Day Trip to the Seven Lakes?

We made a similar trip a couple of months ago! and although it was quite a long day, it was absolutely doable. If you prefer to go independently, you could potentially hire a driver in Tajikistan to meet you at the border and take you to the Seven Lakes. Just a heads-up, though: a 4x4 is necessary since the roads can be quite rough.

From what I understand, hiring a driver in Uzbekistan might be tricky due to the complicated border crossing regulations. Much easier to arrange a driver from Tajikistan to pick you up from the border and start the tour from there.

Hello,
I'm considering a different approach and would appreciate any tips or insights. My plan is to take a shared taxi from Samarkand to the border, then cross over and catch a local taxi to Panjakent. I’d like to arrange for a guide to take me on a day hike to the Seven Lakes or the Fan Mountains. Ideally, I want to return to Samarkand the same day if that’s possible.

I’m trying to avoid spending a lot on organized tours since I’m traveling solo, and they can be quite pricey.

We traveled with a company called Marcopolo, and it cost us $140 per person for a group of two. The package included pick-up and drop-off at the Uzbekistan border, plus a brief stop at the Panjakent mosque and bazaar to grab some supplies before heading to the lakes. If you start from Panjakent, I think it could be cheaper. You can reach out to Said at +992 92 633 0203 for more details.

For our one-day tour, we went with Sogda Tours. The whole trip took around 10 hours, including pick-up and drop-off at our hotel in Samarkand. We ended up paying $360 for two people. Hope this helps!

I’m not sure if this will be useful, but I spent three nights in Panjakent last autumn. When I booked my hotel, I asked the owner if he could set up a trip to the Seven Lakes, and he arranged it with a local taxi driver. I paid just $80 for the trip.

To get to Panjakent, I took a marshrutka from Samarkand to the border for about 20,000 som (roughly $1.75), then a shared taxi from the border to Panjakent for 20 TJS (around $1.85). The return journey was the same, so I ended up spending significantly less than what I’ve seen quoted here. Being in Panjakent definitely made things easier.

@yamary Thanks for the great info! I’d love to know which hotel you stayed at in Panjakent. Could you share the name?

Sure! The hotel is called Umariyon, though you might also see it spelled as Umarion due to transliteration issues.

To give you a clearer picture of my journey: I went to what’s known as the Kaftarxona “bus station” in Samarkand, which is more of a busy road with various buses and taxis. I took a marshrutka to the border for 20,000 som ($1.75). From the border to Panjakent, I would have paid the usual fare of 20 somoni ($1.85) for a shared taxi, but since I didn’t have any somoni yet, the taxi driver accepted 25,000 som ($2) instead.

Now, while the title of this thread is about a day trip to the Seven Lakes, I’d recommend considering an overnight stay in Panjakent. It only takes a couple of hours to get there from Samarkand, and staying overnight would allow you to have a more relaxed experience. Plus, you’d keep a good rapport with the hotel owner.

I booked my stay at the Umariyon hotel for June, but I made the reservation back in March and mentioned my interest in visiting the Seven Lakes. When I arrived, the owner recognized me and offered to arrange a local taxi driver to pick me up at 9 AM the next day. This way, I had ample time for photos and hiking from Lake 6 to Lake 7, which was fantastic! We returned to Panjakent by 4 PM, just as planned. The total cost for the taxi was 870 somoni (around $80).

The driver was great, even though he didn’t speak any English. We communicated through gestures and laughter, and he even showed me pictures of himself swimming in Lake 6 with other tourists. The hotel experience was excellent as well; the owner was incredibly accommodating.

So, to sum it up, my total expenses came to $80 for the taxi, about $7.35 for transport at the border, and $22.50 per night for the hotel, which totals around $109.85. You could argue that the hotel cost doesn’t really count since you need a place to stay before the trip anyway.

@yamary Thanks a ton! This is super helpful. I completely agree that staying overnight in Panjakent is a smart move. I’ve adjusted my plans and booked a room at Hotel Sugd, which is pretty close to Umariyon. Looking forward to the adventure!

Hello, has anyone ever gone to the Seven Lakes in winter? We’re thinking of taking a two-day tour in January, but the weather is worrying us. Please share your experience if you’ve been there. Thank you in advance.

It’s not worth going there in January — there’s already snow, and it’s dangerous.

A local friend drove us to the border from Samarkand. A Yandex taxi comes out to 120,000 som.
And after the border you can negotiate around 80$ with taxi drivers, there are plenty of them there.
Otherwise, in Samarkand they charge 100$ per person to organize the trip. If you arrange it as a group, you can bargain for the whole car at about 120$ + round trip. The system is like this: you get picked up from your hotel, driven to the border, then you go through passport control on foot, and in Tajikistan a Tajik driver is waiting for you. You get in with him, after the trip the Uzbek driver is waiting for you and takes you back in the morning.
Everyone crosses the border on foot.
This way is faster. No one drives their own Uzbek car into Tajikistan.
In Uzbekistan they have arrangements with Tajik drivers. But who keeps how much, I don’t know.

And if you go on your own, after crossing the border in Tajikistan drivers offer 100$ per car. You can confidently bargain it down to 80$.
Usually they take you up to the 6th lake. To the 7th lake they go by SUVs or you have to walk. Take the weather into account — in wet conditions you shouldn’t go, you won’t make it. Right now the last lake is frozen, and it’s a 500 m walk to it, there are streams on the trail, so don’t wear fabric shoes.

We went to the Seven Lakes. I want to write down the timing and impressions — we left the center of Samarkand at 8:30. Spent an hour at customs waiting for the car to be allowed through. Out of that time, 30–40 minutes we were actually standing in line ourselves. There were a lot of tourists entering. It should be noted that there are no benches. No facilities either.

By 12:30 we were at the first lake. The whole road, of course, is dust and endless dust, even though we kept the windows closed most of the time and drove with the AC on. It felt like a layer of plaster was now on me and inside me. At 18:15 we were already back and sitting, waiting at customs for the car, with a queue of trucks heading toward Uzbekistan.

All in all, if I had read this kind of timing in advance, I probably wouldn’t have gone anywhere. Or you need to find a car directly in Tajikistan, but one that will 100% go all the way to the 7th lake. Because many are only taken to the 6th, and then the car can’t go further and people walk on foot — we saw some of them today.

So that’s the kind of review it turned out to be )))) it’s beautiful there, no arguing with that, but there’s a lot of time wasted along the route, and a lot of roadside dust swallowed. I wouldn’t recommend my acquaintances and friends to go to the Seven Lakes by car from Uzbekistan even once.

At 19:00 we crossed the border, the driver gave 20,000 on that side and they let him go ahead of the trucks in the oncoming lane. Still, we waited exactly an hour anyway, luckily there’s a café on the Uzbekistan side, we had some coffee).

Actually, as a rule, this excursion is offered with one car up to the border, and from the Tajik side another car meets you. Otherwise it doesn’t really make sense, of course. Processing a car at the border takes much more time than crossing it on foot yourself.

Well, I didn’t study this issue ((( and as a result, the impressions from this timing and a lot of dust, including inside the body, ruined everything. I just wrote this for other tourists. So they don’t make the same mistakes. I didn’t see such a clear review saying that you shouldn’t go by car from Uzbekistan when I was researching the topic.