My parents came out to visit Uzbekistan (and us) a few weeks ago. If you're going to come to Uzbekistan, you absolutely have to come and visit the silk road cities. Really, that's the only reason most people come here as tourists, as the rest the country is nice but not that remarkable.
When I started the planning for my parents' trip, I immediately decided to not take the children sightseeing. Touring historical cities is not a child-friendly activity (I know this because we took the kids to Uzbekistan in 2016) and paying for plane tickets, trains tickets, hotels, and food just to have everyone complain and whine the whole time seemed like a terrible idea.
So Brandon agreed to keep everyone home while my parents and I explored Khiva, Bukhara, and Samarkand. He's a really great husband.
We started our trip in Khiva. I had been to Bukara and Samarkand previously, but I hadn't visited Khiva yet, as it is the furthest from Tashkent. There is a fast train to the other silk road cities, but we had to fly to Khiva. It's not a very long flight, however, and by mid-morning we were out exploring Khiva.
The city is a walled city and the wall is still intact, with the historical area of the cities entirely closed to cars. Khiva is the most charming of the silk road cities for this reason, and all of the historical sites are walkable. Most people hire guides, but we didn't and chose to explore on our own. This caused a bit of a rocky start as it took a little while (and a helpful fellow tourist) to figure out that you had to buy a ticket for all the sites instead of paying for each one individually.
We spent the rest of the day wandering around, ducking in to interesting-looking places. We were able to see everything of interest during the day, interspersed with frequent ice cream breaks. Within ten days the weather had turned from cold and rainy to uncomfortably warm for my parents' visit. The temperatures reached into the upper eighties, so ice cream helped with the heat.
We found the minaret climb to be the most interesting site from our visit to Khiva. It was almost 150 feet high, which doesn't sound too bad until you have to climb very steep, fairly dim steps to get to the top of those 150 feet. I couldn't decide if the climb up almost on hands and feet or the climb down, holding on to the stair above to keep from slipping down the time-slicked stairs was worse.
Both my mom and I had a hard time walking the next day because we were so sore. The top, with no railing to keep you from tumbling off the tiny platform and back down the stairs, was also one of those 'you won't find this in the US' experiences.
We finished our evening with a climb up the city walls. The walls have mostly been restored, but the section by our hotel was covered with crumbling tombs and sharp drop-offs. It was a lovely view in the fading light and we couldn't help but pinch ourselves. I could almost imagine the camel trains coming in, dusty from the road and ready for a much-deserved rest.
Not as many tourists make it out to Khiva (although there were quite a few), but it's worth a visit if you can make it. The sites are interesting, but the ambience of the place is my favorite.
