Khiva is an ancient walled city with mosques, madrassas, mausoleums and minarets. It is one of the treasures of humankind. It was one of the main cities along the Silk Road, and has 2500 years of history. There is the Juma Mosque with wooden pillars from the 9^th century, but the most impressive buildings are from the 19^th century, with complex patterns of blue tiles adorning the faces of the various Khans’ architectural wonders. Descended from Genghis Khan, each of the kings over the long time period had a story. Some were extremely violent, one king known as the “Butcher Khan” executed 10 people each day.  Another was a poet. Some had long reigns: others were short-lived. The Khorezm area was an independent kingdom until the Soviets came and took over in 1920.

A wall surrounds the city, and it is a nice stroll from one end to the other. Now it is basically a living museum, but some 200 families still live inside the walls. People sell the black or white traditional hats that look like afros, and silk and wooden items. The weather is perfect now with sunny warm days, but it gets freezing cold in the winter, and unbearably hot in the summer. We have not seen that many tourists (considering its beauty and history), and in the evening kids play outside the ancient mud colored buildings.

 

Vegan in Khiva: I was very fortunate to find a nice restaurant that serves vegan food. Our guide Ali’s family owns a restaurant called Zoroastr. Plov is the national dish, which is made of rice, carrots, spices and raisins. Usually it is made with meat, but I got a vegan version. Pumpkin samosas, green noodles, dill-filled raviolis, and pumpkin soup made me very happy.

But what are people doing growing rice in the middle of a desert?! Rice is one of the most water-consuming crops known, but yet, while driving through this arid land, we saw many fields submerged in water for rice agriculture. The once huge flowing Amu Darya River is now diverted to grow rice, cotton, wheat and mulberry trees to feed silk worms. This has led to one of largest environmental disasters ever created by humans; the depletion of the Aral Sea. We crossed the river near Urgench, and it was shallow and full of silt. By the time it reaches the Aral Sea, it is gone. Now the Aral Sea is basically gone. This was a region rich in wildlife, biodiversity and natural beauty, but one friend in Tashkent said that it is now salty and bitter and nothing could possibly survive in the water. “The ancient oasis of rivers, lakes, reed marshes, forests and farms are drying up and being poisoned by wind-borne salt as well as fertilizer and pesticide residues from the dried bed of the Aral Sea.”  This is a prime example of how our planet is being transformed before our eyes by the arrogance of our species. I will not comment on human rights abuses in Uzbekistan.

 

Fortresses from more than a thousand years ago are scattered in the desert of Karakalpakstan. This is an autonomous region of Uzbekistan; basically a state within a state. The ruins are made of mud and soft bricks and although they are world heritage sites, they are crumbling underneath the feet of tourists and whoever wants to walk on them. The archeologists are gone, and the treasures that were there are now housed in Russian museums, thousands of kilometers away. What is left are the ruins from the 4^th, 7^th and 13^th century, exposed to the desert sun. It is fun to walk on these ancient places, as if we were discovering them for the first time, but again, they won’t be around long if they are not protected. They were excavated from the sand that preserved them for hundreds of years, but now exposed to the elements and people, I don’t see them lasting more than a generation. Now there are nomadic people hosting the few tourists in yurts.

 

There are wood workers and I watched women making traditional silk carpets.  I hear some Khorezm music outside the window, but the internet works here, near the border of Turkmenistan, in this ancient place.