Khiva – A 21st-century Visitor’s Experience

Khiva, Uzbekistan is the Silk Route’s most memorable city claims veteran travel writer Mark Elliott who first visited back in 1994 when he counted a mere 7 foreign visitors in town. These days it’s an understandable tourist magnet. Here are Mark’s tips for making the most of a visit.

Mark Elliott

Khiva – A 21st-century Visitor’s Experience

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The much vaunted ‘Silk Road’ linking medieval China with the West, was more a shifting network of trade routes than anything resembling a highway. Nonetheless, a few cities have come to typify the essence of that once great trading system in which camel caravans would cross huge inhospitable areas of Central Asia. Bukhara and Samarkand are probably the best known. However, better preserved than either is the fabulous little city of Khiva, also now in Uzbekistan.