Khiva

The drive from Bukhara to Khiva was pretty long – 7 hours including a half hour stop for lunch. I was amazed to see the change in the landscape from green fields and greenhouses to shrubs and scrub, to flat low scrub and sand. The lunch stop included a fabulous meal of ‘country meat’, basically thin strips of sliced meat and chips. Yum!

We also got to see the Turkmenistan border, and go across a bridge which is simultaneously a railway and a lane of traffic, so both directions of traffic had to stop for a train to go through, then wait for the other side. The roads in the second half of the trip were pretty bad, so much so that my watch decided I’d done a good 1500 steps more than at the start of the journey!

Arriving in Khiva, we just wanted to rest somewhere that wasn’t moving, so we had a quick lie down at the hotel, the large and sparse Khiva Bek Hotel. The hotel looks very new and square and clean, but there doesn’t seem to be many people staying here.

We took a walk in the evening to get the lay of the land, wandering through the park next door which housed a huge flagpole with the biggest, most majestically flowing flag I’ve ever seen (did it have its own fan? The thing was flowing beautifully even when there was no breeze down at ground level…), and then exploring a few streets looking for dinner.

We found a cafe that called itself a hot dog shop, but inside was an ornate restaurant. Most of the staff didn’t speak English, so we ordered some food with the help of a menu and google translate.

Luckily, a recognisable and suitable amount of food arrived, and we had some delicious shashlik and tea, with a ‘dollar salad’ of some kind of meat strips with cucumber, walnuts and mayo. After seeing it on a menu later, this mystery meat might have been beef tongue. Tasted okay.

We had a walking tour through the old town, which was surrounded by fortress walls. There were some spectacular sights here, like the very photogenic Unfinished Minaret, a wide and squat that probably should be the tallest in Central Asia if it had been finished, but it looks like it was only half done, and it sits very squat and wide compared to the tall minarets we’ve seen elsewhere. It’s got gorgeous tile decoration in bands all the way up though, and is very aesthetically pleasing.

We also climbed the watchtower on the walls, which was tall enough for me to be satisfied, but R was still keen to climb the tall minaret later in the day (weird!)

We also visited a number of madrasah, an old mosque, the king’s palace harem where he lived with his four wives and 20-odd concubines.

Our guide advised us that the caravanserai near the harem would be a good place to shop, so we popped in for some souvenirs.

After R climbed the big minaret it was finally time for lunch, so we stepped into the tea shop to eat. R continued his exploration of noodles by trying out the very green shivet oshi, and I had something different by trying the stuffed veg. Yum!

After lunch we headed back to revisit the caravanserai but we weren’t feeling very shop-y, as everyone had that post-lunch feeling, so we walked back to the hotel for a break.

We tried out another small cafe near the hotel for dinner, and I found something else new to try – Grechka plov, a variation on the usual which uses buckwheat instead of rice.

The tour of Uzbekistan came to an end with a flight back to Tashkent before we headed our separate ways, me home again and R to see a bit more of south east Asia before he headed back home.

I definitely want to see more of the Stans at some point – let’s hope it happens soon.