Introduction
Khorezm — Xorazm in Uzbek — is a province of the far north-west, an ancient oasis on the delta of the Amu Darya where one of Central Asia's oldest civilisations grew up on the edge of the Kyzylkum desert. Its modern capital is the workaday city of Urgench, the region's transport gateway, while its historic jewel is the walled town of Khiva a short distance away; beyond both, the desert holds the ruined mud-brick fortresses of a Khorezmian world far older than the Silk Road cities.
Overview
Almost everyone comes to Khorezm for Khiva, and the walled inner town of Itchan Kala — the minarets, the palaces, the covered mosque — belongs to Itchan Kala; this page is the province around it. Step outside the walls and Khiva keeps going as a working town: the outer ring, Dichan Kala, is where people actually live, with ordinary bazaars and lanes that give a sense of the place beyond the museum core, especially once the day-trippers have left. Urgench, thirty kilometres away, is the region's airport and rail gateway rather than a destination in itself, but it is where most journeys to the north-west begin or end. The province's real surprise lies out in the desert: the Elliq-Qala, the “fifty fortresses” of ancient Khorezm, great eroded ramparts of mud brick such as Ayaz-Kala and Toprak-Kala rising straight from the sand, remnants of a civilisation that flourished here long before Islam. Reached on a half- or full-day trip from Khiva, they are the counterweight to the walled town — raw, empty and very old.
Discover Xorazm
Khiva does not end at the walls of Itchan Kala. The outer town, Dichan Kala, is the living city — markets, tea houses, schools and homes — and wandering its lanes, or watching the walled town from a rooftop café as the light goes, shows a side of Khiva that the monument core, largely given over to tourism, does not. Staying a night inside or just outside the walls lets you have the inner town to yourself at dawn and see the ordinary town wake up around it. Urgench, the provincial capital half an hour away, is a Soviet-planned city of broad avenues that most travellers use only as the gateway — its airport and railway station are the practical way in and out of the far north-west — but it is a useful, unfussy base with the region's best transport links.
Ways to Experience This Destination
The outer town of Dichan Kala where Khiva actually lives, and Urgench as the region's transport gateway.
Ayaz-Kala, Toprak-Kala and the other mud-brick fortresses of ancient Khorezm, on a desert loop from Khiva.
The river-fed oasis of cotton and poplar, and the crossroads onward into Karakalpakstan.
Frequently asked questions
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