Khiva Travel Guide

 TheWanderingCamel Says:  The lavishly decorated courts and iwans of the Tash Hauli (the Stone Palace) are connected by and to a maze of over 160 rooms -all built in a mere 8 years -although Allah Kuli Khan, the khan who commissioned it, wanted the job done in 2 and promptly impaled the original... 

 TheWanderingCamel Says:  Getting his priorities right, the Khan saw to it that the Harem was the first part of the Tash Hauli to be completed. Here a row of 5 stunningly beautiful iwans (one for the Khan and one for each of his wives) faces a somewhat more spartan complex of rooms (for the... 

 TheWanderingCamel Says:  The will to help Uzbekistan regain its lost heritage of wonderful ctafts is as strong in Khiva as it is throughtout the country but years of Sovie domination has taken a heavy toll both intellectually and financially. Sponsorship from abroad has played an inportant part in... 

 TheWanderingCamel Says:  A visit to Khiva's Unesco-sponsored silk workshop in the Kazi Kalyan medressa is both fascinating and inspiring. Here young women (not children) are taught the old skills of carpet making by hand. Using natural dyes and unique patterns derived from the motifs found in the... 

 TheWanderingCamel Says:  New heroes are needed for a newly independent nation, and elsewhere in Uzbekistan the conqueror, Temur, and his scholarly grandson , Ulugh Beg, are much lauded. Here in Khiva though, the local boy made good is al-Khorezmi - the 9th century mathematician whose Latinized name... 

 TheWanderingCamel Says:  The Islam Khodja may well be the tallest minaret in Khiva, but had the Kalta Minor (the Short Minaret, also known as both the Guyok Minor - the Green Minaret and the Kok Minor - the Blue Minaret) been completed it would have dwarfed it, and any other minaret, in all Central... 

 TheWanderingCamel Says:  Wrestler, poet, strongman, doctor, saint are all rolled in to one man, Pakhlavan Mahmoud, who lived and died in Khiva some 400 years ago and whose mausoleum is the major place of pilgrimage in Khiva. The saint's is not the only tomb inside the chamber with its dazzlingly... 

 TheWanderingCamel Says:  Begun in a project sponsored by the German Embassy in Tashkent, the Institute for International Cooperation of the German Adult Education Association (DVV), the German Development Service (DED) and the Centre for Business and Tourism Development Khiva, the Khorezm Art... 

 josephescu Says:  Historic Khiva is located in the middle of the dessert, near the Uzbek town of Urgench, reasonably far from the main populated areas of Uzbekistan. Khiva – Urgench means 20 minutes ride by taxi, for about 5 euros, or 40 minutes by public bus. From Bukhara, there were no... 

 josephescu Says:  Outside pressure turned Khiva more or less faithless during the last century, so despite dozens of large madrassahs, mosques and palaces, you won’t hear muezzins shouting their call for prayer from the magnificent minarets, nor will you hear bustling bazaars and traders in... 

 TheWanderingCamel Says:  Guidebooks and tour companies all mention Misha (photo 4) - Khiva's lone camel - who spent years standing in the city's main square and who probably ended up featuring in every tourist's photo album. He was there on our first visit in 2005, looking as bored and as grumpy as... 

 TheWanderingCamel Says:  There were so many 'favourite things" about Khiva, I could write a list, but high on that would be the little turrets and towers at the corners of so many buildings, gates and iwans. You'll need to look up as you walk down the streets - or across if you're up in the Ark's... 

 TheWanderingCamel Says:  For a city in in the middle of a desert, the amount of wood used in Khiva is prodigious and the quality of the carving seen everywhere is extraordinary. Along with Kokand in the east, the woodcarvers of Khiva are acknowledged as the country's best. Whether it's the 200+...