A Personal Reflection on Solo Female Travel in Uzbekistan and Central Asia

I grew up in Bukhara, a city with 3,000 years of history, and some of my earliest memories are of early mornings. The sound of footsteps on the ancient streets. The smell of bread baking in the tandoor oven. My mother shaping the dough with her hands, pressing it against the inside of the clay oven, then pulling it out golden and warm.

When travelers walked past our door, exploring the old neighborhoods, we would invite them inside. My mother would break the bread, pour the tea, and everyone would sit together. In our tradition, you hold your left hand over your heart and serve the tea with your right hand. You serve from the heart. This is who we are.

I still think about those mornings. When I think about bread, I am not thinking about food. I am thinking about my family. My mother. My grandmother. The guests we welcomed. Even today, when we greet our travelers, we offer them a small loaf of bread baked in a tandoor, sometimes with sweets placed on top, sometimes with dry tea and spices. It was this way 30 years ago. It was this way a thousand years ago. And it is still this way today.

I have spent more than three decades working in tourism, and in that time I have welcomed hundreds of solo travelers to Uzbekistan and across Central Asia. Many of them have been women traveling on their own. Almost all of them begin with some version of the same question:

“Zulya, will I feel safe traveling alone in Uzbekistan?”

I understand why they ask. I am a woman, an entrepreneur, and a traveler myself. I know what goes through a woman’s mind before she arrives somewhere unfamiliar. But the honest answer to that question has changed enormously over the years, not because the country itself is different, but because the world around it has transformed completely.

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What Solo Travel Looked Like When I Started

When I began working in tourism in the early 1990s, Uzbekistan and the other Central Asian countries had just become independent. The infrastructure was basic. The roads between cities were bumpy and narrow. Driving from Tashkent to Samarkand felt like it took forever. Hotels were Soviet era. Restaurants were few because most families ate at home. There were no water bottles or clean bathrooms along the tourist roads. There were no cell phones. No internet. No WhatsApp. No Google Maps.

If you were meeting travelers at the airport, there was no way to know whether their flight had arrived or been delayed by six hours. You simply waited.

I personally remember standing in the Tashkent airport in 1996, waiting for travelers who were supposed to arrive at three o’clock in the morning. Four o’clock passed. Five. Six. Seven. Eight. Nine. They finally walked through the doors at one o’clock in the afternoon. I had waited more than ten hours, alone, with no way to communicate. Maybe they were stuck in Istanbul. Maybe their connection had been canceled. We had faxes. We had telegrams. But at the airport in the middle of the night, you had nothing except patience and trust.

Solo travel at that time was considered risky for anyone, not just women. Very few women came to Central Asia independently. When they did, they traveled as part of large organized groups, sometimes 20 or 30 people. There was simply not enough information available, not enough infrastructure, and not enough ways to communicate when something went wrong.

Now look at what has happened. Today, women research destinations online before they ever contact us. They schedule video calls on WhatsApp. They travel between our Silk Road cities on high speed trains. They have internet access in most places. They walk through Samarkand and Bukhara on their own in the evening, have dinner at a restaurant, photograph the streets, and return safely to their hotels.

The questions have changed too. Thirty years ago, the question was: Can I even travel there? Today, the question is: Can you design a journey around my interests, at my own pace?

That is a remarkable change.

The Woman Who Took Her First Solo Journey

Not long ago, a woman contacted us who wanted to take her very first solo trip. Her husband had passed away a couple of years earlier, and after two years of not traveling, she was ready. She wanted to go somewhere beautiful. Somewhere she could experience embroidery and craftsmanship. Somewhere she could feel alive again.

But she was nervous. She was concerned about safety, about food, about the language. She was traveling to three different Central Asian countries and she was worried about what would happen at the border crossings. She even started learning a few words of the local language before she left.

We talked through everything. I explained what would happen at every step. She decided she wanted a private female guide in each country, someone who would be with her throughout.

I told her what I tell every woman who feels nervous before her first solo trip: from the minute you walk out of the airport, you will not feel uncomfortable. Somebody will be there to meet you. Somebody will take you to your hotel. Somebody will be with you at the train stations, the sites, the villages, the restaurants. You are traveling alone, but you are never on your own.

She went. She visited villages, cultural events, local families. She joined cooking classes. She watched local women dance and danced with them.

And when she came home, she told me something I will never forget.

“I came by myself, but I never felt alone.”

She said it was the best trip of her entire life. And it was her very first solo journey.

Diana’s Birthday

Some of my most powerful memories have nothing to do with monuments or hotels.

