Just before our pick up we get an email from the company saying that our intended driver couldn’t make it. So we have been upgraded from SUV to minivan. With two rows of seats we can all sit comfortably and the children can climb as much as they want.
The road seems fine until we exit the city and it becomes an arduous bumpy slalom around the holes in the road. After 30 minutes we go off road towards what seems to be a hill fortress. Once we get there, we read that Сhilpik Dakhma is a former Zoroastrian tower of the dead, like the one we visited in Iran. The idea is that fire and the earth are holy and shouldn’t be tainted by human remains. So they built a wooden structure upon the tower on which the corpses would be laid out to be picked clean by the carrion vultures. After the Arab invasion the tower lost its original function as it was turned into a fortress and later a Mongolian fire signal post. The views of the surrounding area are amazing and we can see Turkmenistan just across the river.
Zeno fell asleep while touring the tower so he continues to sleep in the van and Cleo soon joins him. This gives us the luxury to relax as much as that is possible while shaking left and right. After some 2 hours on the road we arrive at Kizil Kala, the next fortress. Cleo is still sound asleep, so we let her sleep and tour this castle ourselves. It’s a castle from the first to fourth century, built by the Khwarazm civilization that was ruled by the Afrighids. They also built the tower of dead. The fortress served as an outpost for the nearby fortified place of Toprak Kala, which is next on our list.
Cleo wakes as we come back and joins us for the exploration of Toprak Kala. This was the capital of Khwarazm and a palace city founded in the first our second century. Originally the palace was decorated with Zoroastrian wall paintings, some of which can be viewed in the museum in Tashkent, there were also Hellenistic sculptures found on the site, they are now in the Hermitage. The surrounding walls of the site are still clearly visible, making clear it was a huge place. We climb to the top for some nice views of the complex and the surrounding area and return to the van.
Our driver asked via a German tour guide if we wanted to have lunch, so our next stop is lunch in a yurt beside a lake. We eat salad and bread while Cleo enjoys some beef stew and Zeno runs circles around the yurt table.
The desert fortresses of Ayaz Kala are our last stop for today. The four different forts were built between the first and ninth centuries to guard against raids by dessert nomads. We stop at a yurt camp with Bactrian camels. From here we have to walk through the sand and up the rocky hill.
We see weird little sand lizards and green broccoli like flowers in the sand. Although it’s only supposed to be 20 degrees the sun is burning and exhausting as we climb the hill. This castle has more obvious remains of walls and underground passages. At the far end you have a great view of the other fort. We make a round trip over the walls and head back to the van. We still have a two hour ride to Khiva ahead of us, so hopefully we’ll arrive before sunset.
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