Fergana Valley Travel Guide – A Forgotten Corner of Uzbekistan

This Fergana Valley travel guide will tell you all you need to know about the area.

Being one of the lesser visited areas of Uzbekistan, there is very little information about how to travel the Fergana Valley online and I wanted to change that!

I spent a few days in the Fergana Valley after crossing over from Kyrgystan and I have to say it was one of my favourite places in Uzbekistan!

It was affordable, the people were soooo friendly and the food was excellent!

There are a few major towns and a few major sites in the Fergana Valley that I will go through with this guide.

Overview of the Fergana Valley

The Fergana Valley in Uzbekistan feels like nowhere else in the country and nowhere else in the region. It is a mix of Uzbek, Tajik and Kyrgyz cultures that has a mish mash of borders and exclaves with tensions between them sometimes boiling over.

As one of the most fertile regions in Central Asia, it is a widespread valley between the Tien Shan and Alai mountain ranges in Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. In Soviet times, the region produced an almost monoculture of cotton which was sent all over the Soviet Union with smaller amounts of rice and fruits also being grown.

Nowadays, it is still a major agricultural region but has diversified to produce most of Uzbekistans fruit and vegetables.

It is still a conservative area which you can tell immediately by the way the locals dress, with women in traditional headscarves (not like those in the Middle East) and men often wearing the doppa, their traditional hat.

But all of this makes it an incredibly unique place to visit when travelling Central Asia and I feel it should be a part of any journey to Uzbekistan.

Andijan

Andijan is the gateway to the Fergana Valley if coming in from Osh in Kyrgyzstan. It is the closest city to the border and most people only pass through. It is infamous for the Andijan Massacre that occurred in 2005 when hundreds were killed by government security forces.

You can visit the Joma Mosque and see the site of the massacre but there are few tourist sites in Andijan.

The train station is a beautiful building and is at the end of the line for the train that runs to Tashkent and onwards to Khiva.

Fergana

Fergana isn’t one of the those places with a million sites to visit. It’s a place you go and relax and feel the place.

I felt I learned more about Uzbekistan in a few days in Fergana, sitting and watching, than seeing all of the other major sites in Tashkent to Khiva.

I walked around the beautiful parks to the smells of cooking sashlik, I wandered around the market as the only foreigner taking in the beautiful breads and I watched people go about their business like any local does in any part of the world.

That isn’t to say that Fergana is boring, you just have to adjust your expectations before you go.

I stayed at the Sakura Inn and it was probably my favourite place I stayed in Uzbekistan. The owner was so lovely and friendly and he helped out a lot with information on where to go and how to get around. The breakfast was also excellent.

To get to Fergana from Andijan, the bus cost 15,000som and took about 90 minutes.

Margilon

Margilon is home to the Yodgorlik silk factory, one of the most popular tourist attractions in the region, but still bereft of the hoardes you would expect in other parts of the world. It is a must visit if you want a taste of the Silk Road. The link above has the full review of my experience there.

There are also some nice mosques and markets in the city but little else for tourists to enjoy. However it is worth spending some time just to take in the vibe of Margilon. I ended up talking to a young lad about 15 years old that just wanted to speak English with me. In my experience, that doesn’t happen in too many other places around the world where there are an abundance of tourists.

To get to Margilon you can take a shared taxi from any of the other cities in the Fergana Valley. I also took a Yandex from Fergana to Margilon and it took about 30 minutes and cost 32,000som. A shared minibus from Andijan to Margilon cost 20,000som and took about 90 minutes.

Kokand

Kokand used to be the gateway to Fergana Valley and was a major part of the Silk Road. Home of the Kokand Khanate, it was once one of the most powerful cities in the region. It has Silk Road palaces such as the Khudayar Khan Palace and the wooden pillared Joma Mosque.

It is also the gateway to Tajikistan (or the first place in Uzbekistan you will reach if coming from Tajikistan!)

This is the only part of the Fergana Valley where you are likely to see the famous blue domes on mosques that are more famous in Samarkand, Bhukara and Khiva.

Namangan

Namangan is one of the most religious places in the Fergana Valley with over 600 mosques in the city. Namangan is also the city that is most “out the way” compared to the other cities in the region even if it is the third largest city in the country!

There is also the Namangan Museum of State and Culture which is open daily from 8am-5pm which explains the history of the region in a lot of detail. It is located here.

Namangan is about 1 hour in a shared taxi from Margilon or 90 minutes from Fergana.

How to get around the Fergana Valley

The best way to get around the Fergana Valley is my the shared minibuses that ply the routes between all the major towns. Find the local bus station and you’ll have someone offering you a lift within seconds. You do have to wait for the buses to fill up, the longest of which took about 45 minutes, so try and do most of your travelling early in the morning when buses fill up earlier.

If you have more money than time, you can always use Yandex to book a private taxi between cities. I did this from the border to Fergana when I forgot my phone, a journey that took over 2 hours.

To get to the Fergana Valley, you can either cross the border from Osh in Kyrgyzstan, Khujand in Tajikistan or visit from Tashkent. There is a train that departs from Tashkent and visits most of the major towns in the region that departs a couple of times per day. You can book your tickets here. For more info on booking trains in Uzbekistan, read this guide.

You can also fly from Tashkent to Margilon and Andijan airport but it is often costly and has at most a few flights per week.

Although I believe it’s possible to take a bus from Tashkent to the Fergana Valley, it is over high mountain passes and I don’t know anybody that has done it.

Summing up the Fergana Valley

The Fergana Valley is a real off the beaten path destination. Other than a couple of Russians in my hotel, and a few tourists at the Silk Factory, I didn’t see any other tourists and was welcomed by locals because of it.

Spending just a few days in the Fergana Valley will give you an insight into Uzbekistan that you won’t get anywhere else in the country. It feels much more authentic and raw than the more visited Silk Road cities. I loved the Fergana Valley for its challenges and being a real off the beaten path destination!

Other resources you may want to check out. This is everything I could find on the Fergana Valley before I went!

https://www.journalofnomads.com/how-to-get-from-osh-to-tashkent-to-osh/
https://againstthecompass.com/en/fergana-valley-uzbekistan/
https://www.journalofnomads.com/fergana-valley-uzbekistan/
https://caravanistan.com/uzbekistan/ferghana-valley/margilan/
https://www.backpackadventures.org/fergana-valley-uzbekistan-travel-guide/

Dan

Dan is an avid traveller from London. His first big adventure was in 2010 living in Malaysia for 3 months. He has been on the road almost constantly since 2015 travelling to destinations that aren’t on the mainstream tourist trail and working full time and travelling since 2021.