24 May Bukhara to Khiva

With some trepidation about starting a long journey in a small car in open country with no obvious bathroom stops, we set off on a 7 1/2 hour journey to Khiva across the Kizil Kum Desert, which is the 11th largest desert in the world. Its name means red sand in Turkish. We stopped and ate our packed lunch at a kind of tourist/truck stop that actually had toilets with running water. Our next stop was for a view of the Oxus River

that forms the border with Turkmenistan along this area, and was crossed by Alexander the Great to conquer this area in the third century BC.

Oxus River

We used this as an unofficial toilet stop as well. There were two species of Bee-eater on the electric lines along the road, and a fair number of raptors, but otherwise there was nothing to see on this route, and the car's AC system was overwhelmed by the heat and seemed to need to be shut off every half hour to regain some degree of cooling. It was forecast to be about 105 degrees F in the shade, but there was of course no shade!

Reaching our hotel, Asia Khiva, just outside Khiva's impressive city walls at 4:30 PM, it was so hot that we decided to rest for an hour before setting out to see the town. We entered the city through the south gate adjacent to our hotel.

Khiva South Gate

Khiva is considered an open-air museum with tens of old mosques, caravansaries, madrasahs, as well as two separate palace complexes for rulers in different time periods. Like Bukhara, it is an oasis town in the middle of the desert, but it seems much more arid than Bukhara, and is contained within city walls perhaps less than a kilometer square. From above the city walls we took some good pictures, but it stayed oppressively hot until about 7:30. We were fortunate to have dinner in an old converted madrasah that had air conditioning.

The city walls undulate like a snake and their crenelated tops make a wonderful picture. The walls are actually featured on "The Silk Road" guide book cover by Insight Guides. We had initially thought the photo was of a section of the Great Wall.

Snake-like walls

Kalta Minor Minaret

The minarets of various tiles in turquoise and dark blue were beautiful after dinner and provided wonderful light for photographs. Souvenir shops sell local silk fabric, fur hats, knives, and other oddments. Quite a nice place to visit except for the heat.