Disneyland, but with slaves (Khiva, Uzbekistan)

After the Aral Sea, the next main stop on my itinerary was Khiva, about 150km southeast of Nukus. There don’t seem to be any direct connections between Nukus and Khiva, so I was looking at the possibility of some sweaty minibuses with a layover in a charmless town in between. But Dave and Sam, the Australian couple I’d accompanied to the Aral Sea, saved me from exploring transport options any further with a much happier alternative. The same outfit with which they booked the Aral Sea tour also runs a daylong trip to the “fortresses of ancient Khorezm” that begins in Nukus and ends in Khiva. In effect, for a somewhat higher fee (but really quite reasonable all told) we could get from Nukus to Khiva by private car and catch a bunch of the sites in between en route.

There are many upsides to travelling alone. I can choose my own pace and itinerary, I can enjoy the quiet of downtime alone, and, in circumstances that can sometimes be challenging, I don’t have to worry about anyone’s comfort except my own. But there are downsides as well. I still feel a bit weird eating in restaurants alone but the main one is cost sharing. Anything requiring a car, driver, or guide can be expensive, especially if you’re going alone. I remember running down the street to catch up with a trio of white people I saw in Gonder in Ethiopia, hoping that they, too, were planning a hike in the nearby Simien Mountains and would be willing to add another person to share the cost (they were).

 

Like so much else with travel nowadays, finding travel companions is easier than it used to be. My go-to resource for Central Asian travel has been Caravanistan, a website and travel company that has a rich trove of information for independent travellers, link-ups with tour groups, and a discussion forum where travellers can trade tips and make connections. I found Dave and Sam through a Caravanistan forum when I was looking for someone with whom I could share the cost of an Aral Sea trip. We ended extending those two days together for another day and a half.

 

It's always a gamble to agree to spend several days with complete strangers but in this part of the world it’s a fairly safe bet. If you’ve made the long journey out to Central Asia, you’re probably open-minded and curious and you probably have some prior travel experience—I can’t imagine many people choose Uzbekistan for their first trip abroad. All this turned out to be true of Dave and Sam. They’re based in Melbourne but spend as much time as jobs and money will allow on the road. This is especially true of Dave, who’s been to many of the more oddball places I’ve been, like Iran and Myanmar, as well as a number that I haven’t (yet?), like Kenya and Afghanistan. He has a particular fondness for Central Asia and this was his third visit to Uzbekistan, but Sam’s first. Dave is a mathematician who uses his skills in a consulting capacity, helping to streamline supply chains and the like. Sam is a nurse, and it was fun connecting with someone who chose a career that I came within a hair of choosing as well.

 

The Fifty Fortresses

 

The region to the south of Karakalpakstan, wedged against the border with Turkmenistan, is known as Khorezm. Like Karakalpakstan, the Khorezmis have their own language, although it’s less distinct from Uzbek and nationalist sentiment there seems less pronounced. The area has an ancient history and was a seat of power along the Amu Darya far enough back for them to offer help to Alexander the Great in his campaign against their neighbours.

 

The Mongols swept through Central Asia in the thirteenth century and destroyed pretty much everything they came across so very little of pre-Mongol Central Asia remains. Between Nukus and Khiva are the ruins of scores of ancient fortresses that testify to the density and wealth of the pre-Mongol population. The area is known as Elliq-Qala, meaning “fifty fortresses,” although I think that’s more an approximation than an exact figure.

 

Our driver for the day was Ali, an affable and dapper guy from Nukus. At one point early in the trip, we passed by a goldmine that, Ali explained, sends all its gold to Uzbekistan. In what seems like a common characteristic of Karakalpaks, he speaks of Uzbekistan as if it were a different country.

 

Our first stop was Dakhma Chilpik, the hilltop remains of a Zoroastrian “tower of silence,” where they performed sky burials. Zoroastrianism was the main religion in the region before the arrival of Islam, although Christian missionaries had also passed through (Merv in nearby Turkmenistan had a bishop before Canterbury did) and the region has some ancient Buddhist sites as well. From our high vantage point, we could see lush green fields irrigated by the Amu Darya give way to desert—a little reminder of where all the water that used to feed the Aral Sea had gone.

