Zarafshan

Gold-mining city in Uzbekistan's Kyzyl Kum desert, built around the Muruntau deposit.

Zarafshan is a closed gold-mining city planted in the middle of the Kyzyl Kum desert in northern Uzbekistan. It exists entirely because of the Muruntau gold deposit nearby — one of the largest open-pit gold mines in the world — and it has essentially no reason to exist otherwise. The city is home to an expat community of miners and engineers, but almost no travelers ever make it here.

Getting in is the real challenge. The city has historically required a special permit to enter, and local police have been known to turn away visitors who show up without the right paperwork. Check the current permit requirements before attempting the trip. If you do manage to get in, the bleak Soviet-era grid of apartment blocks against a backdrop of endless desert has a strange fascination — a company town at the edge of the world.

There are several flights connecting Zarafshan to Tashkent, which is the only realistic way to arrive. The even more remote settlement of Uchkuduk lies further into the desert and is sometimes visible from the air on the Tashkent–Urgench route.

Guide

Getting There

Zarafshan has its own airport, ZAJ, with several flights a week from Tashkent operated by Uzbekistan Airways. The flight takes a little over two hours. There is also a regular charter service for mine workers that occasionally has spare seats.

By road, Zarafshan sits at the end of a six-hour drive across the Kyzyl Kum from Bukhara, or a longer haul south from Nukus. Public transport is sparse — a few buses link the city to Navoi, the regional capital. Foreigners typically need a special permit to enter; arrange this through a registered Uzbek tour operator well before arrival. Without it you are likely to be turned around at the checkpoint outside town.

Guide

Things to Do

Zarafshan is not a tourist destination. There are no monuments, no old town, no museum that an outside visitor will be allowed into. What the city offers is its strangeness — a Soviet-built grid of apartment blocks stranded in the Kyzyl Kum, an industrial gold-mining outpost the size of a small European town, with the largest open-pit gold mine on earth a few kilometres away. Get the permits sorted, fly in, and let the strangeness do the work.