Sue's Travels: Silk Road - 5 June 2009 - Road to Khiva, Uzbekistan

We left Bokhara at about 8:00 am to head to Khiva. The road was long, bumpy and dusty. It was about 460 Km and we didn’t get to Khiva until about 4:00 PM. I shouldn’t complain because in the days of the silk road it took a caravan about 14 days to make the same trip that we completed in 8 hours. As we left Bokhara, we saw sun flowers, corn and wheat growing. Gradually desert took over. In the days of the silk road, there was significant blowing sand that could bury a caravan. The Russians planted desert type vegetation to reduce the amount of material that blows around. We encountered dust, but nothing more serious. We pulled over to the side of the road to photograph the blowing dust, but we didn’t get out because if we did the bus would have been loaded with dust. We passed a family living in a Yurt tending a flock of sheep. We stopped and took pictures and Suzie gave the children pens. We came to the Oxnus or Amu Darya River, which, when Alexander the Great encountered it, he initially thought that it was a lake because it was so wide. The Amu Darya is 1,400 Km long and used to flow into the Aral Sea, which is now drying up because most of the rivers that used to flow into it have been diverted for agriculture, especially cotton which requires a lot of water. There is a bridge which crosses it at its narrowest point in Uzbekistan, which is 600 meters. The bridge is sort of a truss bridge. While very effective, it isn’t very pretty.

We passed through the district of Korezum. The local people believe that Zorastrianism developed in their province and not in Persia (Iran). They have apparently incorporated many Zorastrian customs into their lives. They use fire at funerals, when they visit graves and at weddings. The region produces a significant rice crop, which meets part of the countries need for rice.