VacationSelector
Inverness Castle above the River Ness, Inverness
InvernessInverness Castle above the River Ness
A madrasa and its minarets on the Registan, Samarkand
SamarkandA madrasa and its minarets on the Registan

Photos: Inverness by Diliff, CC BY-SA 3.0, cropped; Samarkand by Yaşar Başkurt, Pexels License.

Inverness or Samarkand?

Our verdict in twelve categories, each scored against the same fixed benchmark cities, and the climate month by month, so you can choose for your trip.

Choose Inverness for

  • nature and the outdoors
  • families
  • beaches

What lies behind each score is written up on Inverness’s own page.

Choose Samarkand for

  • culture and sights
  • prices
  • food and drink

What lies behind each score is written up on Samarkand’s own page.

Scoreboard

Twelve categories on one fixed scale from 0 to 100. The shaded stretch is the gap between the two.

Beaches & swimming. Inverness 20, Samarkand 4: Inverness leads by 16 points.
Food & drink. Inverness 36, Samarkand 54: Samarkand leads by 18 points.
Culture & sights. Inverness 27, Samarkand 84: Samarkand leads by 57 points.
Nightlife. Inverness 28, Samarkand 14: Inverness leads by 14 points.
Nature & outdoors. Inverness 84, Samarkand 40: Inverness leads by 44 points.
Day trips. Inverness 56, Samarkand 72: Samarkand leads by 16 points.
Good for families. Inverness 55, Samarkand 30: Inverness leads by 25 points.
Getting around. Inverness 48, Samarkand 58: Samarkand leads by 10 points.
Shopping & style. Inverness 30, Samarkand 42: Samarkand leads by 12 points.
Affordability. Inverness 38, Samarkand 80: Samarkand leads by 42 points.
Live music & performing arts. Inverness 33, Samarkand 24: Inverness leads by 9 points.
Wellness & relaxation. Inverness 30, Samarkand 32: Samarkand leads by 2 points.
0255075100

What lies behind each score is written up on the two cities’ own pages: Inverness and Samarkand.

Your match

Pick a travel style or drag the sliders, and both match scores follow your weighting.

Inverness
40match

Wins on nature and the outdoors and families with your weighting.

Samarkand
Best match
45match

Wins on culture and sights and prices with your weighting.

What matters to you?

When should you go?

Pick your month. The climate figures are measured averages, not a forecast.

Inverness in July

19 °Cdaytime high
11 °Cnight-time low
69 mmrain in the month
5 hsunshine a day
14 °Csea
17 hdaylight a day

Samarkand in July

34 °Cdaytime high
19 °Cnight-time low
2 mmrain in the month
12 hsunshine a day
No seasea
15 hdaylight a day

Daytime high, °C

0°10°20°30°40°JFMAMJJASOND

Rainfall in the month, mm

0255075100125JFMAMJJASOND
InvernessSamarkand

Where the figures come from

Inverness has no rain gauge within 25 km of the centre, so its rainfall comes from a gridded climate dataset read at the city rather than from a gauge further away.

Inverness's sunshine is measured 43 km from the centre, at Kinloss.

Temperature and rainfall are climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Inverness: 2005-2020 (sunshine 1991-2020, rainfall 1991-2020) normals, Inverness / Dalcross (11.9 km from centre). Samarkand: 1991-2020 normals, Samarkand (10 km from centre).

Before you go

MeasureInvernessSamarkand
Official languageEnglishUzbek
CurrencyPound Sterling (GBP)Uzbekistan Sum (UZS)
SocketsG230 V, 50 HzCFI220 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideLeftRight
Time zoneUTC, UTC+1 in summerUTC+5
Emergency number112 or 999112
Elevation7 m702 m
Main airportInverness Airport (INV)12 km from centre15 non-stop destinationsSamarkand International Airport (SKD)5 km from centre29 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year10 days-

By the numbers

MeasureInvernessSamarkand
City population47,380546,303
People per km²2,2895,058
Museums within 10 km311
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km01
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone-

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Inverness or Samarkand somewhere new.

Browse every destination

Sources

Ground elevations sampled from the Mapzen terrain tiles via OpenTopoData, merging SRTM, ASTER, NED, EU-DEM and national sources. Structured data from Wikidata (CC0). Weather data by Meteostat. Meteorological data provided by NOAA, DWD and others. Rainfall where no rain gauge is within 25 km is from the TerraClimate 1991-2020 climatology (Abatzoglou et al. 2018, Scientific Data), read at the city. Sea surface temperature from NOAA OISST v2.1, NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory. Airport data from OurAirports (public domain). Public holidays from Nager.Date (MIT). Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates. Non-stop route lists from the "Airlines and destinations" tables on English Wikipedia airport articles, by Wikipedia contributors, reused under CC BY-SA 4.0. Currency from the ISO 4217 register maintained by SIX, cross-checked against country data from GeoNames (CC BY 4.0). Price level from World Bank open data (PPP conversion factor for private consumption and official exchange rate), CC BY 4.0. Time zones from GeoNames (CC BY 4.0); clock offsets computed from the IANA time zone database. Daylight hours computed from each destination's latitude using the NOAA solar position algorithm.

Category scores are our editorial verdict under rubric v3, each placed against the same fixed benchmark cities; the climate figures are measured. How the scores are set. Snapshot generated 2026-10-31. Daily budgets are estimates from country price levels.