At first light outside Samarkand, four minarets of seventy-five metres catch the sun before the city does, and the marble courtyard below them is already filling with people who have travelled a very long way to stand there. Some have come from Dubai, some from Jeddah, some from a village two hours down the road — and for a moment, in the hush before the call to prayer, there is no difference between them at all.
This is the Imam al-Bukhari Memorial Complex, and in March 2026 it reopened after five years of reconstruction as one of the largest sacred sites in Central Asia. If you have been putting off a ziyarat journey to Uzbekistan, the reason to stop putting it off has just been rebuilt in white marble.
Muhammad ibn Ismail al-Bukhari spent sixteen years assembling the hadith collection that Muslims around the world know as Sahih al-Bukhari. He was born in Bukhara and buried in the village of Hartang, a short drive from Samarkand, and for centuries pilgrims came to a modest mausoleum on that spot.
What stands there now is on a different scale entirely. Reconstruction that began in 2021 was completed and officially opened on 19 March 2026, ahead of Eid al-Fitr. The site spreads across roughly 44 hectares and holds fourteen blue domes, four minarets of seventy-five metres each, a museum, a library and a congregational mosque of white marble built for ten thousand worshippers. In its first month alone the complex welcomed more than a million visitors.
Come early. The light at sunrise turns the marble the colour of milk and honey, the courtyards are quiet, and you can sit with the recitation for as long as you need to.
Twelve kilometres from Bukhara stands the shrine of Bahauddin Naqshband, the fourteenth-century master whose name the Naqshbandi order still carries across the Muslim world. The complex is green and shaded, built around a courtyard where visitors gather at a fallen mulberry trunk and the mood is closer to a family gathering than a monument.
From there the road continues to Chor Bakr, the “city of the dead” west of Bukhara, where domes and courtyards were raised over the graves of a revered Bukharan family line. Bukhara itself holds the Kalyan minaret that Genghis Khan is said to have spared, the Char Minar with its four turquoise-capped towers, and dozens of madrasas and mosques within a twenty-minute walk of one another.
Bukhara is our home city. Our office sits on Islam Karimov Street, and the shrines in this article are places our guides grew up beside.
Access has changed faster than the guidebooks. Etihad Airways began daily Abu Dhabi–Tashkent flights on 9 August 2026, and a codeshare with Uzbekistan Airways now puts eight Uzbek cities — Samarkand, Bukhara, Urgench, Nukus, Termez, Fergana, Namangan and Andijan — on a single ticket from the Gulf. Uzbekistan grants visa-free entry to citizens of more than ninety countries, the GCC states among them.
Inside the country, the Afrosiyob high-speed train links Tashkent, Samarkand and Bukhara in a few comfortable hours, so a ziyarat itinerary no longer means long days in a minibus. Food is halal by default rather than by request. And from late September the summer heat breaks — autumn in Uzbekistan means warm days, cool evenings, pomegranates split open on every market table, and the softest light of the year on the tilework.
A focused pilgrimage route runs Tashkent — Samarkand — Bukhara in five to seven days, with prayer times, shrine visits and rest built into the schedule rather than squeezed around it. Longer journeys add Termez in the south, where al-Hakim at-Termizi is buried, or the Fergana Valley and the shrine of al-Marghinani.
GoUzbekistan is a licensed Uzbek tour operator based in Bukhara — tour-operator licence No. 662280 from the Committee for Tourism Development — and the team behind it has been running ground operations in this country since 2007. We arrange private transport, Arabic- and English-speaking guides, hotels chosen for location rather than brochure copy, and itineraries that respect the reason you are travelling.
Tell us how many days you have and who is travelling with you, and we will build the route around your prayers, not the other way round: create your own custom tour, or explore our tours to see how other travellers have walked this road.
السياحة في أوزبكستان تبدأ من هنا: ضريح الإمام البخاري قرب سمرقند بعد افتتاحه الجديد، وأضرحة بخارى الصوفية على طريق الحرير. نُنظّم رحلات زيارة خاصة مع مرشدين يتحدثون العربية ومواعيد صلاة مدروسة. صمّم رحلتك الخاصة إلى أوزبكستان.
Ihre Usbekistan Reise auf der Seidenstraße: Samarkand, Buchara und Chiwa als private Rundreise mit deutschsprachiger Begleitung. Schnellzüge verbinden die Städte in wenigen Stunden, und der Herbst ist die schönste Reisezeit des Jahres. Unsere Seidenstraße Rundreise entdecken.
Viajes a Uzbekistán por la Ruta de la Seda: Samarcanda, Bujará y Jiva con guía privado en español. Trenes de alta velocidad entre ciudades, otoño templado y una gastronomía que sorprende a todos. Crea tu viaje a medida.
Un voyage en Ouzbékistan sur la Route de la Soie : Samarcande, Boukhara et Khiva, avec guide francophone et trains rapides entre les villes. L’automne offre la plus belle lumière de l’année sur les mosaïques. Découvrir nos circuits.
乌兹别克斯坦旅游，从丝绸之路开始：撒马尔罕、布哈拉与希瓦，中文向导陪同，高铁连接各城，秋季气候宜人。定制您的专属行程。
Туры в Узбекистан по Шёлковому пути: Самарканд, Бухара и Хива с русскоязычным гидом, скоростные поезда между городами и мягкая осень вместо летней жары. Смотреть наши туры.
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