 

View over the desert from Dakhma Chilpik, with irrigated fields standing in start contrast to the surrounding desert

The Dakhma Chilpik and the three fortresses we visited later that day were all massive constructions of mud brick. Most were built between the third and sixth centuries and picturing what went into building them is a daunting task for the imagination. The first, Toprak-Kala (which I’m guessing means “earth fortress,” since the Turkish equivalent would be very close to that) was a palace complex where it’s still possible to wander between roofless chambers. Long after humans have stopped living there, wasps, birds, and lizards have all found these shady spots make for good living quarters for themselves. In a quiet moment in one chamber, I had a game of Red Light Green Light with two lizards on the walls, who were motionless whenever I looked at them but had moved a little up the wall whenever I looked away and looked back.

 

The honeycomb remains of Toprak Kala

The other two fortresses, Ayaz Kala and Kyrk Kyz Kala (not sure about the former but the latter means “forty girls fortress”—I guess the local king was a happy man?), didn’t have the extensive honeycombing of Toprak Kala. Instead, they had an empty stadium-sized central space surrounded by crumbling mud brick walls.

 

The approach to Ayaz Kala

Inside Kyrk Kyz Kala

To my joy, and the fortresses’ detriment, there seem to be pretty much no regulations about where you can clamber (and also no fencing separating clamberers from some pretty precipitous drops). It was great fun exploring the various ramparts and chambers—yet again, I wished I could have brought my eight-year-old self on this trip although, in a sense, I suppose I did—but I could also see why more heavily visited sites in richer countries tend to discourage visitors from this sort of thing. Mud brick in desert heat is brittle and while I didn’t do any serious damage, there are a couple spoonfuls of earth that got displaced by my shoes. Multiply that by the several hundred visitors who come each week and you can see how this might eventually become a problem.

 

Toward the end of the outing, we stopped for gas in the town of Beruniy. The name intrigued me and a combination of a Wikipedia consult and a statue confirmed that this was the birthplace of Al-Biruni. Along with Avicenna, he was one of the two great heroes of a book I read this spring about the Central Asian enlightenment that ran from about the ninth to the thirteenth centuries. A great deal of the intellectual fireworks that lit up the Golden Age of Islam (similar timespan) originated in Central Asia, even if many of them made their names in Baghdad. Al-Biruni was a polymath whose two biggest claims to fame are his remarkably accurate measurements of the circumference of the Earth and his pioneering research on India. With regard to the former, he realized that the known world of Eurasia covered only about two-fifths of that circumference and hypothesized that there must be another continent to the west of Europe and to the east of Asia. With regard to the latter, he’s sometimes called the father of comparative religion or the father of anthropology, showing objectivity and curiosity about a place and religious tradition that was very foreign to his own.

 

My favourite anecdote about him recounts a visit from an Afghan scholar when he (Biruni) was on his deathbed. He got deep into interrogating this scholar about Afghan contract law, at which point the scholar expressed surprise that Al-Biruni should show such interest in this matter at such a time. Biruni replied, “Is it not better for me to leave this world knowing the answer to this question than not knowing it?”

 

Arrival in Khiva

 

It turns out this tour of mud brick fortresses was an apt build-up to our arrival in Khiva. Khiva is a small city with a population of over 100,000 but its main, and pretty much only, attraction to tourists is its Itchan Kala or inner fortress (in Turkish this would be iç kale: once again deciphering Uzbek place names using my limited Turkish!). The Itchan Kala is small and walkable—650m by 400m—and ringed by a formidably thick wall of mud brick. Khiva has been inhabited for two and a half thousand years but most of it dates from the sixteenth century onward.

 

The thick mud-brick walls of the Itchan Kala

Khiva rose to prominence in the sixteenth century with the establishment of the Khanate of Khiva. Khiva flourished as a desert entrepot, one of whose principal trade goods was human slaves. A large slave market once stood at the city’s east gate, and Turkmen and Kazakh nomadic raiders would deliver a steady flow of enslaved people to keep business brisk.

