The Silk Road By Rail: Uzbekistan’s High-Speed Afrosiyob and Beyond

The ride on the train is easy, but the booking system? Not so much. With tourism to Uzbekistan booming, and a recent price hike on train tickets, I’m going to talk you through trains in Uzbekistan, how to book them, and tips for your journey.

The Main Train Types in Uzbekistan

Even though the Afrosiyob is the train most travellers are interested in booking, Uzbekistan’s actually got a few different train types that you may come across on your travels.

Afrosiyob: The Bullet Train

The Afrosiyob is Uzbekistan’s high speed train, running along the rail network’s main artery. It links Tashkent, Samarkand, and Bukhara. If you’re travelling between these famous cities, this is how you’re going to want to do it.

The trains themselves are manufactured by Spain’s Talgo, and can reach top speeds of 250km/h – not that far off Japan’s Shinkansen, in looks as well as speed.

Inside, you’ll find air-conditioning, power outlets and a chill, quiet vibe. There are three classes of travel on the Afrosiyob: Economy, Business, and VIP.

• Economy:
  • Despite the name, we’re talking more Emirates than Ryanair here. The seats are arranged in a 2+2 layout, they recline quite far, and there’s plenty of room for bags. You’ll also get a snack on the journey, usually a sweet pastry and a tea or coffee.
• Business Class:
  • The main upgrade here is the seating. It’s arranged in a 2+1 layout, so if you’re travelling solo, you can nab an individual seat without anyone next to you. Like in Economy, you’ll also get a snack, and a tea and coffee trolley that comes round from time to time. Price-wise, there’s usually only about £10 or so in the difference between business and economy, so it can be worth it for longer journeys.
• VIP:
  • Not every Afrosiyob train has a VIP car, but when it does, it tends to be at the front of the train and only have 11 seats in it. The seats are laid out in a 2+1 formation, like business, but they’re leather seats, and the snack and tea/coffee options tend to be a little bit elevated.

Jaloliddin Manguberdi: The Newcomer

The Jaloliddin Manguberdi are the newest trains in Uzbekistan. Once they officially launch, the 1,286km journey from Tashkent to Khiva will take just 7 hours and 40 minutes, almost half of what it takes today.

Manufactured by South Korea’s Hyundai Rotem, they’re named after the historical Uzbek hero who fought off the Mongols. They were shipped from South Korea in late 2025, and since then, Uzbekistan has been hard at work getting ready for their launch.

You may see them flying across the steppe as Uzbekistan trains its drivers and tests the new trains. They’re designed to operate in temperatures from -40°C to +50°C and have a dust-proof design to survive the sandy winds of the Kyzylkum.

Commercial service is officially scheduled to launch in Q2 2026 (around April or May), but some reports have said that this could be as late as September. Whenever they do launch, however, the journey to Khiva is about to get a lot easier.

Feature	The Old Night Train	The 2026 Jaloliddin Manguberdi
Duration	14-15 hours	7 hours 40 minutes
Vibe	Soviet Nostalgia	Sleek and modern
Speed	90 km/h	250 km/h
Best For	Saving on a hotel night, experiencing the romance of an old sleeper train	Seeing the desert in daylight, speeding across the steppe

The Sharq: Uzbekistan’s Express Train

The Sharq (which means “East” in Uzbek) is the dependable, workaday train of Uzbekistan. It’s not as modern or slick as the Afrosiyob, but it’s far more comfortable than a long distance bus.

It’s an “Express” train, but it uses older Soviet-era carriages. It’s not as smooth as the Afrosiyob, and slower at top speeds of about 140-160km/h.

The Sharq train mostly runs along the Tashkent – Samarkand – Bukhara route. It’s about half the price of the Afrosiyob, so if you’re travelling on a budget or the high-speed trains are sold out, the Sharq is your best backup.

Travel classes on The Sharq:

• 1st Class:
  • Instead of an open carriage, you’re often in a closed compartment of about 3-6 seats, a table, and sometimes a TV.
• 2nd Class:
  • An open plan carriage with rows of seats usually in a 2+2 layout. It’s simple, but perfectly fine for a 3 hour journey.

Unlike the Afrosiyob, you won’t have a snack box delivered to your seat, but there is usually a bistro car where you can buy drinks and snacks.

The Night Train

If you are heading to Khiva by rail (at least until the new trains launch this year), the night train is your primary option.

Every carriage has a samovar at one end – a massive silver hot water jug. Bring your own tea bags or instant coffee, and help yourself throughout your journey.

When you board, you’ll be given a plastic bag with clean sheets, a pillow case, and a thin towel. You’ll need to make your own bed, which is a little different to the incredibly efficient sleeper train attendants in Thailand.

