Uzbekistan part 4 - desert castles and a few last shots of Khiva!

[graculus]

Apologies for the delay in continuing to post about my trip to Uzbekistan, RL has been a bit manic and I'm only just now catching up with myself and wanting to sit down and tinker with photos.

Okay, where were we?

We were staying in Khiva and there are still a few more pics from there in this post, but the majority of today's post is going to be about the day-trip we took out to two of the former fifty forts of the province of Khoresm. It wasn't until the 1940's that these were properly excavated, having been abandoned to fill with sand for hundreds of years from the time the Arabs invaded Uzbekistan in the 7th century.

First off, we visited Toprak Kala (literally, 'the clay fortress'), which is about 500m x 350m:



It's really hard to get the scale of these places from the pics I'm posting:



Then it was off to Ayaz Kala and its neighbouring yurt camp, where we had lunch and drank tea - much appreciated because it was incredibly hot climbing to the top of the fortress - but didn't stay.





Remember this is all clay brick, all made and built without the benefit of any kind of machinery, with building on this site starting in about 400BC:







And this is an aerial view from the fortress of the stables, which is probably about the size of a modern football stadium:



Here's a view of Ayaz Kala from the yurt camp, which gives more of an idea of its size:



I thought the yurts were interesting, particularly the one with the framework bare of canvas:





Back to Khiva for the night, but just enough time to snatch a few pics of the city walls and various minarets etc. from above:



These pics give you more of an idea how crammed together everything is in the walled city:







Here's an interior shot, looking out into one of the courtyards where there are three of the traditional clay tandoors standing - these are also all over the place across the country and still used on a day to day basis by much of the population as ovens for cooking/baking bread:



Finally, for today at least, another shot of the city walls with a view of the tower from which the previous pics were taken and an idea of scale:




I'm hoping to get some more pics up tomorrow, as we make an exceedingly long bus ride to Bukhara...

Comments

[graculus.livejournal.com]

What you can't get from the pics of those desert castles is that it was insanely hot and the walls of the first castle were pretty much covered with sparrow nests in every crack going. I'd be interested to see how much degradation there's been since they were unearthed in the 1940's...

We didn't stay in any of those yurts, but there is a night in a yurt coming up in my trip, with added camels. ;)