 

Among the slaves were Russians living around the Caspian region, which was one of several reasons the tsar took an interest in Khiva (another was its geographical advantage as a forward base for extending influence deeper into Central Asia and toward British India). Unfortunately, Khiva was very difficult to reach (trains and highways have made things easier since), with the Karakum desert and the aforementioned Turkmen and Kazakh tribes standing between Khiva and Russian settlements on the Caspian. Four different campaigns against Khiva failed—two ending in utter disaster—before the Russians finally conquered it in 1873.

 

As a side note, it’s a bit odd reading about Russian and British expressions of abhorrence toward the monstrous Khivans and their slave market at a time when the United States kept several million people enslaved and Russian serfdom was slavery by another name.

 

We arrived in Khiva in the early evening. I checked into my hotel, had a shower, and stepped out to find some dinner. This was my first proper view of Khiva, which was cool and quiet in the evening. The city is remarkably well preserved. The Itchan Kala feels more like a museum or a Silk Road theme park than an actual city, to the point where it’s almost surprising to discover that several thousand people still live within its walls leading ordinary lives, some of them unconnected to the tourism industry. And if we’re honest, sleepy tourist town is a step up from slave trade emporium. Despite flashes of grandeur, the architecture has a subdued character that makes it feel elegant rather than kitschy.

 

Many of Khiva’s restaurants are on second- and third-floor terraces that give diners a view over the Itchan Kala while they eat. I had my first dinner near the west gate as dusk set in and lighting illuminated the nearby palace and minaret.

The view from my terrace restaurant on the first evening in Khiva

Exploring the Itchan Kala

 

My hotel had an attached travel agency that offered half-day walking tours of the city. I only had a day and a half in Khiva so this seemed like a good way to get my bearings before exploring further on my own. And I managed to rope Dave and Sam into it, making it an affordable proposition for all three of us.

 

Our guide, Umida, was a stylish woman in early middle age whose necklace, earrings, and bracelet made a matching set. She was also a very informative guide and very much worth her fee.

 

Despite its small size, the Itchan Kala houses dozens of madrassas (Islamic religious schools, roughly equivalent to Christian seminaries), none of which are still in active use and many of which have been converted into hotels or museums. These tend to be structured around an inner courtyard and lined with arched hallways that used to house students—not so far off many of Oxford’s colleges. Dave and Sam booked themselves into a hotel that was formerly a madrassa.

 

Dave, Sam, and Umida in the courtyard of Dave and Sam's hotel/quondam madrassa

Another former madrassa that Umida took us to now serves as a workshop and sales shop for local traditional woodworking. The item that caught my attention—and lightened my wallet—was an ingenious bookstand. It’s made from a single piece of wood without any screws or nails but carved in such a way that it can slot and unslot and take on ten different configurations. I was amused that, in his demonstration, the craftsman showed how we could rest an iPad or tablet on it rather than thinking to mention that we could also use this bookstand for reading books.

 

Probably Khiva’s most recognizable landmark is the Kalta Minor minaret. Construction began in the nineteenth century with the ambition of building the tallest minaret in the world, which would allow Khivans to see their enemies in Bukhara several hundred kilometres away. It didn’t quite reach thirty metres—about a third of its projected height—when the khan who’d commissioned it dropped dead and further construction was abandoned. As a result, it’s a peculiarly squat cylindrical structure with horizontal bands of tiling in shades of blue and white.

 

But the building the really captured my heart was the Pahlavon Mahmud mausoleum. Pahlavon Mahmud was a fourteenth century poet and wrestler—how many can claim to excel in both these fields?—who rose from being a humble craftsman to becoming a renowned healer and Sufi teacher. He’s Khiva’s patron saint and his mausoleum is a revered spot for locals.

 

The present structure dates from the nineteenth century and has some of the finest tilework in a city full of sublime tilework. Each section of wall had a different pattern in the tiles but there’s enough harmony and repetition in the patterns that the variations enhanced the beauty rather than making it overly busy.

