What a visitor's money does in Uzbekistan: every guide rated from very cheap to very expensive, cheapest first, then the things that cost travellers money without buying anything — the ATM, the taxi, the SIM.
Uzbek Som (UZS) · 1 USD = 11,800 UZS · 1 EUR = 13,700 UZS
The black market is gone and the banks now give the real rate, which was not true a few years ago — ignore older advice. Cards are increasingly taken in hotels and restaurants, and almost nowhere in a bazaar.
Avoid: the black market, which no longer exists and is not worth looking for
Use: Kapitalbank, Ipoteka Bank, Hamkorbank
Some machines dispense dollars as well as som, and those are the ones to find. Many sit inside branches and follow bank hours. Bazaars are cash only.
A short ride in Samarkand: 15,000–35,000 sum across town — very cheap
From the airport: From the airport to the centre 30,000–70,000 sum, depending on the city
Cheaper than flagging down a private car, which is also normal and negotiable here.
Plov is the Sunday dish and each city claims its own; Bukhara’s has raisins. The chaikhanas around Lyab-i Hauz do shashlik, samsa and green tea under the mulberries; the restaurants in the old caravanserais are the pricier end. Non (bread) is stamped and sold from carts.
Plov at the Plov Centre at noon, from cauldrons that feed a thousand; samsa from the tandoor at Chorsu; shashlik along the canals in the evening; and a Korean community that has made kimchi a local dish. Cheap: a feast is 60,000 som.
Plov is the national dish and Samarkand makes its own version, with the rice on top rather than mixed through. The bread — non — is stamped, baked on the wall of a clay oven, and is genuinely different from town to town. Samarkand bread is the one people carry home to Tashkent.
Shivit oshi — green dill noodles with a meat sauce — is Khiva’s own dish. The restaurants inside the walls cook for tourists at tourist prices; outside the gates the chaikhanas do the same food for half. Melons from the Khorezm oasis are the best in the country.
The cost rating is this site's own, for a visitor, from the guides' authors and the corrections readers send in. The general rules — the conversion prompt, shoulder season, the airport taxi — are in budget travel tips.
SamarkandUzbekistanThe blue domes of the Silk Road, in a city Tamerlane rebuilt to be the centre of the world
BukharaUzbekistanA whole medieval city still standing: minarets, madrasas, covered bazaars and a pool with mulberry trees, and it is quieter than Samarkand
KhivaUzbekistanA walled city of mud brick in the desert, intact from the gates to the minarets, and the one Silk Road town you can walk round on the wall
TashkentUzbekistanThe biggest city in Central Asia, a metro with chandeliers, the world’s oldest Quran, plov cooked in cauldrons the size of a car, and the gateway to the rest