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Yesterday we had toyed with the idea of going today on a long drive from Nukus, the capital of the Autonomous Republic of Karakalpakstan, to Moynak, which used to be at the edge of the Aral Sea. I, far more than Steven, was curious to to catch a glimpse of where the sea had been before it dried up in what has been called by some experts as the world's greatest man-made environmental disasters of recent times. The dying sea has lost half its area and 75 per cent of its volume in a single generation, bled dry by the Soviet obsession with growing cotton exclusively. Seeing the white salt-caked former shores where only beached fishing trawlers lay rusting in the sand ninety miles away from the nearest water would have been a sobering reminder of the dangers of environmental recklessness. But Steven was absolutely right we wouldn't have comfortably had time to consider that eight hour trip northwest and then a further three hour ride southeast to Khiva, our destination for the next several days.
Instead we played it safe and had the hotel in Nukus order us a taxi to take us to the marshrutka or shared van station so we could go directly to Khiva, located about three hours away. We negotiated the $10 fare for both of us with a car driver and figured we were all set! What a very tight fit it was with four of us in the back seat including the young boy on his mother's lap and all of her luggage. Thank goodness, I hadn't been eating too many ice cream cones recently!
Money exchanged hands between the two drivers and, after the driver didn't have any luck picking up more passengers, we were off again. We were beginning to understand why the hotel had recommended we hire a taxi to drive us the whole way!
The whole system would collapse entirely except for the government's policy of sending school children, students and adults into the fields every fall to harvest cotton. The practice has resulted in international condemnation and boycotts of products made with Uzbek cotton. Even though the government passed a law in 2009 banning the forced labor of children under 16, Anti-Slavery International and the Environmental Justice Foundation continued to find evidence of widespread 'slave labor' in 2012.
You will read in future posts about conversations I had with Uzbeks we met about their work in the cotton fields as I was curious to learn more. If you click on the picture below to make it larger, you can see people harvesting the cotton by hand.
Unlike any of the other countries we'd been in this trip, there were regular police checkpoints but the driver and car had been waived through each time. The last time we encountered anything like that was traveling by private car and a driver in Egypt several years ago. It was a reminder that we in a far from democratic country and in fact were in a totalitarian state.
As we arrived in Urgench, the city closest to Khiva with an airport, we saw an attractive mosque in the distance and then soon passed many beautiful buildings, unusual because we'd seen nothing like that for well over two hours. We wondered whether oil and gas money had paid for their construction.
Hidden in the deserts of northwest Uzbekistan was the oasis caravan town of Khiva that became the region's capital in 1592 after both the Mongols and Timur had flattened nearby towns. Khiva, or Xiva in Uzbek, provided a vital pit stop for caravans headed on to Persia. Trade with the Russian Volga added to the city's wealth and filled its caravanserais with samovars, furs, guns and Turkestani melons. Isolated and lawless, the city also grew rich on plunder and importantly on the slave trade.
Our first glimpse of Khiva were the 17th century walls with rounded bastions that surrounded the Ichan Kala or inner city. Gates at the four entrances were once sealed dusk to dawn to keep marauders out. According to our guidebook, Khiva, listed by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site, is the most architecturally intact and tightly packed of Uzbekistan's Silk Road cities. We couldn't wait to discover the city and see it for ourselves!
Just steps from our guesthouse was Hunarmand Chilik Muzeyi also known as the Museum of Handicrafts. When we were in Tashkent, we had a sense of the beauty of what we might see here in Khiva and the other Silk Road cities in Uzbekistan after visiting some of the capital's sumptuous blue-tiled mosques and madrassas or religious schools but walking into our first old madrassa here in Khiva was something I will never forget.
Oops - were we going to be in trouble when we realized the madrassa had been turned into one giant souvenir stand! We were focused on the spectacular tile work and exquisite carpentry but it was impossible to miss the women selling beautiful cotton and woolen scarves, felt slippers, etc.
Luckily, we were able to escape from the persistent vendors for a few minutes into rooms set aside for the museum. We saw an old kitchen where meals were prepared, a 19th century tannery, stone carvings and a metal carving workshop.
The carriage was used by a farmer during the 19th century.
The brightly painted rolled ceiling was exceptionally gorgeous.
The detailed mosaic walls and ceiling were so lovely in another room.
I soon came to realize we would be seeing a lot of hand knit slippers in Khiva!
We walked another hundred steps, if that, and came to the 19th century Tash Hauli or Stone Palace, home to the court of Allah Kuli Khan. It was hard to see the 'palace' from the many souvenir stalls that had been set up in its interior.
After we escaped from the palace masquerading as a crafts center, we continued our discovery of Khiva, just amazed at almost every turn by the absolutely beautiful buildings. This one had been converted into a restaurant! It had musical entertainment nightly.
As you might have guessed, there were just a few more souvenir stalls as we made our way to one of the city's gates!
Polvon Darvaza, the eastern gate of Ichan Kala, was also used as trade stalls with side arches accommodating two stalls on each side along a 200 ft. long stone corridor. At the entrance was an inscription that said 'Shakhri Khiva' or Khiva city, where letters standing in for figures gave the construction date as 1221, i.e. 1806. As there used to be a slave market until 1873 to the right of the gate at the exit from Ichan Kala, niches inside the gate marked where fugitive and rebellious slaves awaited their fate.
Again, it was heartening seeing a young boy riding his bike along the ancient corridor and not treating it like a overblown movie set which it had almost begun to feel like.
Site of the former slave market:
We couldn't fail to notice the intricate design on the gate.
A view from the gate back into Ichan Kala:
Our first day in the country's capital of Tashkent, we'd been lucky enough to come across a crafts fair that had some superb suzanis or embroidered textiles. We didn't realize then how many we'd soon see, and be tempted by, as we toured more of Uzbekistan as the quality of the workmanship was high, the designs were beautiful and the prices were reasonable!
