tashkent to Nukus) and by road, including the roughly 400 kilometres from Issyk-Kul to Bishkek and about four hours from Nukus to Khiva. Entry arrangements for China, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan change, so check current requirements with official government sources before you book; our answers to practical questions about travelling in Kyrgyzstan are a useful starting point for that leg.

Uzbekistan: the oasis cities of Transoxiana (Days 20 to 29)

The last leg reaches the cities most people think of when they hear the words Silk Road. The order matters here too. The tour flies west to Nukus and then works back east, from Khiva to Bukhara to Samarkand, so the cities grow larger and the building programmes grander as the journey nears its end. Our answers to common questions about visiting Uzbekistan cover the country-level practicalities.

Nukus and the Savitsky Museum (Day 20)

An early flight from Tashkent reaches Nukus, capital of Karakalpakstan, for the Savitsky Art Museum. It was founded in 1966 at the urging of the painter and collector Igor Savitsky, and holds more than 82,000 items, including a large collection of Russian avant-garde art that could not be shown in Moscow under Stalin, alongside Karakalpak folk art and archaeological finds. The day also includes visits to an embroidery centre and a family of yurt makers. The Savitsky Museum is as much about cultural memory as about avant-garde art, since its collection kept together work that had been out of favour for decades.

Khiva (Days 20 and 21)

About four hours by road from Nukus, Khiva sits on the Amu Darya, which gave it the water to farm an otherwise arid plain. Its walled inner town, Itchan Kala, was inscribed on the World Heritage List in 1990. A full day inside the walls covers the tiled stump of the Kalta Minor minaret, the Kunya Ark fortress, the Pakhlavan Makhmud complex, the Islam Khodja minaret, built in 1908–1910, the Djuma Mosque with its forest of carved wooden columns, and the 19th-century Tash Hovli Palace of the khans. Within its walls, Khiva still reads as a complete walled oasis city on the Amu Darya, with mosques, madrasas and palaces packed close together.

Across the Kyzyl Kum to Bukhara (Days 22 and 23)

The road to Bukhara crosses the Kyzyl Kum desert, long a border zone between the settled oases and the nomadic steppe, with lunch at a desert teahouse. Bukhara was a trading city and also, as the tour page puts it, a major centre of Islamic theology, scholarship and culture, and its historic centre has been on the World Heritage List since 1993. Day 23 covers the Ark fortress, the Ismail Samani Mausoleum, the Poi Kalon ensemble of minaret, mosque and Mir-i Arab Madrasa, and the 16th-century buildings around the Lyabi Hauz pool, ending with an Uzbek dance performance. In Bukhara, Islamic scholarship, architecture and urban life were bound together, with madrasas, mosques and markets standing side by side.

Samarkand and Shahrisabz (Days 24 to 27)

On the way to Samarkand the group stops at the Summer Palace of the former Emir of Bukhara and at Gijduvan, for lunch with a family of potters. Samarkand, listed by UNESCO in 2001 as a crossroads of cultures, is where the Timurid story reaches its height. Day 25 begins with the remains of Ulugh Beg’s observatory, built in the 1420s by Timur’s astronomer grandson, destroyed after his murder in 1449 and rediscovered by archaeologists in 1908, then visits the Afrosiab Museum on the site of the pre-Mongol city and the Shah-i-Zinda necropolis. The afternoon is for the three madrasas of the Registan and the Gur-e-Amir, the mausoleum where Timur lies. In Samarkand, Timurid ambition, learning and monumental space come together in a single city.

Day 26 goes south to Shahrisabz, Timur’s birthplace, whose historic centre was inscribed by UNESCO in 2000. The ruins of his Ak-Saray palace and the Kok Gumbaz Mosque close the loop that began at Jiayuguan: the ruler who was marching on Ming China when he died in 1405 had spent his reign turning these cities into showpieces of art and scholarship. Day 27 allows a free morning in Samarkand before the Bibi Khanum Mosque, Siab Bazaar and the high-speed train to Tashkent.

Tashkent (Days 27 to 29)

Tashkent is the modern capital, and the itinerary treats it as a place where all the layers meet. The tour page notes that the city was destroyed by Genghis Khan in 1219 and rebuilt on the profits of the Silk Road. Day 28 visits the Hast Imam complex and its manuscript archive, Chorsu Bazaar, the Kukeldash Madrasa and the History Museum, includes a ride on the Tashkent Metro with its decorated Soviet-era stations, and, depending on the schedule, a performance at the Navoi Theatre before the farewell dinner. The tour ends after breakfast on Day 29.

What the route adds up to

Taken in order, the stops make an argument. The Silk Road was not a road but a sequence of places that made long-distance travel possible: capitals that sent out envoys and received monks, frontier forts that controlled who passed, oases that engineered their own water, caravanserais that made the mountains survivable, and trading cities that turned wealth into learning. Buddhism travels east along the route, from Xuanzang’s texts in Xi’an to the painted caves of Mogao and Bezeklik; Islam arrives later and builds the mosques of Xi’an and Kashgar and the madrasas of Bukhara and Samarkand; and Russian and Soviet rule leaves its own layer in Karakol, Bishkek, Nukus and Tashkent.

That is what an overland journey adds to the reading. Crossing the Gobi by train and the Tian Shan by road, you understand why an oasis such as Turpan mattered, why Kashgar sat where it did, and why a stone shelter at 3,200 metres was worth building at all.

Is this Silk Road tour a good choice for solo travellers?

Yes: the tour page describes the journey as designed for couples and solo travellers, and the group is small, with up to 16 travellers and the services of a Tour Leader. Most meals are included (28 breakfasts, 23 lunches and 26 dinners, according to the tour page), so there are few evenings when you would need to find a table on your own, and the shared experience of long travel days tends to bring a group together quickly.

What should you read before the journey?

Start with the general history, then the people who rediscovered the route. The tour page’s reading list includes Peter Hopkirk’s Foreign Devils on the Silk Road, Peter Frankopan’s The Silk Roads: A New History of the World and James A. Millward’s The Silk Road: A Very Short Introduction. Hopkirk’s book pairs well with our article on the explorers at Dunhuang and Turpan, and Millward’s short introduction is a manageable companion to carry on the trip.

Twenty-nine days is long enough for the route to make sense in the way it did to the people who travelled it: as a series of crossings, each with its own reward on the far side. On Travel on the Silk Road with Odyssey Traveller, a small group follows that sequence from the Terracotta Warriors to the tiled courtyards of Samarkand and the metro stations of Tashkent.