Khiva or Bukhara: which should you choose if you only have time for one?

Khiva feels like stepping into a picture. Its inner town, Itchan Kala, is still surrounded by its mud-brick walls, and almost everything inside them is a monument: madrasahs, minarets, palaces and mosques packed into a few streets. In the evening, after the day visitors leave, it becomes very quiet. It was the first site in Uzbekistan to be listed by UNESCO, in 1990.

Bukhara is bigger and busier, and that is its charm. The old city is lived in: the trading domes are still full of shops, families gather around the Lyabi-Hauz pool in the evening, and you can wander for days between the Ark fortress, the Kalyan minaret (1127) and hundreds of smaller mosques and caravanserais.

In Khiva the highlights are the unfinished Kalta Minor minaret, the 213 carved wooden columns of the Juma mosque, the tiled courtyards of the Tash Hauli palace and the view over the whole town from the walls at sunset. See Itchan Kala, monument by monument.

Just outside Khiva are the desert fortresses of ancient Khorezm, 2,000-year-old mud-brick castles in the Kyzylkum desert, which nothing near Bukhara can match. See desert fortresses.

Bukhara has more monuments in total and more variety: the Samanid mausoleum (one of the oldest buildings in Central Asia), the Poi-Kalyan ensemble, the Chor Minor, and the summer palace of the last emir just outside town. See our Bukhara guide.

This is the deciding factor for most people. Bukhara is on the main rail line from Tashkent and Samarkand, so it fits easily into a short trip. Khiva is about 450 km further west across the desert, six to seven hours by road. You can reach it by train or by a flight to Urgench, 30 km away; see Urgench airport to Khiva.

If you have four days or fewer in Uzbekistan, Tashkent, Samarkand and Bukhara is the realistic choice. With five days or more, adding Khiva is worth it; our guide to how many days you need has sample plans.

Bukhara wins on choice: more restaurants, more terraces, more craft shops (ceramics, suzani, knives, carpets) and a livelier evening. Khiva has fewer places, but its own dishes are worth the trip: green dill noodles (shivit oshi), tukhum barak dumplings and fish from the Amu Darya. See what to eat in Khiva.

We live in Khiva, so you might expect us to say "Khiva". In fact we tell most first-time visitors with less than a week to choose Bukhara and come back for Khiva. But if you have five days or more, or if you love photography, archaeology and quiet places, do not skip Khiva: the walled town at dusk and the fortresses in the desert are the memories our guests talk about most.

The best answer is to see both. The classic route runs Khiva → Bukhara by road across the desert, then Samarkand and Tashkent by train; see our classic Uzbekistan tour.