Few names evoke much capacity as the Silk Road. However, and forgive mythomaniacs, the Silk Road does not exist. At least not imagine it exists as most mortals: a concrete driveway for which long caravans of camels came and went from China to Constantinople. The path is a journey, but one direction. A network of maritime and land trade routes between East and West through Central Asia. And never a caravan made in full. The merchants brought their goods from one oasis to another and there sold them for new traders, new ropes of camels and horses could take them to the next city, the next market. And so on.
One of those stations for the caravan was obliged Khiva in Uzbekistan, a lost oasis north of the Karakum desert, in a secondary branch of the Silk Road, which eventually became the capital of a small empire: the Khanate of Khiva . It is not easy today to this corner of the border with Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, turn onto the main road on which are the country’s largest cities (Bukhara, Samarkand, Tashkent) and go about 400 miles northwest of the valley in search Amu Daria River.
There, surrounded by walls of brick and adobe and overshadowed by the fame of the nearby Samarkand, Khiva stands, a city-only museum in the world that it is much better than the essence of the oasis towns of the plains of Central Asia : walls, minarets, madrasas, palaces sumptuous courtyards, streets surrounded by high brick walls, glass domes … You can almost still hear the footsteps of the camel caravans coming through the door of Khun Ark from Kyrgyzstan, or the bustle of the Bazaar while downloading Dekhon dusty bundles of fine fabrics, spices and odors hardwood chests filled with oils and cosmetics.
The front door
But really now ringing through the narrow streets of Khiva and fresh are the footsteps of caravans of tourists in high season come to this city turned into one of the emerging destinations in the route (or routes) from the Silk Road, on especially since in 1990 all its historical center was declared World Heritage by UNESCO. The city has 2,500 years of history very well run. Interestingly, most of the restoration of many monuments and historic buildings began during the Soviet era: the front door, Darvoza Ota, it was rebuilt with the same area in 1970 after 50 years before its demolition to make room for the growing urbanization.
This massive intervention succeeded in restoring its glory. Sometimes even too much glory, because there are areas that exude a whiff of cardboard while increasing tourism has displaced the population of the historic center to make room for new business more prosperous, souvenir shops, hotels, museums … But do not be alarmed, a lot of tourists in Uzbekistan is a figure of light years away a lot of tourists in the world famous cities such as Venice and Prague. And as you get out two blocks from the monumental heart reappears in all its splendor local life: children playing, dogs and cats, markets and bazaars, ladies who laugh, people who nap in the shade, noise, flies, puddles of sewage, dirt streets, Internet cafes, popular restaurants … and a great kindness to the stranger.
The silhouette of Jiva is thorny and slender minarets, tile floors, tile and Verdemare purple, blue, turquoise and yellow iridescent glow at dusk as kaleidoscopes of mud, all full of geometries and reliefs of sacred texts. Uzbek minarets have some Gaudi: the funnel-shaped, rather than a minaret, brings back memories of the nineteenth century industrial Barcelona and Parc Güell.
The most famous and the highest is the Islom-Minaret Road: 57 meters high and 118 steps open to anyone who wants to enjoy top of the best aerial view of the city-oasis and the desert that surrounds it. However, the icon is a stylized Jiva minaret, but a squat and conical construction of colored tiles, which occupies a prominent place in the historic center. It is the base of the minaret Kalta-Minor, the unfinished work of Khan Mohammed Amin, who in 1851 insisted on raising in Jiva’s tallest tower in the Muslim world. To have done would have been a Guinness record for from your skylight had come to distinguish the distant Bukhara. But Amin was left without money and without a throne, and what should be a large minaret in the database derived truncated chimney-like nuclear plant, in this really hit the kan-has become anyway in the most photographed of the city.
Green tea bowl
There are two magical moments in Khiva. One is to sit mid-afternoon in one of the cafes near Ota Darvoza or Kalta-Minor and order a green tea. Here is served in bowls, not cups, and little sugar. And let the hours enjoying the human spectacle that parades before you. Women with velvety black suits sprinkled with gold embroidery and bright ocher. Groups of marriageable girls in costume skirt and mischievous laughter. Elderly severe face with the eternal path of cap Uzbek Juma mosque and the mausoleum of the philosopher, poet and saint Pahlavon Mahmud.
The second magic moment occurs at sunset from the top of the Ark Kuhn, the headframe defending the west gate of the wall. From here you can see the sea of mud terraces and glass domes covering the city. A blanket of architectural wisdom has protected the inhabitants from the heat of the desert and the incursions of enemies for two centuries and a half. Then, without any modern building that interrupts the scene and the cool air starts to arrive and the desert, Jiva itself could be the imagined city of the thousand and one dreams East.
