This is the day we bade farewell to the lovely city of Tashkent, flying to the western city of Urgench. Flying domestically was…interesting. Airport security was this…. Place everything on the conveyor – suitcase, carry-on, breakfast – and then walk through the detector. Wait…breakfast?? Yep, people put their sack breakfasts and drink on the conveyor and ran it through security. The first thought was “that’s odd” and the next thought was “holy ^@%, people are bringing beverages in from outside. That would never happen in the US!!”. Funny how accustomed one becomes to what’s normal for them, forgetting that normal doesn’t look the same across the globe. Speaking of normal, their safety video was anything but as it doesn’t feature the aircraft. It kept us in stitches because it was so clever and different than what we’re used to. If you have six minutes and wish to learn about the safety requirements of Uzbekistan Airways (okay, see a hilarious and creative take on a safety video), here’s the video:
Our experience with Uzbeki airports is that you don’t have a gate, they bring the portable stairs to the tarmac and you deplane on the tarmac. In Tashkent we had a bus take us to the terminal, but on landing at Urgench International Airport we found we had to walk to the terminal from the plane. At least it was nicely manicured and maintained. (Yes, this was our “gate” on the back-side / from the tarmac as we were walking from the plane.)
After landing in Urgench, we found that we had another baggage incident. The airport was teeny and had only one conveyor. With one flight arriving it should have been easy to grab our bags, right? Tim had his bag and the rest of our group had their bags, and the conveyor shut off, yet Jay did not yet have her bag. After low key panic and head scratching, trying to figure out how Jay’s bag could have disappeared, we discovered that one of our travel mates mistook Jay’s bag for his and had put it on his cart. Whew!
If you’re not familiar with Uzbekistan or the country’s geography you might wonder why we flew, rather than driving and enjoying the landscape. Urgench is somewhere around 600 to 700 miles (depending on road selection) from Tashkent, but is a whopping 24 hour drive because the roads are soooooo horrible!
We immediately drove out of Urgench to visit Toprak Kala, an impressive mud fortress. From a distance it looked like a huge mound of earth sticking up from the plains.
Yes… yes, this was the fortress. It wasn’t until we were nearly at the fort that we saw it was a structure (structure is a loose term as it’s the ruins of 7th century mud fort). We walked the 107 (modern, recently added) steps up to the top to get a bird’s eye view. Partial walls and rooms are still visible from the top. It would have been so interesting to see it when it was a fully functional fort!
Notice the tiny people on the far hill side for scale…
As we were returning to the bus, our tour guide said ‘who wants coffee and cookies?’. This seemed to be a weird question – we were in the Kyzylkum desert (it wasn’t overly hot, maybe in the 80’s… but still….) and there were no facilities nearby. What a nice surprise – our bus drivers had coffee & tea waiting for us along with a decent selection of cookies & chocolates! Interestingly, they had the bus’s luggage door up and open, and they were inside the luggage compartment of the bus, on a carpet from which they served the refreshments.
From the fortress we traveled to another fortress – Ulli Hovli (translates to great court, which was accurate as the inner court was quite large).
The 17th century fortress was fully reconstructed just under a decade ago, using the same mud-based construction as the original fortress. (side note: the fortress is also referred to as a ‘cob castle’ which means it was constructed with mud.) The fortress now functions as a hotel and restaurant, and also has some yurts on display. While we didn’t stay at the hotel, we had the opportunity use see the hotel rooms which were quite rustic. The rooms were centered off of a great courtyard (as most residences seem to be). They were small rooms, a bit dark due to the mud walls, wooden floors, and housed three single beds arranged Tetris-style. Outside each room, but still under a covered porch area, was a tapchan where guests could eat or just relax and enjoy the weather.
A tapchan is an interesting multi-functional piece of outdoor furniture. It looks like a massive sofa, which it’s used for. It’s also used as a dining area as a square table in placed in the middle at meal time. A tapchan also functions as a bed. Uzbeks spend a lot of time outside and it’s common for homes to have an inner courtyard that includes a tapchan as well as the outdoor kitchen where plov is made.
While there was nothing fancy about the rooms, it would have been an interesting stay!
In addition to eating lunch at Ulli Hovli we had the opportunity to explore a bit, as they were setup as a pseudo-museum with cultural art galleries, historical photo rooms, historical displays of applied art, even a hat collection display.
In one of the large courtyards, there were several yurts in various levels of setup (so you could see how they were constructed), including one of which that was fully furnished, giving us an idea of what living in a yurt would be like.
(Notice the tapchan that would also be set outside of a yurt…)
Our final stop within Ulli Hovli was at the stables. Here they had a couple of camels, a baby camel, and a horse “on display”. One camel was a dual hump camel, and one camel was a single hump camel, but despite reputations, both seemed relatively friendly (no spitting – although no one really got close enough to test out that friendliness).
We then embarked on the next leg of the journey, which was a drive to Khiva (pronounced Hee Vaa, with the H of hee being slightly guttural or throaty), an ancient city in western Uzbekistan.
There are no interstates or highway systems in this part of Uzbekistan, and the drive was… shall we say exceptionally interesting. Meaning very bumpy and quite sway-ey, even at the roughly 40 miles an hour we drove. While we weren’t truly to the desert yet (that will be Day 7), the topography and vegetation while green, looked very dry and scrubby. You can definitely tell they are a more arid region.
While we won’t show pictures of this boring arid region, there were a couple of oddities that we saw while passing thru. One was what looked like a roadway over-pass constructed over a railroad line, maybe 200-ft long, yet there were no signs of the roadway construction it would have served, or how you would ramp up to that height given the flat topography.
One other choice oddity we encountered on the drive, was a quite interesting and ornate gateway feature…. in the middle of nowhere. Not sure what the gateway was to, but we passed through it. (You can get a feel for the roadway in the 2nd picture, which shows you a decent example of the pavement condition.)
After a fun 2-ish hour drive on this roadway, we finally arrived at Khiva.
After checking in to the hotel we walked to Ichan Kala fortress which is essentially the old original inner city of Khiva, for dinner. Entering through the thick city wall gate, made quite an impression.
A small mini-van wanted through as we were entering. To help give you a feel for the gate size as well as the wall thickness, below is a photo as it and we entered.
What a cool complex! It housed three of the four M’s – minarets, a mosque, and a madrasa. (Technically there were quite a few tombs in the fortress, but no real mausoleums… more on Ichan Kala on Day 6’s blog).
Here are a few sneak peaks (again, Day 6 will have more detail) on our walk into dinner:
(Just inside the entrance, where they were in the process of placing new pavers.)
Our dinner was quite enjoyable. We sat outside under the massive minaret with nice breezes blowing. Entertainment was provided by a small troupe of performers in the form of local songs, dances, and music, using instruments native to Uzbekistan.
The show stealer was the youngest child in the group. He sang his heart out and was quite a serious dancer. Serious as in he had the most intense looks of concentration each time he performed. He was absolutely adorable!!
If you’d like to see a snippet of his performance, you can check out the video below.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/16ChYTEk0nyty8s_TpSw7yr-acK8-wqst/view?usp=sharing
It was a good meal, we had great company, good entertainment, and the weather provided a nice environment for our outdoor dinner and the walk back to our hotel. A good way to end the night.
See you in Day 6.