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6. Along the Silk Road: Khiva, Uzbekistan
- Laurie Hull
- May 1
- 3 min read
Updated: Aug 18
Khiva
There is a phrase Timur shared somewhere along the way that I keep returning to: the roots are sour but the fruits are sweet. I do not remember exactly what prompted it, but it felt like a description of Khiva most of all.
Khiva is a walled ancient city, Ichon-Qala, and walking inside it feels like stepping directly into another century. The mud-brick walls glow warm in the late afternoon light. The tiled minarets and carved wooden columns of the mosques and palaces are extraordinary. It is compact and walkable and somehow more intimate than Samarkand or Bukhara, as if the walls themselves hold the history in close.
Timur's beautiful wife Zukhra above ground tombstones
At the museum we encountered something that moved me more than any monument: school groups. Children everywhere, delighted to practice their English on actual Americans. They wanted photographs. They clustered around us laughing. One little girl told me I was beautiful. Just precious. Another, a bit later, quietly pressed a bracelet into my hand as a gift. Then she looked up and asked, "Do you like us"? I told her "We love you". And I meant it for all of them, in all five countries. The people of the Stans have been without exception warm, curious, and kind toward us. They seem genuinely happy to see Americans and to connect. If they only knew the complicated picture we carry home with us.
Our guide's family became real to us in Khiva too. Timur's daughter Shakla is in second grade and plays piano, studies chess, and does math competitions. His son Miransha is in first grade and does the same. His wife is finishing her fourth year of a hospitality degree. A family building something, carefully and with great intention, in a country doing the same.
The trip would not have been complete without an evening at Timur's home, and we were the first group ever to go to his house. What an honor. His wife Zukhra was gracious and beautiful, and had laid out an extraordinary spread of food including handmade dumplings (manti) filled with meat or pumpkin. The children performed for us, reciting poems and playing piano. His daughter showed us her paintings and artwork without stopping for breath. His son played chess with one of our group members and kicked around a soccer ball with another. We wandered through their home and saw how they live. It was one of those evenings that reminds you why you travel in the first place, not for the monuments, but for the moments when a door opens into someone else's life and they welcome you in completely. The highlight of my trip. An amazing family and the most gracious welcome.
The Desert Crossing
The drive from Bukhara to Khiva takes you straight through the Kyzyl Kum, the Red Sands Desert, and it turned out to be one of the most quietly spectacular things I've experienced. Mile after mile of dunes and scrubby, prairie-grass-like brush, with mountains hazy and distant on the horizon, vast and empty and ancient. At some point I just put the camera down and imagined how it was centries ago. This is the exact route the Silk Road caravans traveled, loaded with silk and spices and gold, guarded against bandits, moving at the very slow pace of a camel. Out there, you finally feel the scale of what those journeys actually meant, in a way no museum display ever quite gets across.
I couldn't help but picture camels along the road, goods loaded onto their backs while people walked alongside. We passed camels grazing near the road. The Amu Darya River appeared briefly in the distance. The Aral Sea, once one of the world's great lakes, is drying up, salt crusting its former shoreline, fish populations collapsed, communities built around fishing now stranded inland.
The desert crossing took eight to nine hours, but it was worth every minute to reset my mind on where I was and the significance of it all.
An interesting rest stop with diner attached
