Khiva

Khiva is a whole town inside its walls. Itchan Kala, the inner city, was kept almost entire, and its minarets, madrasas, palaces and caravanserai stand within a few hundred metres of one another, between mud-brick walls the colour of the desert around them. Sleep inside the walls, wake before the gates open to the day’s visitors, and for an hour the town is yours.

The Kalta Minor is the first thing you see: a broad minaret sheathed in turquoise tile, left unfinished at a fraction of its intended height. The Islam Khodja minaret, the tallest in the town, is the one to climb for the view over the roofs; the Juma mosque beneath it is a forest of more than two hundred carved wooden columns, some of them close to a thousand years old; the Kunya-Ark, the citadel of the khans, keeps its throne room and a summer mosque tiled in blue.

Khiva is the far end of a journey through the Silk Road cities: in Khorezm, on the lower Amu Darya, a short flight from Tashkent or a full day across the Kyzylkum from Bukhara. The desert road is part of the point. The fortresses of ancient Khorezm rise out of the sand nearby, and the drive to Bukhara, with a stop on the bank of the Amu Darya, is the one day on which the size of the country becomes real. Your private guide in Khiva knows which rooftop takes the sunset best, and how to reach it once the day’s visitors have gone.