While the bedding is freshly washed for your use, some travellers like to bring a sleeping bag liner anyway – they fold up smaller than a full sleeping bag, but can add a bit of extra comfort. I also have this inflatable camping pillow as I often find sleeper train pillows are too thin for me.

The Classes:

• 1st Class:
  • 2 berths per cabin. Best for two people travelling together or you just want fewer roommates.
• 2nd Class:
  • 4 berths per cabin. This is the standard experience.
• Platzkart / 3rd Class:
  • The platzkart is the standard open plan sleeper car on Russian or post-Soviet trains. Think of it like a dorm on wheels. There are no doors, and it’s common for people to get chatting to each other, sharing food and drinks.
  • If you are offered food, it’s polite to accept a little (assuming you can eat it), and if you’ve got some snacks of your own, offer them to share back! Even if you’re vegan, like me, you can always join in for tea!

A Note on Train Toilets

Most of the trains will have a toilet in each carriage. On the Afrosiyob, these are Western-style toilets.

On the older Sharq and Night Trains however, these can be an experience if you’re not used to them. They’re gravity drop style, so you can peer down the toilet to see the train tracks flying beneath you. Make sure your phone or any other valuables are firmly stowed away because there’s no getting them back if you accidentally drop them.

Toilet paper and soap isn’t always a given, so pack your own hand sanitiser and tissues!

How to Actually Book Tickets in 2026

The 45 Day Rule

Officially, the booking window for train tickets is 45 days. If you go onto the Uzbekistan Railways website right now, you’ll only see tickets for the next 45 days, and anything further than that is greyed out.

The clock resets at midnight Tashkent time (UTC+5). For those of us in the UK or Ireland, that means being at the laptop at 19:00 (GMT) or 20:00 (Daylight savings) the night before the 45 day mark.

Official Channels

The UzRailways app is the most modern interface and allows you to store your passport details in advance (do this!). You can download it for Android or iPhone.

Alternatively, if you’re a millennial like me and think this is a “Laptop Task”, this is Uzbekistan Railways’ website to book tickets on. It’s got a slightly better user experience for seeing the seat map on a larger screen.

When you book, you’ll be asked to choose your seat, and you can switch between carriages in the interface to see what’s available. For the Afrosiyob, the carriage classes aren’t always clearly marked, but you can tell the difference by the seat layout and price:

• Business: Has a 2+1 seat layout, prices are higher.
• Economy: Has a 2+2 seat layout, prices are lower.

Tips for Booking Online

• Language Glitch
  • Even when you switch to English, some station names revert to the default Cyrillic alphabet.
  • If nothing comes up when you search for a station name, try the Uzbek spelling, especially for Tashkent (Toshkent in Uzbek) – I’ve included a table below with translations of the most popular stations to help you out.
• Third party sites
  • Sites like 123Go or Advantour exist, and they can be good for peace of mind in booking tickets. However, it’s worth noting that they charge a premium, and they’re either bots doing the booking through the normal channels for you, or in some cases, a local who heads down to the station to buy your ticket.
• Check your station
  • Tashkent has two train stations:
    • Tashkent Central (Toshkent Markaziy / Ташкент пасс)
    • Tashkent South (Toshkent Janubiy / Ташкент южн)
  • Double check which one your train is going from, you don’t want to end up at the wrong vokzal, desperately trying to find a Yandex to get you to your train on time!
• Name must match your passport
  • When you buy a ticket, it’ll ask you for the name on your passport. It must match exactly – even if you go by Jane Doe, if your passport says Jane Alice Doe, that’s the name on your ticket.

Uzbek station name translations

I had a bit of an unfair advantage in Uzbekistan. I’m married to a Bulgarian, so I could already read the Cyrillic alphabet. This helped as most signage is in Russian as well as Uzbek, although there is a shift nationally to move away from Russian. If you don’t have your own Slav at home, store bought (Google translate) is fine.
Here’s some popular station names and their variants in Uzbek and Cyrillic:

English spelling	Uzbek spelling	Cyrillic/Russian spelling
Tashkent	Toshkent	Ташкент
Samarkand	Samarqand	Самарканд
Bukhara	Buxoro	Бухара
Khiva	Xiva	Хива
Qarshi	Qarshi	Карши
Urgench	Urganch	Ургенч

Tips for Payment

• Payment verification:
  • Sometimes, the payment gateway struggles with international payment verification. Make sure your bank app is open and you’re ready to approve the transaction immediately.
• The 15 minute window:
  • Once you select a seat, you have 15 minutes to finish the transaction. If your card fails, those seats get locked for another 20 minutes before they’ll reappear.
• Create your account early:
  • There’s a weird, known bug where some users with newly made accounts can’t pay immediately. Create your account a few days before you need to book to make sure it’s good to go.
• Card choice:
  • Visa and Mastercard are usually fine, but Monzo and Revolut tend to have a higher success rate with the Uzbek gateway than traditional high street banks.

