eGlobal Education: Khiva--mud-walled city of the Uzbekistan desert

late afternoon sun over Khiva

I love Khiva, Uzbekistan. Its old city, completely surrounded by mud-brick walls, is full of beautiful buildings and small enough for strolling when the early morning or evening light makes the walls and monuments glow.

outside wall of Khiva at sunset

The khans covered their palaces, madrassas and tombs with gorgeous majolica tiles in blue, turquoise and white, creating cool, peaceful spaces. (When we were here last year and the temperature was over 105 degrees, they were particularly inviting.)

The old city has been restored and is now an open air museum, a UNESCO World Heritage site in its entirety. Getting here is not easy, so Khiva is not overwhelmed with busloads of tourists—yet. We flew 2 hours from Tashkent to Nukus, to see the remarkable Savitsky Museum there (more on that in another blog), then drove 4 hours to Khiva over really terrible roads. To get to Bukhara from Khiva is another difficult drive, 7 to 8 hours, over crumbling asphalt with huge potholes. The government is in the process of building a road linking Tashkent to Khiva and has completed about 75 miles, which is lovely, but way too short. The bright side is that we’ve visiting before the tourist hordes descend, as they certainly will someday soon when it’s easier to get here.

gorgeously tiled mihrab in tomb

child watching acrobats

Khiva has rebuilt its craft culture with silk weaving, silk rug weaving, wood carving, suzani (embroidery) and pottery. Years ago, a British man restarted the silk rug craft in a small workshop in the middle of the old city. That is now thriving, but, years ago, when the mayor told him to give him 2 particularly beautiful silk rugs, he refused, pointing out that the women who made them had spent many months making the carpets. Soon after that, when he had left Uzbekistan for a trip home, he returned to the airport and was refused entry to the country. Not only that, but he was also denied access to any flight out of the country, so he spent weeks in the airport with friends bringing him food before he was able to leave (and never return).

pilgrims visiting Khiva's holy tombs

There are several hotels inside the walls of Khiva. One is a former madrassa, which looks like a lovely place to stay until you see the rooms, dark, dank caves that students used to inhabit for living and study. So, we chose one of the other hotels, in an old house, but nicely refurbished into a comfortable, if somewhat basic hotel. We all loved it, particularly sitting in the garden for dinner under the grape vines.

Ladies chatting on bed outside home

You need to spend a full day in Khiva with a really good guide to understand which khans lived when and who did what. Just hearing about their uniquely gruesome ways of killing people (errant wives, foreigners, an architect who said he couldn’t build a huge palace in 2 years, and so on) will give you a chill. If you come to Uzbekistan, don’t just visit Tashkent (limited interest), Bukhara and Samarkand, take the time to see the Fergana Valley, home to much of the agriculture and beautiful crafts of the country, and Khiva, one of the most beautiful walled cities in the world.