Bukhara or Samarkand?

Neither city is anywhere near the sea, and neither has a beach. Bukhara's historic pools, Lyabi-Hauz among them, are for sitting beside. Around Samarkand, locals cool off in the shallow Zarafshan river and the irrigation channels, but that is not something to plan a trip around. In both cities a hotel pool is the only real way to swim, and in Bukhara's fiercer summer heat it matters even more.

The two cities cook the same Uzbek dishes, plov at lunchtime, samsa, shashlik and endless green tea. Bukhara offers less around them. Its pleasure is the setting, under the mulberry trees by the old pools or on teahouse platforms, but menus repeat across the old town, and vegetarians struggle.

Samarkand gives the same cuisine more local identity. It has its own layered plov and the dense, glazed Samarkand bread known across Central Asia, and Siab Bazaar beside Bibi-Khanym is a better market to graze through than anything in Bukhara. A winery dating from the nineteenth century adds a tasting to the trip.

These are the two great Silk Road cities, and the difference between them is one of shape. Bukhara is the more complete. Its old town hangs together from the Kalon Minaret to the Ark and the tenth-century Samanid Mausoleum, and the residential lanes in between still feel lived in, so the whole place works as one monument.

Samarkand has the more spectacular individual buildings. These are the Registan square, the tilework of Shah-i-Zinda and the gold interior of Gur-e-Amir, along with Ulugh Beg's observatory and the Afrasiyab murals. Between them, though, lie Soviet-era avenues rather than an intact old quarter.

Both cities go to bed early, and neither has a club. A Bukhara evening is gentle: tea or dinner by Lyabi-Hauz under the floodlit madrasas, then quiet streets. Samarkand is a little louder, with big restaurants where wedding parties dance to live bands and a few lounges in the Russian-era quarter. Even so, anyone who wants a late night should wait for Tashkent.

Samarkand has far better access to the outdoors. The Zarafshan range rises to the south, and about an hour away the Aman-Kutan valley and the hills above Urgut have streams, juniper woods, walnut groves and trails through Tajik-speaking villages. The Nuratau mountains are within reach for longer homestay treks.

Bukhara sits in a flat oasis of cotton fields and canals that gives way to scrub desert. Its outdoor option is a yurt camp with camel rides towards the Nurata lakes, which means a long drive and a night away.

Each city is the other's best day trip, linked by a high-speed train that takes under two hours. Beyond that, Samarkand has more within reach. Shahrisabz, Timur's birthplace, is a drive over a mountain pass that fits into a day, the Urgut Sunday bazaar sells old suzani among the produce, the paper-making village of Konigil is just outside town, and Tashkent is about two hours away by train.

Bukhara's nearby trips are smaller: the ceramics workshops of Gijduvon, the minaret at Vabkent and the Chor Bakr necropolis. From Bukhara, both Shahrisabz and Khiva need an overnight stay.

Neither city is built for children, but both are safe, and strangers in both are warm towards small visitors. Bukhara's advantage is its size. The old town is flat, mostly pedestrian and compact, so pushchairs cope and little legs do not have far to go.

Samarkand has parks with simple rides and wide pedestrian streets around the Registan, but the sights are further apart. Older children with an interest in history and tilework get the most out of it. Both cities are best avoided with young children in high summer.

Both are walking cities with cheap app taxis for the outlying sights, and neither calls for a car. Bukhara's old town is a single compact, largely car-free area, where most things lie within twenty minutes on foot through the trading domes. Samarkand is laid out in a line instead: one pedestrian street runs from the Registan past Bibi-Khanym to Shah-i-Zinda, but the observatory, Afrasiyab and the station need a taxi.

Bukhara is the better place to buy crafts. In its sixteenth-century trading domes and the madrasa courtyards around them, suzani, ikat, carpets, gold-thread caps, hammered copper and the stork-shaped scissors are often sold next to the room where they were made. Take your time and bargain gently, as quality varies.

Samarkand sells much the same from madrasa cells in the Registan and Shah-i-Zinda, but souvenirs crowd out the good pieces more. Its own specialities are hand-knotted carpets and the mulberry-bark paper pressed at Konigil.

Both cities are very cheap for plov, tea, taxis and monument entry, and family-run guesthouses are good value in either. Bukhara's guesthouses are often old merchant houses with tiled courtyards. In Samarkand, prices climb at the upper-end hotels around the Registan in spring and autumn, and imported alcohol is not cheap.

Samarkand offers a little more of an evening programme. The Registan is lit for sound-and-light shows, and in some years it hosts the Sharq Taronalari festival of music from across the East. Bukhara's offering is smaller: folk dance and costume shows in a madrasa courtyard beside Lyabi-Hauz, plus puppet shows of local tales.

In either city, classical maqom music is more likely to be heard by chance at a wedding than in a concert.

Bukhara is the more restful of the two. Several bathhouses that are centuries old still work under brick domes near the trading halls, offering steam, scrub and herbal massage much as they always have. The town's slow rhythm of courtyard mornings and afternoons over tea completes the effect.

Samarkand keeps the hammam tradition alive in a single old bathhouse near Bibi-Khanym, plus hotel spas. Its calm is found on a shaded topchan in a chaikhana, or in the old quarter once the tour groups have gone.