Other items we saw in many of the stalls were jackets and coats in brightly colored ikat fabrics that we'd first seen throughout Indonesia. I knew we were here for several days so wasn't tempted to buy then. If you believe that, I have some swampland in Florida to sell you!
Ahead was Khiva's tallest minaret, the 148 ft. high Islam Khoja Minaret named after the enlightened early 20th century grand vizier who built several public schools and hospitals before being assassinated by outraged religious conservatives.
We got sidetracked momentarily by the vision of this throne and collection of fur hats in the middle of the alley! For a fee, Steven could have donned a hat and sat on the throne but he declined.
The minaret's attached madrassa had a wonderful display of ceramics, silk clothing and other applied arts but again we had plenty of time to return another day when we wanted to shop.
With the sun shining and no clouds in the sky, it was the perfect time to climb to the top of the minaret and get a bird's eye view of the city.
Climbing minarets is not for those who suffer from claustrophobia as the steps were high and there was precious little space for others to pass by!
All that was easily forgotten when we looked out the windows, though, and saw the city laid out at our feet.
Near the top, it was so steep we literally had to use our hands to climb up further!
More of stunning Khiva! We were glad we had several days to explore the city's madrassas that had been turned into museums as there were over fifty places to see if we wanted.
I was sort of relieved that no one in our family is much into chess as this beautiful set would have been heavy to bring home.
We didn't realize until later that afternoon we could have bought a two day ticket good for all the museums and most of the other sites and used it right away. We thought that we'd have to wait and buy the ticket the next day to make full use of it. That was why we just popped into the courtyard only of this mosque and madrassa.
The 1873 Yoqubboy Moja Madrassa had been converted into a Training Workshop for Traditional Carpet Weaving and Natural Dye Making.
As we have done in several other countries, I watched with admiration while the women nimbly wove tiny sections. How nice it would have been to see the finished product!
I read a flyer that indicated some of their dyes were cheap and easy to find like onion skin, apple and grape leaves which blended together gave a bright lemon yellow color. Other dyes proved to be more elusive and therefore expensive to procure, necessitating trips to Afghanistan and India. Some of their ingredients don't have any color on their own but, when mixed together, yield an impressive result. Zok and oak gall, two products I'd never heard of before, when mixed give a rich, dark blue. The information stated that all their dyes are tested for water, friction and light fastness.
The owner showed us this outstanding pure silk rug that had been made with all natural dyes and had taken five months to make. He pointed out even the shop's address had been woven into the top. The asking price was asking $2500 for it - well worth it, no doubt, but out of our price bracket for a souvenir from Khiva!
The carpet looked a different color depending on where the light shone on it.
The fur hats would be perfect on a frigid day in Moscow or Siberia, I thought. That may have explained why some Russian speakers were interested in them !
Not that I'm an animal activist but I could still never see myself wearing a fur hat or fur anything for that matter. However, it would have been interesting to know what furs these hats were made from.
The camel looked like it was right at home, having come in from the wind-swept desert sands outside the city gates!
Ahead was the bright green stub of the Kalta Minor commissioned, according to one version, by Amin Khan in 1851 to be the world's tallest minaret so he could see all the way to Bukhara. It was abandoned after he was murdered or, depending on the story, after he dropped dead four years later leaving the beautifully tiled structure unfinished.
One legend says that when the minaret's construction reached 26 meters, the vizier on a routine inspection visit said he could look from the top into the harem of the Emir or local ruler. When the Emir was informed about that, work stopped immediately! Another version is the architect would have been killed when it was finished so he could not build a similar one elsewhere. One more says that locals complained that if it had been finished, it would have towered over all the local houses and the locals would have lost their privacy. No matter which version you believe, it was still a wonderful sight to behold!
Another view of the throne!
The minaret may have been squat but the colors and pattern of the tiles were simply lovely.
The map listed all the monuments we could see in Khiva. It was rather overwhelming!
Most people enter Khiva through its western gate known as Ata Darvaza but we had entered through its southern gate. You have to agree it was a dazzling sight and one just like out of fairy tales!
From the western gate we had another marvelous view of the city walls that we had seen as we drove into town.
More views of picturesque Khiva, code for I can't remember which minaret this was!
Beautiful scarves with designs of Khiva's mosques and minarets:
Socks and scarves made out of camel hair:
After buying the Khiva ticket which we finally realized would be good for as long as we stayed in the city, we visited the Music Museum where he heard music played by 'the people's artist,' Almayan Hayitova, who came from Karakalpakstan region where we'd just arrived from that day.
It was a little far fetched to call it a 'museum' as it really only had a few pictures of instruments with no explanatory text.
Hayitova:
The adjacent Museum of Ancient Khorezem Culture looked remarkably similar once we were inside.
It would be an interesting few days seeing so many of the city's museums as they would all be in madrassas just like this one, i.e. individual cells or rooms surrounding an open courtyard!
Image of writing in the ancient local language:
The figures depicted gods from different religions.
The small 'gallery' had a wheel for lifting water, a mill, mortar, and a wooden plow from the 19th century.
One of my favorite shots in a long time:
Being in Khiva in the late afternoon was a magical time as the sun took its last bow for the day.
We found a charming restaurant to eat in Ichan Kala that didn't set us back an arm and a leg as we'd been warned eating in the touristy area might do. In fact, our two plov dishes and a pot of tea only cost 45,000 som or $5.50!
Next post: Exploring more of Khiva.
Posted on October 19th, 2018, from Almaty, Kazakhstan.
"One of my favorite shots in a long time", yes I agree, it tells the story of your adventure. Lil Red
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