Diana was a solo traveler who came to us from the United States. She was traveling alone across all five Central Asian countries, and it happened that her birthday fell during her time in Uzbekistan. Her husband had not been able to join because of other commitments, so she was here on her own.

We celebrated her 70th birthday at my family’s home. My mother was there. My nephews and nieces were there. We decorated the entrance of the house and sang happy birthday. We also took her to a local school, where the children had prepared songs and dances for her. They made beautiful paper crowns and placed them on her head, and they sang.

Diana stood in the middle of that classroom, surrounded by children she had never met, in a country she had barely known existed a year earlier. And she cried.

She told me that in her 70 years, nobody had ever made such a gesture for her birthday. Nobody had ever gone to that kind of effort. She said it would be the most memorable birthday of her entire life.

I still have her photograph from that day, taken in front of our house.

When the Flight Was Delayed and Everyone Danced

Things go wrong in travel. Flights get delayed. Luggage goes missing. People get sick. What matters is not the problem itself. What matters is how you respond.

One of my favorite stories happened when a solo traveler was flying to Khiva to attend a music and dance festival. The flight was delayed, not by thirty minutes, but by hours. She could not leave the airport because the flight could be rescheduled at any time. She was stuck.

Our guide decided that sitting and waiting was not an option. She turned to the traveler and said, “We are going to a dance festival. We should be prepared. Let me teach you right now.”

And right there, in the airport terminal, our guide started teaching her Uzbek festival dances. Hand movements. Steps. Rhythms.

Other passengers waiting for the same delayed flight saw what was happening. One by one, they joined in. Before long, an entire group of strangers were learning Uzbek dances together in the middle of an airport, laughing and clapping and forgetting that their flight had been canceled.

When the traveler finally arrived in Khiva, she said she was ready. She danced at the festival. She visited homes. She watched the sunset over the ancient city walls. And she told us afterward that the moment in the airport, when everyone started dancing together, was one of the highlights of her entire trip.

“I will never forget what your team made me feel and how they prepared me. When I arrived in Khiva, I was the one who was dancing with everyone.”

What My Travelers Have Taught Me

After more than 30 years, the biggest lesson I have learned is this: never assume that everyone wants the same journey.

Every traveler is different. Some want to join a family dinner and help make the bread. Others want to sit in front of the Registan in Samarkand for hours, studying the mosaics and the majolica tile work. Some want to shop at the bazaars all morning. Others want to meet a local businesswoman and hear her story. Some want cooking classes. Some want silence.

I used to want to tell every traveler everything about Uzbekistan the moment they called. I have learned to do the opposite. Now I listen first. What interests her. What pace feels right. What makes her nervous. What excites her. The planning conversation matters as much as the journey itself.

My travelers have also taught me what luxury really means. It is not a five star hotel. It is arriving at a small boutique hotel where the person at the front desk already knows your name. It is walking into your room and finding a handwritten welcome note. It is stepping out of an airport in a foreign country where your cell phone may not work, and seeing someone standing there with a smile, holding a sign with your name on it.

“Luxury is connection.”

It is sitting around a table in someone’s home, not speaking the same language, and understanding each other anyway. It is being handed a piece of warm bread and a cup of tea, served from the heart.

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What I Tell Every Woman Before She Travels

I would never tell anyone that any destination in the world is completely without risk. That would not be honest. Uzbekistan is widely experienced as a welcoming and safe destination, and our female travelers consistently tell us how comfortable they felt here. But I still encourage preparation.

Uzbekistan is a predominantly Muslim country, though visitors are often surprised by how relaxed daily life feels, particularly in the cities. Women do not generally need to cover their hair, but I recommend dressing respectfully when visiting religious sites or traditional communities. A lightweight scarf in your handbag is always useful.

Local people are curious. A woman traveling alone may occasionally be asked whether she is married or whether she has children. These questions can feel unusually personal to an American or European traveler, but they almost always come from warmth and genuine curiosity.

“Do not travel with fear. Travel with knowledge.”

Ask questions before you go. Learn about the culture. Tell us what makes you comfortable and what makes you nervous. Tell us what fascinates you. And then allow yourself to experience the country.

Walk through the old streets of Bukhara early in the morning, when the light is golden and the air still smells of baking bread. Stand beneath the blue mosaics of Samarkand. Sit around a table where nobody speaks your language, but somehow everybody understands one another. Laugh. Dance if someone invites you.

And give yourself permission to be surprised.

Because after all these years, after all the travelers I have welcomed, the sentence that still means more to me than almost anything else is this:

“I came by myself, but I never felt alone.”

And perhaps that is the most beautiful thing solo travel can be.