Day 10 - Tashkent

Our first point of call is the Khast Imom religious centre, where the main museum holds an original of the last ancient Quran in the world, the Osman Quran, dating back to the 7^th century. It’s an impressive tome, about  1 ½ metres wide when open and written in beautiful Arabic calligraphy (I couldn’t help but think whether in some strange way kufic script was derived from hieroglyphs!). The museum also houses other ancient and beautifully decorated hand-written Qurans, graced with colourful red, gold and blue motifs along the margins, and dating back to the 12^th-13^th centuries.

We meander through the lanes of the old town and revisit the bustling Chorsu Bazaar, before heading for the more modern part of town, to the Amir Timur and Mustaquillik Maydoni, an area characterised by President Kharimov’s wide avenues, squares and giant, white-washed, palatial buildings, standing next to exemplars of Russian architecture sometimes good (the beginning of the 19^th century Romanov Palace), sometimes really bad (the Soviet architecture of the Hotel Uzbekistan).

For the rest of the day we enjoy the company of a very bright and interesting young Uzbek man, a friend of a friend in London, who takes us to the city’s newest mosque, financed in part by the Uzbek Russian oligarch Usmanov, to the modern version of an Uzbek bazaar (where a startled fruit seller says ‘seriozna?’ - seriously? in Russian – when my friend Sejal says she’s from ‘Anglia’ – England , followed by all of us bursting into laughter as it is obvious that he also thinks she’s a Bollywood movie star) and end the day in a Chaykhaneh for a snack and pot of green tea and later in a Kyrgiz restaurant called Manas for dinner in a ‘yurt’ (a nomad tent). We really enjoy talking to him and he helps us fill in some of the ‘blanks’ we had in better understanding his country.

It has been a really special holiday. Following my visits to Iran and Georgia, the Uzbek adventure has yet again confirmed that Central Asia is a region of the world I want to learn more about. Watch this space…;-) I’ll be back.

Day 9 - Khiva

We resume our peeling of the multiple layers and hidden jewels of Khiva, but also find the time to wander through the open air market and do some ‘suzane’ (Uzbek embroidered table cloths, bed covers and other home apparel) shopping.

The highlight of the day is our unintentional crashing of a ‘Sunnat Toi’ (an Uzbek circumcision celebration). We wander into this very lively tea house and before we realise what’s going on we have already become the guests of honour at the party and are being offered food and vodka. Sejal is then dragged onto the dance floor as the guests are curious to see her ‘hindustani’ moves. Everybody is very welcoming and friendly and we end up spending a good hour enjoying a typical Khivan Uzbek ‘toi’. Even the little boy who is being celebrated manages the odd smile, in spite of what he has gone through…

It’s time to leave Khiva and head back to Tashkent on a very delayed flight that makes a detour to Samarkand to pick up a motley crew of Americans, a mixture of security and embassy analyst types...

Day 8 - Khiva

Khiva is a unique city. The only place similar to it I can think of is Yazd in Iran, as both are desert cities that have remained unchanged for centuries, basking in their mud-brick, domed beauty. Yazd very much still a lived in town, abuzz with families going about their daily business, and Khiva more of a ‘monument ‘city, lived in in its Northern and Southern fringes close to the walls, but otherwise very much an open air museum, rich in majestic palaces, medressas, mosques and palaces built over the last millenium.

In the 8^th century Khiva was a trading post off a side branch of the Silk Road. In the 16^th century it became the capital of the Khorezm khanate under the reign of the Shaybanids and for the next 3 centuries a hub of the at the time very active slave commerce. I will not try to list the sights of the Ichon-Qala (Old Town inner walled city) one by one, as I would have to produce a list of 50 names. Just enjoy the photographs, they speak for themselves…

Unfortunately the historical bazaar, caravanserai and hommom are closed for restoration. I’ll have to return.

We have enjoyed warm weather for most of the journey, until Khiva… It’s freezing, windy and rainy, so no sunset pictures of this beautiful city.

At dinner we join some of our B&B co-guests, a German and an American couple, the latter just having spent 40 days travelling the Silk Road through China.