14-Day Uzbekistan Sketching Trip: The Slow Line

Watercolor sketch of Khiva held up against the real city

5 Good Reasons To Do This Trip

DRAW THE HOUR MOST PEOPLE SLEEP THROUGH
Climb to a merchant's rooftop in Khiva before dawn and watch the walled city turn from grey to terracotta to gold, the one hour of the trip Abdu says he'd choose if he could only show you one.
SIT WHERE ROYALTY SAT
Four sitters in striped silk robes and gold-threaded hats hold still for you in a nineteenth-century courtyard house, so you learn to read a face before you touch a single detail.
HOLD THE PAPER BEFORE YOU DRAW ON IT
Meet the papermakers at Konigil village and lift a wet sheet of hand-beaten mulberry paper straight off the screen, the same paper that will be filling your sketchbook.
WATCH A COUNTRY MAKE ITS OWN SILK
Follow one mulberry tree from Chor Minor to a mountain silkworm room to the looms of Margilan, where raw thread becomes ikat cloth in front of you, inch by inch.
EARN YOUR SEAT AT OHALIK
Walk forty-five minutes up an irrigation channel into the orchards before you sit down to draw the mountain terrace this trip was built around.

Trip Details

Trip Breakdown

Dates

Price (USD, per person)

26 Mar 2027

Ends: 8 Apr 2027

$4,801 USD

NEW DATE

Deposit

$1,200 USD

3 Nov 2027

Ends: 16 Nov 2027

$4,801 USD

NEW DATE

Deposit

$1,200 USD

Private room supplement: +$1,403 USD (total $6,204 USD) · Private room deposit: $1,551 USD

Length: 14 days / 13 nights
Details: 2-week cancellation window applies (bookings 120+ days out)
Lifetime Deposit — if you need to cancel, your deposit is transferable to any Leatherback trip
Twin-share is the base rate; private room available as a supplement
Please refer to our payment terms in the FAQs.
Arrival: TBA
Departure: TBA
Group Size: Minimum 4, maximum 14
Included: Wayward Artist's Pack, yours to keep
Tuition from your Wayward Paper guest artist
1 internal flight, Tashkent–Nukus
5 train legs: Khiva–Bukhara, Bukhara–Samarkand, Samarkand–Tashkent, Tashkent–Kokand, Margilan–Tashkent
All accommodation, meals, and internal transport as stated in the itinerary
Arrival and departure airport transfers
A top-rated Ohalik ground guide
All listed activities and more!
Not Included: International flights
Travel insurance (mandatory)
Visa fees
Additional hotel nights & late checkouts
Drinks and other personal expenses
Tip kitty (see FAQs for more information)

Itinerary

Day 1: Arrival and Chorsu Bazaar

Arrive in Tashkent and settle into your hotel, no rush after the long flight over. At midday the group gathers for a welcome briefing and the presentation of your Wayward Artist's Pack, everything you'll need for the fortnight ahead. Then a long lunch of plov and green tea before we walk into the old city to Chorsu, the bazaar under its great blue-tiled dome, four roads meeting as they have for centuries. You'll choose your first sketching position: the gallery above the hall, the bakery lane with its towers of fresh non, or the spice section framed by a distant minaret. Two hours of sketching, tea at your elbow throughout. In the late afternoon we go underground, into Tashkent's Soviet-era metro, marble and mosaic and space-age chandeliers, before dinner and your first overnight in Tashkent.

Accommodation:: TBA
Included:: Lunch and Dinner

Day 2: The Brutalist City in New Leaf

A slow morning at a private gallery in the artist quarter, coffee alongside a local urban sketcher's ink drawings of a disappearing Soviet skyline. From there we walk to Amir Timur Square, plane trees changing character with the season, brutalist Hotel Uzbekistan rising behind them, bronze Timur at the centre with one hand raised. Ninety minutes to two hours of sketching: how to draw hard concrete edges without the page going dead. Lunch nearby, then we rest, pack, and fly west to Nukus in the late afternoon, the desert's great gallery waiting for us tomorrow. Dinner and overnight in Nukus.

