When I was in Uzbekistan, I decided to add a day tour to Tajikistan to my itinerary, if only so that I could add a new country to the list of those visited. It would have been easier for me just to stay in Uzbekistan as the day tour to The Seven Lakes of Tajikistan was just so bad. Let me explain.
Having received my Tajikistan visa just three days before the tour, I was lucky to be able to head off into Tajikistan. The day started with an hour’s drive from Samarkand to the border with Tajikistan. The road was challenging but certainly not horrendous, and even the border crossing into Tajikistan was relatively smooth, though some local people decided that they were too good to wait in line and skipped the line as best they could.
Having switched cars at the border between Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, we boarded a Mercedes Sprinter bus that holds around 20 people. After 30 minutes, we first stopped at a local market, the Panjakent Bazaar, to exchange cash and buy some Tajikistan fruit and souvenirs. This was an interesting short stop and gave us our first glimpse of everyday life in Tajikistan before we continued towards the Seven Lakes. We then boarded the bus to continue our drive to the mountains.
About 45 minutes after crossing the border, we reached another checkpoint, having to provide a copy of our passports, before beginning the ascent along the mountain road towards The Seven Lakes.
To say that these were the worst roads I’ve ever encountered would perhaps be stretching the truth, but they were not far off. Perhaps some roads in Bhutan were worse, or possibly some of the roads I experienced on certain days in Mongolia.
With various photo stops along the way, at each of the lakes, the drive to the 7th lake took around three hours. The journey was made even more frustrating by the fact that our driver decided to stop and help another vehicle that had broken down, leaving the tour group to walk between Lakes 3 and 4 in the hot Tajikistan sun.
Eventually, we reached the end point of the drive, only to discover that another 15-minute hike to Lake 7 awaited us.
Now, I don’t want to be too harsh about the lakes themselves. They were certainly pleasant and the scenery was attractive, but to say that I found them exceptionally impressive would be an overstatement. The bigger problem was that we spent most of the day getting there and back.
We stopped for between five and 10 minutes at each lake, with a lunch break of an hour or so at Lake 7. The rest of the day was spent bouncing around on shocking mountain roads, enough to rattle your teeth and repeatedly throw you into the windows of the vehicle.
Then came the return journey. If anything, the road down seemed even worse, especially since everyone was tired after the long journey to reach the 7th lake. We departed our lunch stop at 3PM and didn’t reach the smoother road until 4:50PM.
That’s nearly TWO HOURS of further bouncing, rattling and shaking. By this stage, I was developing a serious sense of humor failure. Eventually, we made it back onto the smoother road and began heading towards the Uzbekistan border.
Unfortunately, fate intervened once again. One of the other tour buses that was part of our day tour broke down. This meant that our driver once again had to reverse course and go and help get the vehicle back onto the road.
Eventually, we arrived at the Uzbekistan border at around 5:30PM and, thankfully, made it through border control with relative ease.
Then came the final challenge: the journey from the border back to Samarkand. We had to endure another hour of the same horrible roads before eventually reaching the meeting point and the chance to put an end to a rather annoying and frustrating day.
So, was the day tour to The Seven Lakes worth it? For me, absolutely not.
If you are looking for a day tour where the destination is reasonably interesting but not exceptional, the roads are horrendous and bumpy, and you enjoy being hot, dusty and shaken around in a vehicle for most of the day, then go right ahead and book this tour.
As for me, I could quite easily have spent the day exploring more of the fascinating sights around Samarkand and enjoyed myself considerably more.
That said, I want to make one thing clear: this is my personal experience of a particular day tour. Let me be clear that this blog post is not aimed at a specific service provider but rather the whole process of the day tour from Samarkand to The Seven Lakes.
The Seven Lakes themselves may well be worth visiting as part of a longer Tajikistan itinerary where you can take your time and enjoy the scenery rather than spending almost the entire day travelling there and back.
The one redeeming quality of the day tour was that I got to add country number 56, Tajikistan, to the list of countries I have visited. Other than that, it was a lesson learned. From now on, any tour advertised as going ‘off road’ in Central Asia can quite easily be avoided.
Perhaps you will have a different experience if you choose to do The Seven Lakes Day Tour from Samarkand to Tajikistan. However, just know that you are in for a most uncomfortable day of driving over really bumpy roads for a destination that, unfortunately, is rather underwhelming.
Regarding the visa for Tajikistan: if you, like me, are traveling on a UK passport, make sure that you apply for a visa before entering Tajikistan, otherwise you will be refused entry. Read my blog post ‘How to Apply for a Tajikistan Visa: A Step-by-Step Guide’ (current as of June 2026).
Consider reading other posts on Tajikistan by Two Passports Packed.
(Visited in August 2026)