Travel Tips

Given the chance, don't hesitate and climb as many minarets as you feel up to - it's physically challenging but it's the views from the tops that will take your breath away, not the actual climbing. What I liked most was the way you can see the whole of the city, and with time you notice that there are basically only two colours and their shades - light-brown and light-blue, with only tiny spots of green.

When we were about to climb yet another minaret, the ticket lady gave us some kind of warning along these lines 'be careful, it's going to be very dark but you will see light at the end of ther stairs'. Now, that was no news to us any more - having previously climbed minarets we expected darkness, narrowness and steepness of the steps. And I must admit we were not disappointed there - it was the case when every limb helps, that is, we were completely blind and practically had to crawl and it took us hours, it seems, to get to the top. I mean, just look at the size of those steps in the photo!

Even before I came to Uzbekistan I'd already known what I was definitely going to see - I didn't know what this place was called but I knew what it looked like - it looked like the place where the fabulous film "orlando" was shot - and only later my research told me it's a mosque with 218 or 216 wooden carved pillars some of them dating all the way back to 11 century. I went there in the afternoon and it looked marvellous from the inside - the light coming only through the central part of the ceiling and the rest remaining somewhat darker

I never regretted getting up at 5 am to walk through the empty, absolutely quiet streets of the inner town, which is full of locals and crowds of tourists in the daytime. The feeling of being in a totally deserted town was queer, I had the whole town to myself and was feeling like I was in 18 or 19 centuries as there is nothing (no modern buildings, no noisy places - bars and restaurants, no billboards) to prove it's modern times. And wiith the first sun rays the town looked stunningly magnificent, especially from a terrace in the city wall.

Khiva is THE place to see all the tiles of all kinds you care to see - they cover some of the oldest buildings in town. It's not simply an ornament, it sometimes cover the whole of minarets, insides of mausoleums, even harem. Add to this exquisitely carved wooden and stone pillars and you'll get the unforgettable impresstion these produce.

Though most of the town buildings are not colourful (to say the least), being beige or ochre or light brown, the unfinished minaret whose surface is adorned with tiles is an exception. Just imagine how tall it should have been, had it been completed!

The inner city is impressive as it's not simply a coulpe of mosques, minarets and other buildings surrounded by some remains of a hint of a trace of city wall. The inner city of Khiva, called Ichon-Kala, is very well preserved, and the massive walls around it have numerous passages and hidden rooms so take your time to explore the hidden parts of them. The walls and some buildings were actually used for shooting "Orlando" because you can't think of a better filming location in Central Asia.

Going to and from Khiva might turn out to be an exciting and tiring expeience at the same time as it was for me. I was looking forward to seeing desert for the first time in my life and it was because of the desert that i decided to visit this part of the country in the first place. Still, driving for 7 hours through the desert in a car that turned out to be on the verge of breaking down - that was a bit unnerving. Especially so, as there was no other car in sight during most of our ride.