Accommodation:: TBA
Included:: Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner

Day 3: Savitsky and Mizdakhan

A morning for looking, not sketching: room after room of Igor Savitsky's hidden collection of banned Soviet-era art, then next door among the felt yurts and silver jewellery of the Karakalpak National Museum. Lunch is lagman, hand-pulled noodle soup, followed by a slow walk through Nukus market, collecting faces for later. In the afternoon we drive to the Mizdakhan Necropolis, two thousand years of mud-brick and turquoise tile stacked across three low hills, where pilgrims still build small towers of stone to buy the world more time. Two hours of sketching on the eastern slope, looking out towards the Ustyurt plateau, tea and dried fruit within reach. Dinner and overnight in Nukus.

Accommodation:: TBA
Included:: Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner

Day 4: Chilpiq Qala and the Amu Darya

An early start, thermoses filled, driving south into the desert. Our first stop is Chilpiq Qala, a twenty-two-century-old Zoroastrian tower of silence alone on its mesa, where we sketch the weathered mud-brick with breakfast in the field. Then to the banks of the Amu Darya, the river the Greeks called the Oxus, herons working the shallows as we settle in for ninety minutes of drawing air, distance, and water. We reach Khiva in time for a late lunch of manti inside the walls of Ichan Kala. The afternoon is deliberately soft, a walking tour, a nap, a pot of tea in a courtyard. Today your eyes rest. Tomorrow we climb. Dinner and overnight in Khiva, inside the old city walls.

Accommodation:: TBA
Included:: Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner

Day 5: The Ichan Kala from Above

We rise in the dark for this one. Coffee in hand, we climb to a merchant's rooftop on the edge of Ichan Kala and watch the walled city turn from grey to terracotta to gold, the turquoise stub of Kalta Minor sitting just below. After a proper breakfast, we walk down into the city to the Tosh-Hovli harem and its painted ceilings, then the narrow lanes at whatever pace your feet suggest. As the sun drops, an optional session at the entrance to the Juma Mosque, robes and shawls moving through the gate for evening prayer, swallows or sparrows working the air above. Some artists call this the drawing of the whole trip. Dinner and overnight in Khiva.

Accommodation:: TBA
Included:: Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner

Day 6: The Kyzylkum and Poi Kalon

The morning train east crosses the Kyzylkum desert, six hours of horizon, loose sketches if the mood takes you, otherwise a day for dozing and the tea the carriage attendants keep bringing. We arrive in Bukhara early afternoon and walk the Ark, the earthen citadel of the emirs raised on twenty-five centuries of older walls. Tea in the hotel courtyard, then two hours of sketching from the terrace, the Islam Khoja minaret rising alongside a stork's nest on the chimney opposite. Around half past five we walk together to Poi Kalon, the sacred heart of Bukhara, three positions arranged across the square as the light turns amber and the muezzin's call lifts every pigeon off the domes at once. Dinner in a courtyard that was once a caravanserai. Overnight in Bukhara.

Accommodation:: TBA
Included:: Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner

Day 7: Chor Minor and a Free Evening

A slower start, walking into the residential quarters to Chor Minor, its four different towers tucked among the mud-brick houses and shaded by an old mulberry tree. Two hours of sketching, then a stop at a fourth-generation blacksmith still forging Bukhara's famous stork-shaped scissors, and a family suzani workshop where embroidery frames pass from grandmother to granddaughter. Your evening is free, a pocket sketchbook at Lyabi Hauz at dusk, or simply resting your hands over a pot of tea. Both are correct. Dinner at leisure. Overnight in Bukhara.

Accommodation:: TBA
Included:: Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner

Day 8: Portraits at the Faizulla Khodjaev House

This morning our subject is the human face. We're welcomed into a nineteenth-century merchant's courtyard house, garden in full seasonal colour, where four sitters in Bukharan and Uzbek dress hold position for two hours: a painted reception room, a garden ivan, a low tea table, a plain wall for pure portrait study. The morning's lesson is likeness through the geometry of the head. An unhurried lunch in the old town, then the Afrosiyob train to Samarkand, two hours through cotton fields and orchards, blue domes and snow-capped peaks waiting at the other end. We walk to Registan Square after check-in, three madrasas facing each other across the most beautiful square in Central Asia. Tonight we look. Tomorrow we sketch. Dinner at a family-run place in the old town. Overnight in Samarkand.