 

I’m a sucker for geometrical patterning in art, so it’s no wonder that I’m drawn to Islamic art and architecture. Admiring the Pahlavon Mahmud mausoleum, I was struck by a curious comparison with the formline art of the Pacific Northwest, another art style I greatly admire. The tile patterns in many Islamic designs are built from figurative elements—mostly twining foliage and flowers—but they use these figurative elements to create a pattern that’s abstract and geometrical. By contrast, formline art is constructed from abstract and geometrical elements—ovoids, S and U shapes, and so on—that combine to create a figurative shape—usually a representation of an animal.

 

Art is neat and people are clever.

 

I retreated to a shady outdoor café to drink some tea and do some reading when a young man sat down and asked if I minded if he joined me. I mind a little when people do things like this but in this case he was courteous and interesting enough that my minding evaporated fairly quickly.

 

He opened the conversation by offering to pour my tea three times and then pour it pack into the pot, apparently an Uzbek tradition that helps mix the tea. His name was G’iyosiddin—an unusual name even for an Uzbek, and one with strong religious connotations—and he was visiting family near Khiva on a break from his studies at a madrassa in Tashkent. He was interested to learn that I taught philosophy and was curious to know what sorts of things philosophers talk about and what they have to say about religion. I explained that philosophers have a very wide range of different things to say about religion. Some are atheists and argue that there’s no God and some are religious and build philosophical arguments to help understand their faith better. He wanted me to give some examples of the latter. He also expressed puzzlement that Christians claim they believe in one God when they worship three.

 

G’iyosiddin wasn’t the obvious stereotype of a madrassa student. He wore a baseball cap and called me “bro.” He was also very open in his outlook. He hopes to continue his studies in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, or Turkey, and wants to see more of the world. He thinks all religions have their virtues, and notes that Islam makes a place for Jewish and Christian prophets (allowing that Jesus was just one prophet among many). He had some trouble understanding how Judaism can be a religion of peace considering what’s happening in Gaza but accepted my explanation that responsibility lay with the Israeli government, not the Jewish religion.

 

When he first sat down, I was worried that G’iyosiddin was going to ask me for money or try to sell me something but as far as I could tell he only wanted to meet a foreigner and practice his English. That said, he did order an ice cream that he didn’t pay for when he left half an hour later.

 

A last evening and morning in Khiva

 

The light is best in the early evening and early morning and in Khiva I started a habit I’ve extended to Bukhara and Samarkand of running around at these hours and snapping photos like the gawking tourist that I am. In Khiva, I raced from the watchtower on one side of the Itchan Kala to the tall minaret on the other side to see the sun set over Khiva from these two different angles, while snapping some shots of the streets in between.

 

View from the watchtower at the top of the main palace in the Itchan Kala

View of the Kalta Minor down an avenue as the sun sets

View of the sunset from the Islom Hoja minaret. The Pahlavon Mahmud mausoleum is the blue-domed structure in the foreground and you can see the Kalta Minor in the near distance.

And then the next morning, I set my alarm for six and spent an hour wandering around capturing things from street level.

 

The Islom Hoja minaret from which I watched the sunset the night before

My last stop before leaving Khiva was a few hundred metres outside the Itchan Kala. G’iyosiddin had recommended I visit the Nurullabay Palace, built in the early twentieth century at a time when there was no more space to fit it within the Itchan Kala. It doesn’t figure in my guidebook and I saw very few tourists there. Wandering the palace on my own gave me some sense of what it might be like to live there. Among other things, it would be a great place to host a wedding reception.

 

That said, I got the same impression from this palace that I did from palaces of similar vintage from Qajar Iran. You can see decadence and rot starting to show in the aesthetics. Where earlier structures have an austere grandeur, much of the palace, clearly bearing Russian influence, went overboard on ornateness and finery. That said, there were some fine examples of the wood pillars that are a fixture of traditional Uzbek architecture.

 

Russian finery and OTT taste in the Nurullabay Palace

But they do have some nice wooden pillars

And after that, it was off to the train station and off to Bukhara. Stay tuned for more on that!