You spend a week under Hainan palms with the South China Sea still warm on your skin - and then, one overnight flight later, you are standing in a square of turquoise domes that were already ancient when the Ming dynasty began. The wind carries dust and roasted bread instead of salt. Sanya to Samarkand is no longer a Silk Road daydream. It is a boarding pass.
In December 2024 Uzbekistan Airways landed the first scheduled service between Sanya and Tashkent, connecting China tropical island directly to the heart of Central Asia. Add the China-Uzbekistan mutual visa waiver that came into force on 1 June 2025 - up to 30 days per visit, no embassy queue, no paperwork - and the oldest trade road on earth has quietly become one of the simplest journeys a Chinese passport can make.
It means you land, you are stamped, and you are in a taxi within the hour. The mutual waiver allows stays of up to 30 days per entry, with a total of no more than 90 days in any 180-day period - enough for a long weekend in Samarkand or a slow month across the whole country. No invitation letter. No consular appointment. No fee.
The effect on the ground is visible. Uzbekistan welcomed 7,749,308 foreign visitors between January and July 2026, up 22.6 percent year on year, with Samarkand, Bukhara and Khiva absorbing most of that growth. Hotels in the historic centres now book out weeks ahead in the shoulder season. If you have been waiting for the right year, this is it - and waiting another one only means more people in your photographs.
Tashkent is served from several Chinese gateways. Uzbekistan Airways, Air China and China Southern operate between Beijing and Tashkent on a regular weekly pattern, and the Sanya route launched with twice-weekly departures - a genuine novelty, since it links a beach destination directly to a desert civilisation. Schedules change by season, so confirm current timings when you book; what matters is that the connection now exists at all.
Inside the country, distance stops being a problem. The high-speed Afrosiyob train reaches Samarkand from Tashkent in a little over two hours, and continues to Bukhara. You can land in the morning and be drinking green tea beneath the Registan by sunset the same day.
September and October are the months Uzbeks themselves recommend. Daytime temperatures settle between 22 and 28 degrees, the summer haze lifts, and the light turns long and gold across the tilework. This is also harvest season: Siab Bazaar in Samarkand piles up with pomegranates, figs, honey melons and grapes still warm from the sun, and every table in the country carries more fruit than it can hold.
Evenings are the reason people cry a little at the Registan. When the crowds thin and the floodlights come up on the three madrasahs, the blue turns almost black and the gold script seems to float. It is the single most photographed square in Central Asia, and it still does not prepare you.
A comfortable first trip runs Tashkent - Samarkand - Bukhara - Khiva. Two nights in Samarkand for the Registan, Gur-e-Amir and Shah-i-Zinda; two in Bukhara, where the old town is small enough to walk and old enough to feel like a film set, with Lyabi Hauz for evening plov under the mulberry trees; two in Khiva, a walled city you can circle on the ramparts at dawn with nobody else awake. Add Nurata and a yurt camp at Aydarkul if you want one night of desert silence and stars.
GoUzbekistan has been operating on these roads since 2007, and we build this route as a private trip - your own guide, your own driver, your own pace - rather than a coach schedule. We are a licensed Uzbek tour operator (licence No. 662280, Committee for Tourism Development), headquartered in Bukhara, which is to say we are not selling you someone else country from an office far away.
Tell us your dates and what you want the trip to feel like, and we will build the itinerary around it: create your own custom tour, or explore our tours for ready-made Silk Road routes across Uzbekistan.
从三亚直飞塔什干，中国公民免签入境乌兹别克斯坦，最长可停留30天。撒马尔罕的蓝色穹顶、布哈拉的古城与希瓦的城墙，只需一夜航程。让我们为您定制专属的乌兹别克斯坦旅游与丝绸之路行程。定制您的专属行程
السياحة في أوزبكستان أصبحت أسهل من أي وقت مضى: رحلات مباشرة، وقطارات سريعة، ومدن طريق الحرير مثل سمرقند وبخارى وخيوة على بعد ساعات قليلة. نحن منظم رحلات مرخص في بخارى ونصمم برنامجك الخاص بالكامل. صمّم رحلتك الخاصة
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