I spent most of the day with the guide, Tolqin, and for the whole morning I thought well, I have a free day tomorrow so I’ll go back to all these fabulous places and take pictures at my leisure. After lunch I realized this was not a good plan because there was just too much and it turns out I was too tired to go back anyway, but I hope these give the idea, just imagine it all multiplied by three, and I included a couple pictures from the internet too.
A two hundred year old wooden gate. Fortunately/unfortunately when I started to compose a little summary of Khiva’s more than 2,500 year history, google’s AI did it better: “Khiva has been destroyed and rebuilt at least seven times throughout its history, a fate common to most ancient Central Asian cities that served as important Silk Road trade posts and were subjected to numerous conquests. While it’s impossible to give a precise count, the city’s resilience is evident in its surviving architecture, with the current walls dating to the 17th century and the well-preserved Ichan-Kala (the inner city from late Medieval times) being a UNESCO World Heritage site.”
This is an internet aerial photo where you can see a bit of the wall, one of the four gates leading into the city, and prominently featured is the unfinished minaret, called Kaltaminor, begun in 1852 and meant to be the tallest minaret in the world, construction stopped in 1855 when Muhammad Amin Khan, the force behind the plan, died in battle in Iran.
We had a glorious lunch on the second floor balcony of a nice restaurant but one that was not big enough to hold the tour group hordes populating other more well-known places. We had a lamb and a beef kabob, both excellent, a sampler plate of dumplings, and four kinds of Khiva Quesadilla, everything delicious.
Good idea, after lunch I decided I’d better start taking some pictures.
Women making bread in much the same style as I’ve seen in so many places. You roll or pat out some dough and then you whack it against the side of a red-hot oven. Here they heated the oven by burning dried cotton stems, and that was different.
A silk carpet workshop open for visitors. There were other workshops too especially wood carvers but I didn’t stop in. Also there are shopping stalls along all the walking streets in the center of the center of town, all what you’d expect, all just for you and at a very special price, just for you. I should add there are no children following you and no one asks to sell you something more than once. It was very calm actually.
So many brides as is often the case in picturesque places and also in holy places, and Khiva is both. The brides and grooms take two sets of pictures I learned, always one set in traditional wear and another set in western style white gowns.
One of the inner courtyards. I haven’t spoken yet about the extremes of weather in this part of the world, Nukus included, with soaring heat in the summer months and deep freezing cold in the winter. You can see how they spend all the time outside when the weather permits and when it’s too cold people of means will retreat to a heated yurt.
This type of glazed tile decorated palaces, mosques, the madrasas, homes probably, I lost tract of where I was, there was so much of it.
An inside room in one of the palaces I think. There is an old palace and a new palace, both quite grand.
Most of the vendors were on the street so she must be special?
The king’s reception room. I don’t remember which royal family built it.
This is about 1/4 of the Friday Mosque below, an internet picture. It’s being refurbished now so I decided to use this picture because it’s cool looking and one of the oldest original structures, first documented in the 10th century, rebuilt in 1788.
I’ll talk more about Khiva tomorrow!
I talked about the brides before, and here’s a lovely one on the steps of my hotel.
My hotel and the attached restaurant.
This is a cemetery.
The monument closest to my hotel.
