Day Trip from Tashkent: Chimgan, Charvak, Amirsoy

An hour and a half north of Tashkent the plain stops and the Western Tian Shan starts. This is a full day in it — eight to ten hours, your own car and driver-guide, collected from your hotel and brought back to it — through the four places Tashkent itself goes at the weekend.

The price is per traveller, and it falls as the group grows: one traveller pays $130, two or three pay $75 each, four to six $60 each, and seven to fourteen $50 each. Up to three travel in a sedan, up to six in a minivan and up to fourteen in a minibus. Fourteen is the maximum per departure, because larger vehicles are not allowed into the mountains.

Where the day goes

• Amirsoy, the resort built on the north slope with a gondola that lifts you out of the valley in a few minutes. In winter it is a ski mountain; the rest of the year it is the easiest high ground to reach near Tashkent, with the ridge laid out in front of you at the top
• The Chimgan massif, the mountains Tashkent looks at from its balconies. Greater Chimgan is 3,309 metres, in the Chatkal range, and there is a chairlift in season for anyone who wants to be higher without walking there
• Lunch at Bochka, a chaikhana above the valley, at a table rather than in a car park. A set menu, and a vegetarian version if you say so when you book
• Sijjak, a village on the way down where the road is quiet enough to stop and the tea is usually offered before it is asked for
• Charvak, which looks like a lake and is not one: 2 cubic kilometres of the Chirchiq river held behind a stone dam 168 metres high, finished in 1970. In summer it is where the city swims, and there are boats for hire on the shore

How the day works

Eight to ten hours door to door, and the pick-up is agreed with you the day before — your hotel, the airport, or the train station. The driving is about three hours of it in total, spread across the day, on mountain roads that are properly surfaced.

Lunch, water, parking and tolls are in the price. The gondola and the chairlift are not, and nor is the boat at Charvak — those are paid on the day, and the gondola and boat prices are listed on this page so you can decide before you come. The gondola can close in bad weather; the day works without it.

When to come

Every season gives you a different day out. May and June are green and loud with water. July and August are hot in the city and perfect up here, and the lake is full. September and October are the clearest — the best light of the year on the ridge. From December the snow closes in and Amirsoy becomes a ski resort, which is a different trip and still a good one.

Who it suits

Families, and anyone who has done the Silk Road cities and wants a day that is not a monument. The whole day is at your pace because the car is yours: if the ridge at Amirsoy is worth another half hour, you stay another half hour. Nobody is waiting on a coach.