Samarkand is the rare Silk Road city where travelling alone costs you nothing: guesthouse courtyards seat strangers at one table, plov is eaten shoulder to shoulder, and the old mahallas are safe enough to wander after dark.
The backpacker institution of Samarkand: a vine-shaded courtyard 200 m from the Registan where guests eat a communal dinner on shared tapchans for about 35,000 UZS. Dorm beds run 100,000 UZS; drop in for tea even if you sleep elsewhere.
The leafy canteen where Samarkand's small expat and guide crowd eats, open 11:00–23:00 under old plane trees. Solo diners get a normal table rather than a banquet hall, the menu is in English, and mains run 45,000–90,000 UZS.
The mud-brick lanes between Bibi-Khanym and the Shah-i-Zinda necropolis are Samarkand's easiest wander: no traffic, children playing, doors open onto grapevine courtyards. Free, walkable at any daylight hour, and hassle is close to zero.
Samarkand's evening paseo runs 1.5 km from the Amir Timur statue to the state university gates. Students practise English on anyone who looks foreign, ice cream costs 8,000 UZS, and families stay out on the benches until midnight.
In Konigil village on the Siab river the Mukhtarov brothers revived 8th-century silk-paper making. The 30,000 UZS tour ends with you pounding mulberry bark yourself at the water wheel, and the craftsmen linger over tea afterwards.
A cavernous locals' hall where lunchtime plov at 28,000 UZS is served at long shared tables from noon until the cauldron empties, usually by 14:00. Point-and-order works fine and foreign faces are rare enough to attract friendly questions.
Uzbekistan's oldest winery, founded 1868, runs tastings of ten wines and brandies for around 70,000 UZS between 10:00 and 17:00 in a small museum room. You sit with whoever else turned up that hour, which is exactly the appeal.
Samarkand's craft brewery pours unfiltered lager at roughly 25,000 UZS a half-litre in a courtyard near Bibi-Khanym, open until 23:00. Bar seating, live music from 19:30 and a mixed crowd of guides, expats and travellers.
Timur's astronomer grandson cut a 40-metre marble sextant into this hillside in 1420 and measured the year to within 25 seconds. The excavated trench and museum cost 30,000 UZS, open 08:00–19:00, and at opening you often have it alone.
The grassy hills north of Siab hide 2,700 years of pre-Mongol Samarkand. The museum's 7th-century Sogdian ambassador frescoes are the reason to come, at 25,000 UZS, 09:00–18:00, and the ruins behind it are usually deserted.
An 18-metre sarcophagus said to lengthen each year sits on a bluff above the Siab river, with a holy spring below and a pistachio tree that pilgrims believe was revived by its water. Entry 25,000 UZS, and the riverside path back is quiet.
The hilltop mosque above Siab Bazaar has a carved wooden terrace facing west over the old city's domes, with Islam Karimov's white marble mausoleum on the slope below. Entry about 20,000 UZS and the terrace stays calm until closing at 20:00.