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toonsarah Says: The market in Nurata is on the southern side of the town near the mosques and the path to the hill fortress of Alexander the Great. It isn’t very large but it’s a good place to observe daily Uzbek life and, as everywhere in this friendly country, to meet some of the locals....
toonsarah Says: The Chasma Spring is the source of Nurata’s reputation as a holy city and place of pilgrimage. It is said to have been formed through a miracle, when Hazrat Ali, the son-in-law of Mohammed, struck the ground here with his staff. The waters rise nowadays into a rectangular...
toonsarah Says: At the foot of the hill on which perches the fortress of Alexander the Great are a pair of mosques, the town’s Friday mosque and “everyday” mosque facing onto the same small square near the sacred Chasma Spring. It is common for Uzbek towns to have two or even three mosques...
Alexander the Great’s Fortress
toonsarah Says: This is the main reason for most tourists to visit Nurata. There is supposed to have been a fortress on this hill top above the town even before the time of Alexander the Great, but it was his soldiers who strengthened it in 327 BC. It was constructed in the shape of the...
Yurt camp: A night in the desert
toonsarah Says: We didn’t stay in Nurata itself but used it as a jumping off point for our brief visit to the Kyzyl Kum Desert and our night sleeping in a traditional yurt. I’ve written elsewhere on this page about other aspects of our stay in the camp, so here I want to focus mainly on the...
Yurt camp: Dinner in the desert
toonsarah Says: The overnight stay at the desert camp was naturally on a full-board basis, and the meal we were served in the evening was one of the nicest we had on the trip, in my view. We ate at a long table set up under an awning near the caravan where the Kazaks who run the camp live...
A family home: Lunch in Nurata
toonsarah Says: We had lunch in Nurata in a house in a residential area not far from the main road. This was a real family home, and we ate in what was obviously their main sitting and dining room, with shelves of ornaments and family photos for decoration. We sat on cushions on the floor,...
toonsarah Says: This was offered as an option at the desert camp – an option that only six of our number took up, which surprised me. I personally rather like camels, despite their (probably deserved) reputation for surliness. Without doubt this was a great experience. We were led out into...
toonsarah Says: To visit one of these yurt camps I think you need to be on a tour – either exploring Uzbekistan in a group as we were, or you could maybe book a short tour yourself which could be incorporated in longer independent trip (I saw one such trip on the internet at...
toonsarah Says: As I’ve described elsewhere, our journey to the yurt camp was in a small soviet bus, so we had to restrict ourselves to one small day-sac or similar. You need to think carefully about what are the essentials – here are my suggestions: ~ The only time I felt a little chilly...
silkroadsters Says: Sarmish-say is a river gorge on the south slope of the Karatau mountain ridge belonging to the Zarafshan mountain range. It is situated about 30 km northeast of the city of Navoi, which is about 170 km southwest of Samarkand.Took a trip after getting info on the following...
toonsarah Says: On the morning after our night in the camp we headed to Lake Aidarkul, which seems to be standard practice on all these tours. Opinions in our group about this were rather mixed, with some of us enjoying the interlude in the intensive sightseeing, and others regretting that...
toonsarah Says: Despite being only 7 km from the nearby village of Yangigazgan, our desert camp felt very much “Off the beaten path” and never more so than first thing in the morning …I slept well at the desert camp at first, until the cool wind coming through the lattice frame of our yurt...
toonsarah Says: Heading north into the Kyzyl Kum desert from Nurata we came to this village, which would be unremarkable and unvisited by tourists were it not for its role as a departure point for the bus ride to the nearby yurt camp. I was pleased we came here though, for the brief glimpse...
toonsarah Says: Uzbekistan’s most famous site for ancient petroglyphs is the Sarmysh Gorge, but we weren’t able to visit there unfortunately. However we did stop to see a small group of petroglyphs in the rocks right by the road that runs from Karmana to Nurata, near its highest point Black...
toonsarah Says: Some miles south of Nurata, where the road to that city leaves the main Bukhara-Samarkand road to head north across the desert, is the town of Karmana, notable for a number of ancient buildings. Two of these in fact lie some 16 miles east of the town, either side of the main...
toonsarah Says: For me, the highlight of our visit to Aidurkal Lake was the opportunity it afforded for a swim. After several days travelling, and some involving long bus journeys through the hot desert, I was glad of the chance to relax in its cooling waters. If you want to do the same,...
Plan a Nurata vacation with reviews, tips and photos posted by real travelers and Nurata locals
We didn’t stay in Nurata itself but used it as a jumping off point for our brief visit to the Kyzyl Kum Desert and our night sleeping in a traditional yurt....
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Nurata is less-visited than the other stops on our tour, and with some reason as it has far fewer obvious sights. But it isn’t without its attractions, including the hill-top fortress (said to date...
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