Khiva to Bishkek - air vs overland

[helivans]

Hi

Our plans for 3 weeks in Uzbekistan and 5 weeks in Kyrgyzstan for this June- July are coming together well.

We're flying into Tashkent, getting trains then between Samarkand, Bukhara, Nukus. Then doing a 3 day tour Aral sea and other things.

Then Khiva for a couple of days.

This is where I'm looking for advice on a few options i've been considering for how we get from the to Bishkek (where we'll pick up a 4x4 to start our Kyrgyzstan travel).

• Option 1 - TRAIN - Khiva - Tashkent - crossing through Kazakstan and then looks (from Rome 2 RIo) that there's a need for a drive for the last 1.5 hours into Bishkek.
  
  • Option 2- Train - Khiva - Tashkent - doing a night in Fargada, then crossing into Osh. Then internal flight form OSh to Bishkek?
    
    • Option 3 - Train & Flight - Khiva, Urgench - Tashkent - Bishkek (doesn't look like any direct flights from Urgench) - quicker, despite changes, but assuming a lot more expensive for 2 of us.
    I've accepted that we'll need to take a few different changes to get form Khiva to Bishkek. I'm between taking a faster route (more expensive) vs doing more 'on land' - so interested in any additional thought on whether some of these train journeys are scenic / worth taking the time, vrs the flights (which are not direct anyway).
    
    thanks
    
    heledd

[sebhoff]

There are two night trains from Khiva to Andijan (Tuesday and Saturdays - about 21.50€ in 2nd class sleeper). The Tuesday connection gets into Andijan at 12:13 - which should easily leave enough time to make it to Osh on the same day and then catch an evening flight to Bishkek. Flights between Bishkek and Osh are very competitively priced - I paid around 20€ for the ticket (including 15kg luggage, if I remember correctly).
I did this in the other direction last October and enjoyed it a lot. The train ride involves old Soviet-style carriages and is a great way to cross the country. The ride is not scenic most of the way - but this changes once you have left Tashkent. There's plenty to see on the way up to the tunnel and then travelling down into the Fergana valley.

PS: The Afrosiyob trains between Tashkent and Samarkand/Bukhara get booked up quite quickly - so it's worth buying tickets (online) early. For a completely different train experience, book a VIP-seat between Samarkand and Bukhara for 128,000 som...

[helivans]

Thank you so much Seb - I like the sound of that plan.

Can I ask where you bought flights from? Did you pre-book online from home before your trip? I have found this website to work ok for me and I can see only 1 flight, https://www.aero.kg/f/%D0%9E%D0%A8%D0%A ... %D0%AD1000 Although, from other websites it shows several more flights a day.

[sebhoff]

Yes - that's the airline I used (and the website through which I booked my flight). Odd - there used to be more flights per day. Other airlines that are supposed to fly this route are Tez Air, Air Manas and Air Kyrgyzstan - see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osh_Airport.
The live departure board via https://airportinfo.live/departures/oss/airport-osh suggests Tez Jet left a few minutes ago and is on its way to Bishkek... You can use that page to see that other flights are leaving/have left today. So I suppose a bit more digging on the web will lead to further insights... Happy hunting!
Sebastian

[helivans]

Hmm

Website gives an error if you select "Other" in the list of countries (no option for UK).

Do I risk selecting US or Germany for country, but put the correct passport number in...

Is anyone going to notice that it says US on the order number?!

[ClaraCroft]

Hello!

Apparently there is also a night bus Tashkent-Bishkek: https://www.journalofnomads.com/how-to- ... ek-by-bus/

I am also considering how to go to Kirghizistan from Khiva, might be taking a flight to Taskent and then the night bus.
Ciao!
Clara

[helivans]

Thanks.

We had problems trying to book online as all the sites for flights use Russian based payments, so not working for us from the Uk (despite being in Uzbekistan now).

Today we went to a local Aviakassa" (Авиакасса), and bought our ticket there. There was no flights available for the day we planned to travel - despite being available when we looked online a few weeks ago.

Would recommend getting them early, just in case.

Maybe there’s some left available in other towns or at the airport, but we didn’t want to risk pushing the dates back more than the days, so we took the chance to get some tickets.

Flight / bus to Tashkent could be an option also. We considered, but looking forward to the overland train through Uzbekistan!

Have a good trip

H