Khiva — The Walled Desert City

You are met at Tashkent International Airport and transferred to your hotel. Once you have checked in, your guide takes you into the capital, beginning at the Courage Monument and continuing to the Old City, where you visit the Khast-Imam Complex and the Mausoleum of Kaffal Shashi. You will browse the domed halls of Chorsu Bazaar and the pottery stalls around it, ride the decorated Tashkent Metro into the centre and finish at Amir Timur Square. Overnight in Tashkent, with an early start the following morning.

An early transfer takes you to the domestic terminal for the flight west to Urgench, roughly 1,090 kilometres and about one hour forty minutes in the air. Your driver meets you on arrival for the short drive to Khiva, thirty kilometres and around half an hour. After settling into your hotel you begin a walking tour of Ichan-Kala, entering through the western gate beside the unfinished bulk of Kalta-Minor and visiting the Mukhammad Amin Khan and Mukhammad Rahimkhan madrasahs. The evening is free to walk the lanes as the light drops.

You spend the whole day within Ichan-Kala. In the morning you enter the Juma Mosque, dim and cool beneath 213 carved wooden columns, then explore the Kunya-Ark citadel, the old residence of the Khivan khans, with its tiled summer mosque and the watchtower above. You continue to Tash-Khovli Palace and its harem courtyards, and to the turquoise-domed mausoleum of Pakhlavan Makhmud. In the afternoon you climb the Islom Khodja minaret, the highest in Uzbekistan, for the rooftop view, then walk the ramparts at sunset.

After breakfast you drive north-east into the Kyzylkum for a day among the clay fortresses of ancient Khorezm. You visit Ayaz-Kala, a frontier complex of the Kushan period standing on a bluff above the plain, and Kyzyl-Kala nearby, a compact fort of the Kushan-Afrigid era. You then walk the excavated walls of Toprak-Kala, capital of Khorezm in the third century AD and the most completely uncovered site in the region. Picnic lunch is taken in the desert. You return to Khiva in the late afternoon.

The morning is yours in Khiva for photography before the crowds arrive, for the craft workshops around Alla Kuli Khan's caravanserai, or simply for tea on a rooftop above the old town. After lunch you are transferred to Urgench airport for the flight back to Tashkent. On arrival you are met and taken to your hotel. If time allows there is an evening walk past the white marble Minor Mosque and along Broadway before dinner. Overnight in Tashkent.

After breakfast you check out of the hotel. Depending on your flight time there may be a chance to visit the State Museum of Applied Arts, housed in a former diplomat's residence with carved ganch and painted ceilings, or to pick up ceramics and suzani at Chorsu Bazaar. You are then transferred to Tashkent International Airport for your departure. This is the end of the six-day Khiva, the Walled Desert City tour.