Khiva - September 14, 2007

September 14, 2007

We began our day with a city tour of Bishkek, stopping first at the Krygyzstan “White House”, the seat of their government. This building does not also serve as a residence for their president; he lives about three miles away. We noticed that there was absolutely no traffic on the wide avenue, but soon a caravan of cars led by a police car with flashing lights sped by. We found out it was a Swiss contingent heading to the Ak Keme Resort and other traffic had been detoured for security reasons.

Across a street in a wooded park stands Friendship Tower representing friendship between Kyrgyzstan and Russia. The next plaza down the street has two important monuments. The first is the national flag of Kyrgyzstan waving from a flagpole above a marble pavilion. Two soldiers stand at rigid attention guarding the Krygyzstan flag in the open plaza. We waited a few minutes to see the hourly changing of the guard, reminiscent of Buckingham Palace. The soldiers in their green uniforms kick their legs out almost parallel to the ground as they march forward in the ceremony to relieve their fellow soldiers on the elevated platform. It is not as easy as it looks, especially while holding a rifle and marching in unison with two other soldiers, but this is an elite assignment, much as it is for the young men guarding the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Washington DC. Also, on the plaza stands a statue of Erkindik (Freedom), a winged angel on a globe holding out the national symbol on the Kyrgyzstan flag. The guide told us that the angel’s face bears a striking resemblance to a former President’s wife who handed out favors and positions at the right price. Pigeons appropriately sit on her head. During the Russian time, there was a statue of Lenin in this spot, but it now resides a short stroll away in a somewhat hidden park.

We drove to the airport for our flight to Tashkent, Uzbekistan. With a weight limit concern, I jettisoned some items to get my luggage within the weight allowance of 20 kilos. The scale at check-in registered 19.2 kilos (hurray!), but I had stuffed two carry-ons to help reduce the weight. Garry and Rich were not as lucky; they had to pay $7.

Heading to passport control, two men stopped to ask me if I was traveling to Pakistan. I answered no, but that I had traveled from Islamabad through northern Pakistan and continued talking to them about our Silk Road trip. The reason they approached me was that I was wearing my T-shirt with Silk Road and Pakistan on the back. We met them again inside at the gate and talked more about the Swat Valley, Karimabad, Shigar and Skardu. They both work for the Pakistani Department of Agriculture and were returning from a conference in Krygyzstan.

The uneventful flight pleased us, but after arriving in Tashkent Uzbekistan, going through passport control and customs with our luggage was a different story. The group was still working its way through the long line when we found out that our next flight, to Urgency (Khiva), was leaving in 45 minutes! Our 6 PM flight had been moved ahead to 3 PM! Claudio pulled off a minor miracle by gaining the cooperation of the officers and some nearby porters. We then made a mad dash to get our bags through customs and make our way from the international terminal to the domestic terminal. At the domestic terminal, three of the women were given the wrong ticket, but while going through security at the gate, the personnel did not even notice that the name on the ticket didn’t match the name on the passport. We swapped tickets to correct the mistake before boarding the bus that took us to the plane. We were pleasantly surprised to find that the plane was a new Boeing 757.

As we traveled to Khiva from Ugrench airport, we noticed people, mostly women, picking cotton in the fields. We started asking questions of our guide and learned a few interesting facts. Uzbekistan’s economy favors the cultivation of wheat and cotton with cotton production of 3.5 million tons rather than the previously inflated quota of 5 million tons under the old Soviet regime. Kyrgyzstan specialized in cotton and supplied the entire USSR, so after their independence in 1991 there was severe economic difficulty while they worked to find new customers and reduce their production to match demand. Growing of the cotton was done collectively under the Soviets, but now private farmers own the land, cultivate, harvest and sell the cotton themselves. In Uzbekistan, the cotton crop is harvested over three picks. The first pick is done by hand and must be completed by the end of October, before the rains begin. This yields the best cotton. The second manual picking occurs after the rains, but yields a lower quality. The third and final picking is completed by machine and yields the lowest quality.

We arrived outside the thick adobe walls of Khiva’s old city and were surprised to find that our hotel, Hotel Asia, was conveniently located right across the street from the south gate. As soon as rooms were assigned, we hurried through the gate to explore the old city before sunset. The streets were clean as we observed women sweeping them with straw brooms and then sloshing water by hand from buckets onto the road in order to settle the dust. Wandering through the streets, we saw minaret after minaret jutting skyward, veneered with tiles of blue, turquoise, green, yellow and white. Most tourists had left for the day, leaving the streets practically empty; however, several shops remained open for that special last minute purchase. This town has thousands of residents and we saw young children playing, riding bikes and some older boys carving wood. Through open doors you sometimes saw a woman sewing as she watched TV and one husband was reclining by the front of the house drinking tea.

As it got dark, we returned to the hotel and sat in the courtyard across from the city walls enjoying a cold draft beer. We had dinner in the hotel restaurant and called it a night.

Signing off from Khiva,

Rich, Garry and Tamara

Captions: 1) The Krygyzstan "White House" 2) Freedom statue 3) Changing of the Guard 4) Having a cold one at the Asia Hotel in Khiva 5) South gate at Khiva's "Old City"