The Friction with Tour Groups

In 2026, Uzbekistan Railways is under a lot of pressure. They raised fares by 15% at the start of February, but even with these hikes, reports are saying they’re selling tickets at a loss. The country is putting a lot of investment into its rail services at the moment, in part funded by taxes.

Uzbekistan Railways has a long standing partnership with domestic tour agencies, who can submit “Group Requests” for months in advance, well before the booking window opens to the public. When this happens, Uzbekistan Railways blocks out the carriages in their database. When the 45 day booking window opens to the public, the system only shows the remaining inventory.

This then naturally creates a point of friction with the locals whose taxes help fund the railways, but see very little return on their own investment. On the flip side, the counter argument is that this increased tourism brings in money for hotels, guides, souvenirs, restaurants, and attractions that they wouldn’t otherwise if they’d spend the day on a bumpy bus.

To fix this, Uzbekistan Railways did introduce a 1 Passport = 1 Ticket rule in 2023. Previously, agencies could buy 50 tickets under one name and swap them later. Now, they have to provide the actual names and passport numbers of the tourists. This made it harder for the agencies, and the playing field a little fairer for everyone else.

I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve travelled Uzbekistan with a tour group in 2024 and they were very clear about needing our exact names on our passports in order to book the rail travel. For any future journeys in Uzbekistan, I’d absolutely do it DIY, and would encourage you to do the same if you can.

What to Expect at An Uzbek Train Station

Like I mentioned in the Booking Tips section, you really do need to check your departure station on your ticket. If your ticket says “Toshkent Pass Tsentr”, go to the Central (North) one. Likewise, Toshkent Janubiy / Yuzhny is the South station. There’s about a 25 minute drive between the two, and a lot of routes were rerouted in 2024 to the South station to even out passenger load.

Security at the Stations

Finding Your Carriage

Porter Service

There are men with trolleys who will offer to carry your bags for a few thousand som (usually about £1/€1.20). If you’ve got a massive, heavy suitcase, it may make your travels a bit easier paying for a helping hand.

The 2026 Khiva Update

As I mentioned earlier, 2026 is the year that the Jaloliddin Manguberdi trains launch to connect Tashkent to Khiva in 7 hours and 40 minutes. At the time of writing in Spring 2026, the trains are still in their testing phase and not open for public booking yet. If you’re travelling to Uzbekistan later in the year, you may see them available to book when your own booking window opens up.

These trains are the most modern, high tech trains Uzbekistan has, so they’re bound to be as popular as the Afrosiyob, and as quick to book out.

My Trip on the Afrosiyob

I took my own trip from Tashkent to Samarkand in August 2024. In fact, as I was writing this, I came across a little video I’d recorded of myself awake, dressed, and bleary eyed at 6am about to leave my hotel room and realising I’d left my passport in the safe. Not ideal. Thankfully, the passport made the journey along with me, or I wouldn’t have gotten very far through the security checks at the station.

Quick Uzbekistan Train Travel Checklist

Before you book

• Create your account on Uzbekistan Railways a couple of days in advance.
• Store your passport details in the app or the website’s “passengers” section.
• Set a calendar reminder/alarm for midnight Tashkent time (UTC+5) 45 days before your desired travel day – this is when the public inventory drops.
• If you aren’t using a travel friendly card like Revolut or Monzo, tell your bank you’re making a purchase in Uzbekistan so they don’t block the secure verification.
• Buy an e-sim before you travel to make sure you stay connected and can access your tickets.

On The Day of Travel

• Look at your ticket one more time and double check your station/vokzal.
• Arrive at least 45 minutes before departure to give enough time to get through security.
• Even with your e-sim, it’s a good idea to have a paper printout of your ticket just in case
• If you’re vegan or have other dietary needs, buy some snacks before you travel. I’ve got some of my favourite travel snacks here.
• Don’t pack your passport away in your main luggage, keep it to hand.

And that’s it! If you’ve gotten your head around the app, figured out some basic Cyrillic, and managed to nab your Afrosiyob ticket at the midnight drop, you’re already doing amazing.

Whatever mode of transport you choose to travel Uzbekistan, I genuinely wish you the best time. It’s an incredibly special and breathtakingly beautiful country, and I hope you love it as much as I did.