Accommodation:: TBA
Included:: Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner

Day 9: Siyob Bazaar, Studio Workshop, and the Paper Village

We begin at Siyob, the great bazaar in the shadow of Bibi Khanym mosque, where the Zarafshan valley has sold its harvest for a thousand years. Two hours to wander, sit, and draw with no fixed seat. Back to the hotel for lunch and rest, then a two-to-three-hour studio session with your guest artist, reviewing the week's sketchbooks one by one before the whole room. In the late afternoon we drive to Konigil village, where the eight-hundred-year-old craft of Samarkand silk paper is still made by hand, mulberry bark beaten and lifted from the water as sheets, the same paper that's already filling your sketchbook. Dinner at the workshop's own chaikhana beside the stream. Overnight in Samarkand.

Accommodation:: TBA
Included:: Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner

Day 10: A Day in the Mountains

Today we go to Ohalik, the mountain village our ground partner is named for, foothills turned to blossom or gold depending on the season. The family welcomes us onto a terrace over orchards, tea and honey and fresh non already laid out. We walk forty-five minutes up an irrigation channel before settling to draw, choosing between the terrace, the stream, the whitewashed wall, or the snowline above. The midday meal is cooked over a wood fire in the courtyard, proper plov with lamb and rice from Fergana. We return to Samarkand in the late afternoon with time for a real rest before dinner. Today was for the body as much as the sketchbook. Dinner and overnight in Samarkand.

Accommodation:: TBA
Included:: Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner

Day 11: Shah-i-Zinda and the Slow Return

Our last Samarkand sketching morning is at Shah-i-Zinda, a narrow street of tiled tombs climbing the hillside, each portal a different argument in turquoise, cobalt and gold. We leave at six while the street still belongs to the pilgrims and the sparrows, two hours of sketching across three positions on the ascent. A short stop after at Ulugh Beg's observatory, where a fifteenth-century astronomer king measured the length of the year to within seconds, then one last stop for warm Samarkand non for the road. The afternoon Afrosiyob takes us back to Tashkent, sketchbook on your lap for the passing fields. Dinner in Tashkent that evening, close to the hotel. Overnight in Tashkent.

Accommodation:: TBA
Included:: Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner

Day 12: Master Hasan's Forge, and the Road to the Valley

Breakfast, then the morning train east, four hours through the Kurama range and the long Kamchik rail tunnel into the Fergana Valley. We arrive in Kokand around midday for a long, unhurried lunch with the family of Master Hasan, a blacksmith working the same forge his father and grandfather did. Two hours of sketching around the courtyard, at the anvil, in the doorway, or from the divan, watching him forge a knife start to finish. In the late afternoon, a slow architectural tour of the Palace of Khudayar Khan and the Juma Mosque's carved wooden pillars, before driving on to Fergana city through cotton fields and mulberry orchards. Dinner and overnight in Fergana.

Accommodation:: TBA
Included:: Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner

Day 13: Clay, Silk, and the End of the Mulberry Thread

A short morning drive to Rishtan, a town that has thrown pottery from the same red clay for six hundred years. Master Rustam, a fifth-generation potter, walks us through his workshop before two hours of sketching at the wheel, in the decorating room, or across the shaded courtyard. Lunch at his family table is one of the best meals of the trip. An hour's drive brings us to the Yodgorlik Silk Factory in Margilan, where the mulberry story that has followed you all week finally becomes cloth, from cocoon to dye vat to loom. Ninety minutes of sketching before we take the fast train back to Tashkent through the Kamchik pass. Our farewell dinner tonight includes a small closing gift from Wayward. Overnight in Tashkent.

Accommodation:: TBA
Included:: Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner

Day 14: Departure

A slow breakfast, and depending on your flight, time for one more coffee together, one last small drawing of the plane trees outside the window. Transfers to the airport are arranged around each departure, and our team sees every one of you off. You leave with a full sketchbook, shorter pencils, and a country in your hands. End of journey.

Accommodation:: TBA
Included:: Breakfast

Trip Map

Illustrated map of the Uzbekistan sketching journey route

FAQs

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