Best things to do in Khiva

Ichan Kala

• West gate first
• Morning light
• Lit after dark

The walled town itself: a medieval city that never moved out of its ring of clay, on the UNESCO list since 1990, before anything else in the country. Two streets cross it gate to gate and everything else is lanes that end at somebody's door.

Kunya Ark and the wall at sunset

• Go up before the sun drops
• Separate ticket
• Steep steps

The khans' own citadel inside the town: throne court, mint, a summer mosque lined in blue tile. The watchtower above it is where the day ends — the whole of Ichan Kala from one parapet, minarets going black against the desert. The tower and the walk along the wall are paid for separately from the main ticket.

Islam Khoja minaret

• Separate ticket
• Narrow, unlit stairs
• Not for the claustrophobic

56.6 metres, the tallest thing in old Khiva and the youngest of its monuments — raised around 1908–1910 for the khan's vizier, along with a school and a hospital. The stairs inside are narrow and unlit; the view from the top is the one on the postcards.

What else is inside the walls

• Kalta MinorStart with the base: fourteen metres across, laid for a tower three times what stands there now. The khan who commissioned it died in 1855, the work stopped at 29 metres, and Khiva was left with a turquoise stump visible from every lane.
• Juma MosqueFrom the street it is a wall, a flat roof and a minaret. Inside, more than two hundred carved wooden columns stand in rows in the half-dark, no two alike, some of them centuries older than the roof they hold up. It is the coolest room in town at midday.
• Tash Hauli palaceAllakuli Khan built it in the 1830s: rooms around three courtyards, and the carved wood and tile the Khiva school is known for. The harem courtyard has a ceiling painted like the inside of a tent, which is where the dynasty came from.
• Pahlavan Mahmud mausoleumA wrestler, a poet and a furrier who became the patron of the town. Under the turquoise dome this is a living shrine rather than an exhibit — people come to pray, so shoulders and knees covered and the camera down in the prayer hall. Paid for separately.
• The bazaar and the workshopsTrade never left Ichan Kala. Stalls run gate to gate along the spine of the town — hats, carved wood, suzani — and most of the people behind them walk home fifty metres. Two turnings off the main street there are no stalls at all: laundry lines, a tap, children on bikes.
• Shivit oshiOrder the green noodles. The dough is kneaded with dill until it comes out green, cut fine and served under meat and soured milk. It is a Khorezm plate: the name turns up on menus elsewhere in the country, the thing itself rarely does.

What to know before you go

• One ticket for the townOne ticket, bought at the west gate, opens the monuments and the museums; it runs two days and every door has a QR scanner. The walk along the wall, the Kunya Ark watchtower, the Islam Khoja minaret and the Pahlavan Mahmud mausoleum are each paid for on top, or come with a dearer version of the same pass.
• Getting thereFrom Bukhara the fast train takes about three and a half hours and does not run every day; the older trains cover the same line in six and a half. Khiva has a station of its own, twenty minutes on foot from the walls. The alternative is flying Tashkent — Urgench in an hour and a half and driving the last 30 km, which is what our ten-day route does.
• When to be insideThe hours move with the season: in summer doors open around eight and the town stays walkable until dark, in winter they open at nine and shut nearer five. The middle of the day belongs to the groups and to the sun — clay holds heat and there is no shade — so keep it for the Juma mosque, a museum and lunch.
• The night inside the wallsSleeping inside Ichan Kala is what turns a stop into Khiva: the gates empty, the walls are lit and the lanes are quiet. There are hotels inside the walls and five minutes outside them; we book either.

What we can arrange

All of it we book ourselves. Write once with your dates and you get an answer with a price, not another search form.

• A hotelfrom a family guesthouse to the big complexes
• A car with a driverairport pickup, day trips, transfers between cities
• A guide for the dayin the language you are comfortable in
• Train ticketsTashkent — Samarkand — Bukhara, booked ahead
• A table for dinnerthe tea houses and restaurants we use ourselves