Khiva

We sleep in a hotel in the heart of the Ichan Kala in Khiva, the 1500 years old fortified town. It was one of the centres of the Silk Road, famous for its slaves market. Today, it feels like an open air museum with beautifully turquoise glazed tiles on minarets, madrassas and mosques all around us. But also many tourists and souvenir stalls.

It’s our first hotel room of our trip, and we wonder why we booked it for 3 nights, as it requires some improvisation to make it work for the 4 of us. Cleo sleeps on an inflatable mattress on the floor and Zeno shares a bed with Olga. The other bed is for Tim.

Luckily, there is a bath. So when Tim goes for a sunrise walk at 6.00, the children enjoy themselves in the water.

The town is very quiet and all the stalls with fur hats and other tourist stuff are gone for the moment. A woman on top of the walls says that it’s a great photo spot, and she is right. There is a way up through a small cemetery against the base of the wall. The sun has just risen over the horizon and basks the old town in golden light.

The walls stop at the western gate, so Tim tries rounding the city the other way round. The southern gate is passable and once the Eastern wall is reached the wall lowers in height steadily until it nears the Eastern gate. Here, the wall stops at some construction site, there is no way to continue. The Anusha Khan Baths are clearly visible with all their little domes.

Back in our guesthouse we are still waiting for breakfast which won’t be served until 9.00. When it does arrive the pancakes make up for the waiting, sadly everybody has a huge appetite, so we have to fight for the scraps. You probably can imagine who lost this battle.

We go out for a tour of the old city, but when we arrive at the first sight, we are told to get an entry ticket to the old city. The whole idea of staying inside the old city was not to need a ticket every time we want to see and visit the site. So we decide not to and skip all the things which ask for a ticket.

The Pakhlavan Mahmoud Mausoleum needs its own ticket. It’s a shrine to some 15th century philosopher and sage, but the shrine itself dates from the end of the 18th century. The mosaics and ceramics are beautiful.

As everybody is tired we go for a nap in our room. Only Zeno just finished his morning nap in the baby carrier, so Zeno and Olga celebrate Eid-al-fitr with the guesthouse owners, and Zeno gets some more cookies and plays with the children of the owner.

When Cleo wakes at 14.00, everybody is starving again. So we try to score some lunch, as it’s Eid-al-fitr, most restaurants don’t do lunch today or are fully booked by big Uzbek families. We try four different restaurants until we find a perfect spot in the shade of an over priced hotel terrace. We get a variety of fried stuff and some vegetable soups. Tim tries the Okroshka, a variation of his favorite Eastern European soup, which is great besides the surprise pieces of beef in it.

Then, Cleo gets to drive a mini car. She saw those cars driving around just in front of the city walls yesterday, and she was talking about it ever since. First, Tim does not get that it’s being directed by a remote control and he runs after her to ensure she does not hit other cars and people. Olga had a good laugh about the situation.

After some time in the sun we decide that it’s better to go inside for a little bit. It’s clear the children need some rest after almost two weeks of intense travels. We play around with the puzzle books and water paint that we carry with us and when it’s 18.00 we want to get a sunset dinner at a rooftop restaurant, but as all the tables are reserved, we end up in another place at ground level to eat some nice Uzbek vegetable dishes and the children fight for the last fries.

We end the day with a sunset photo shoot and decide to get the ticket and visit all the sites for tomorrow because today felt like a nice and quiet, but also a bit of a lost day. We conclude that Khiva didn’t need two whole days, although it’s also fine to have some rest days every now and then. And Khiva turned out to be a beautiful city to have such a rest day