Tag Khiva

Mike

Somewhere in the ruins of the Urgench fortresses the cell phone dropped out of my side bag and into the hot, desert sand. It was not until we were half way back to Khiva in the car that I reached down in a panic and noticed the phone was gone. It could have fallen out anywhere! I grabbed my camera and flipped through the pictures, pausing at each picture of me wearing the side bag and then zooming in to see if the phone was still a black bulge in the side pocket. With this method, I managed to narrow down the area where the phone was probably lost to two giant fortresses and a long dirt road path leading to a lake, an area covering several miles, at the least, and several hours in the opposite direction.

I sat back in the seat as the car bounced across uneven roads toward Khiva, and after a while whispered to Mike that the phone was gone. Strangely enough, the girl next to me, Olga, was going through her bag in a rising panic and eventually announced that her mobile phone was missing! We tore through the car, reaching under the back seat (I think something is living down there!) and under the front seats, shoving empty water bottles around as we peered underneath—neither phone was located.

Back in Khiva, Olga and I sauntered off with our heads hung low and waved goodbye at the driver, whose puzzled look Mike tried to quell with an explanation and a good-natured shrug. While Olga later found her phone in her room, I was not so lucky. Here is what became of the phone after it was deposited unknowingly in the sand.

Back in Bukhara two days later I got word that someone had found the phone and pushed redial: which directed them to a friend of ours in Tashkent. I heard all this via email, where my friend eagerly explained that they were waiting in Khiva with the phone for us! Khiva is 5 hours away and we had just come from that direction, luckily the finders of the cell phone were coming to Bukhara in a few days. I tried to call the phone but the call would not go through, I tried from various phones in Bukhara and ran around the city pouring sweat until one fluent local explained that I was trying to call an in-network phone from an out-network number—“Impossible!” So, I located an in network phone (which, incidentally, is a bee-line cell phone) then called only to get the message, translated to me, “Your phone is power off. Have a nice day!”

Before the phone mysteriously went to power off I had sent a few messages through to my friend in Tashkent about the tentative plant to exchange the phone, he had, in turn, passed parts of the message on the finders of the cell phone in Khiva. Long story short, we did not know if or when they would be in Bukhara, but Mike and I waited by Lyabi-Hauz pool from 5:30 until 9:00pm for two nights in a row wearing the clothes described to the finders, and running around to every British face asking if they had an excess of cell phones. We now have a reputation as crazies in Bukhara who wear the same clothing multiple days on end and rush around to every occupied table with wide, hopeful eyes.
It was heartbreaking to lose the phone and then the brief, glimmer of hope that had us running around in 90 degree weather and waiting anxiously by the pool for hours on end has left us even more defeated and cell phone-less.

This story, miraculously, has a happy ending. The British girl called in one final attempt as she was leaving Bukhara and left the phone at her hotel’s front desk. She even paid for that phone call since the battery on the cell phone had died. What a nice lady! And now we have the cell phone back and a great saga to tell of our first lost and found item.

Bukhara market

For those of you who got the reference above to Tolkien, I salute you. (and for those of you who got the ‘I salute you’ reference from Gladiator, I…. well, awesome.) Having travelled from Bukhara to Khiva, we decided after several days in the walled city to return to Bukhara before making our grand entrance into Turkmenistan.

The route from Khiva to Bukhara, which we had done not a week earlier, was easier on the return as we knew quite well what to expect: cramped conditions, sweltering heat, screeching Islamic music, a driver screaming on his cell phone, and multiple security stops. We bargained for quite a while with various drivers until finally one agreed, the largest and most intimidating of the lot, to take us for $18 USD a piece. We had heard others bargain for $15 a person, but standing in the 90 degree heat with all of our bags on did not inspire me to drag out the process. We later found out that the average price is $20 a seat, so we had done well to get $18 for a 5 hour cab drive across the desert.

You may be curious as to why I’m quoting in US dollars. Believe it or not, Uzbekistan runs nearly entirely on US currency. Everything in Samarkand, Bukhara and Khiva is quoted in US prices and you negotiate in dollars, even if you end up paying in CYM (the Uzbek currency). We wrote before that there were two rates of exchange in Uzbekistan, the official rate (1,400 CYM to the dollar) and the black market rate (1,800 CYM to the USD). Everyone uses the black market rate when talking about USD. It is amazing to me that everyone in this country uses the dollar. It’s a testament to how stable they think the US is in comparison to the limited faith they have in their own economy. You’d think the government here would focus on stamping out the USD in the country, as it’s a bit embarrassing for them as well. However, at a restaurant owned by the president’s daughter, prices are in Euros, not CYM—not a very good sign.

This time we were ready for the ride to Bukhara from Khiva, and I had taken a Dramamine in preparation for the bouncing (the cars have no shocks) and jolting that would occur for the next 5 hours. What I wasn’t ready for was a neon-yellow bee to fly into the window, into my shirt and sting me in the ribs. This neon buzzing machine scared the hell out of me for its intimidating color and twitching buttocks. Luckily, I’m not allergic to bees, having been stung literally hundreds of times in my life—twice already on this trip. We arrived without other incident and met up, accidently, with the German-Russians (whom we had met on the fortress adventure in Khiva) at Lyabi-Hauz, where they told us that Olga was popped on by a bird as the car sped through the desert (which is considered good luck in Russia!) while the window was mostly rolled up.

