Khiva - the poor man's Samarkand and Bukhara?

Monday 7 May

Khiva is a walled town; not like Chester, in England, where you can actually walk on the walls around the city, but you can walk all around the outside of this small high-walled town.  It takes about 2 hours strolling gently.  As mentioned previously, we did this on Sunday afternoon just to get a feel of the place.  It's definitely a "desert" place - everything is very dusty, and the whole town is built mostly of a sand coloured clay and straw mix, on a brick foundation.

It's Monday and we hire a guide to show us around the town and take us to the most interesting places.  There are mausoleums (high, intricately decorated tombs) to see, mosques and madrasaurs (universities of bygone centuries, where boys were taught Islam-related studies for many years).  There are museums with items of the 19th and 20th centuries on  display, and occasionally there are artefacts from earlier centuries.  Khiva has its own charm, especially as a walled city, and the people are just as friendly, if not even more so than in Samarkand (not quite so noticable in touristy Bukhara).  However, it is poorer than Bukhara and Samarkand,  and I would say that its monuments are not as old or as magnificent as the these other Silk Road towns.

We notice a woman by the side of the road, preparing an "oven" (fuelled by bracken) in order to bake bread.  The oven is like a large clay-built bee hive; the bread is baked over the hole at the top.  Our young guide Omeda tells us that everyone bakes their own bread here - every house has one of these "ovens".  The traditional bread is flat and round.

We enter a one of the mausoleums.  For the sake of tourists who have prayer requests,  an "Immam"  or priest is there in one of the rooms, sitting cross-legged, chanting, a large plate with lots of pieces of bread on it, on the floor in front of him.  2 tourists are kneeling, facing him.  Omeda explains that the tourists bring bread to give to the priest, because bread is life.  I explain to Omeda about Jesus sharing the bread and wine at the last supper, and how Christians take communion, because Jesus asked us to remember that his body was broken for us, and his blood shed for us.

We share a pot of black tea with Omeda half way through our tour , and she tells us some of what's happening in her life.  Omeda's mother runs a hotel (with Omeda's help when she's not tour-guiding).  Omeda is due to get married in the Autumn, but her boyfriend works in the Ukraine, and will continue to work there, probably returning to Uzbekistan only a few times a year, even after they are married.  Omeda says her father died suddenly 4 years ago and she cannot leave her mother, so Omeda and her husband will live apart when they marry.  Omeda tells us that this happens often in Uzbek culture, as it is so difficullt to find work.

At the end of our tour, Omeda takes us to show us her hotel - it's really nice, cool inside and tastefully decorated.  I think she's hoping we'll recommend it to people.

Our last evening in Khiva, and we are having a meal in a restaurant (yes, I have plov and so does Reg!) and a Uzbek band comes on - they sing ( a bit like Indian music) and there's some Arabic dancing - a good end to our stay here.  Tomorrow lunchtime we leave Khiva for a 2 and a half day train journey to Almaty in Kazakhstan - stopping briefly in Tashkent.  We their will be no internet access on the train and we don't know what the internet facilities will be like in Kazakhstan - but we'll post the next blog as soon as we can!

Our memories of Uzbekistan will include:

1.  When the hotel says they'll send a car to meet you at the station, they won't.

2.  When you're told you'll have your washing back the next day, you'll get it the day after that.

3. “In 5 minutes” means, anything up to half an hour – or they might forget completely.

4. The tour guide will arrive an hour early. The taxi will arrive half an hour early.

5. The beautiful, intricate, majestic architecture.

6. The kindness, friendliness, warmth and generosity of the Uzbek people – we could learn a lot from the attitude of a people who work very hard for very little reward.