Khiva was once renowned for its exotic and plentiful slave trade along the silk route. Slaves were captured in distant lands and marched across the harsh desert to Khiva, where they were put on display and sold. The slaves were usually from neighboring countries (in modern lingo) or from opposition regions, but generally from within Central Asia. As you enter the city from the east gate you are reminded of its ancient trade. The east gate is a long tunnel with prison cells on both sides that could hold up to seventy people per cell. To enter the market people had to pass through this tunnel of slaves, where sellers would shout out bargain deals on humans. Once in the east gate you were routed to the main bazaar area (although today there is a restaurant blocking the direct path) where you could buy vegetables and fruits, but also livestock and handicrafts.

If you were to enter the city from the west gate you might have a totally different experience in Khiva. This is where grand entrances are made, as this is the largest and most stately entryway into Khiva. The west gate enters near the Khiva Ark, which is where the ruling family lived. The multi-story complex they occupied boasts some of the most fascinating architecture in Central Asia. At the base of the Ark was the prison (of which we took a modern-day tour). The prisons in Khiva were never full for long, the reason being that the rulers employed professionals to do away with the prison’s inhabitants in ever more gruesome and creative ways. For example, a woman and man found to be in an unmarried relationship were killed, naturally, but here is the ‘Khiva catch’: The man is slowly hung from a platform in the city square while the woman is buried in the square up to her head and then slowly sawed in half while the dying man watched. In another twisted punishment, a woman who commits a crime is put in a bag full of cats (Mike thought they were snakes) and then the bag is hit with a bat. Finally, men are buried alive vertically, with their feet sticking up into the city square as a reminder. In Khiva, they were on the one strike system.

If you enter from the south gate, as we did, you will have a rather simple experience as that is where many locals chose to put their modest dwellings. Once inside the rather non-descript gate you will be greeted by local stray dogs and cats, and can peruse the alleys talking with the children. If you head west you’ll find the city’s graveyard, which is a cemetery that scales up the side of the city wall, the city’s oldest locally used mosques and medrassas are here. If you head east from the south gate you’ll find a long winding road that leads to more housing.

Finally, the north gate. In modern times this is the transportation hub, with buses to and from neighboring cities. There is little of interest other than a small restaurant outside the walls. In ancient times this gate served a different purpose: sanitation. The city was once fueled by a canal system bringing water in and sewage out: this was the out. There was also a pool outside the north gate where people could bathe and cleanse themselves as well as take a short-cut to the bazaar. This was the most lively and active gate for locals still living in the city and tourists trying to get out. From here you can also climb up on the twenty foot wall of the city and take a semi-circular tour of the city from above.

Khiva is a must-see on the silk road for its absurdities, its amazing architecture and the extreme dichotomy of the walled city. Owing much to its importance as a trade center until recent times, and then to the Soviet preservation of the city, Khiva has remained relatively unscathed by the 21st century (though you can find internet near the minaret by the west gate).

Khiva Shared Taxi Ride

Having decided to leave Bukhara, we endeavored to find a way to Khiva, a city on the western side of Uzbekistan. There was a train, but it took 24 hours and would depart from a city an hour from Bukhara at 3:00am. If one wanted to jump a bus to Khiva, you should wait on the side of the street and wave down passing busses and inquire if they were headed towards the west. The third and final option was to hire a shared taxi, which is to say that one driver will sell seats in his car and leave when all the seats are full. Our B&B owner knew a man who was leaving for Khiva that afternoon at 5:00pm, so we said we’d tag along for $18 USD. It would be a five hour ride.

The driver arrived and was a giant man with a square jaw and veins protruding from his forearms. HE had already found another local man heading to Urgench, a city near Khiva, and suggested we either pay for the empty seat or wait at the bus station to find a fourth person. We opted for the later. The car itself was a tiny Nissan with no seat belts and back windows that did not budge. There were no head rests and the air conditioner had been removed to make way for a large CD player, which jiggled around in the dash board while we drove. At the bus station we picked up a scrawny fourth traveler, who looked sickly and slightly drunk. We peeled out of the bus station, sending rocks flying up behind us. The driver and the two local passengers then did a short prayer together using the phrase, “inshallah” which means, “God willing.” This did not seem like something a driver should say about a straightforward drive to another city, they all bowed together and did the traditional prayer gestures (note that we had not stopped the car and now the driver was closed-eyed doing 100kph).

What should have been a straightforward ride turned out to be a test of my inner most patience. We were stopped by cops seeking bribes as well as several internal customs and border checks (regional rather than national). Before and behind our car people were crying as the seats were ripped out and their baggage overturned. For some reason, perhaps the fact that our driver knew every guard along the route, our car was sparred.

After 4.5 hours in the car we stopped and the driver told us we were then in Urgench. He told us to get out and threatened to leave us where we had stopped, which was in the middle of nowhere at a local family’s home and diner. We got on the phone right away with the lady from the B&B in Bukhara. She saved the day and negotiated for the driver to take us from where we were directly to the front door of the hotel we indicated for $5 USD. Seeing little alternative we agreed, though the extra $5 was pure robbery. Once at the hotel in Khiva, though, he demanded $5 a person, not $5 all together, and made an ugly grimace with his misshapen head as he continued to stick out his fist for more money. It was at this point that I lost it and barked out a stream of unintelligible information to this man and demanded that he get in his rickety little car and drive off before I really got angry. He thought this was cute, but seeing as veins were now popping out of my forehead he got in his car and left. The owner of the hotel demanded a ridiculous sum to spend the night, and I also snapped on her and told her I thought that the money grubbing was getting out of hand. We ended up paying $10 USD for the night at the hotel.

In all, it was a great test of patience for me, while Mike’s mid-western charm was turning from charming to placating.