We are in Khiva now. We took a taxi from Bokhara which took seven hours, mostly through desert. It was very interesting, we saw falcons, marmuts, loads of goats and sheep and sand-dunes.
Khiva is a beautiful historic walled town that was renovated by the Soviets and it looks fantastic. It is an open air museum really, with many grand old buildings - mosques, palaces, a fort and an intact city-wall. Few people live here, it seems most people were moved out during the renovations, which does give the place a rather unreal atmosphere. Anyway, at least it is still here.
We are staying in a hotel just outside the walls. We chose the hotel because it advertised that it has wireless internet which we confirmed over the phone with the hotel manager. We wanted wireless so I could clear some of the backlog of photos to be put onto flickr. However, when we arrived we found that it not only did not have wireless but the hotel internet connection is a slow old-fashioned dial-up, so I could not load any photos after all. Finally we found another place with wireless and we are spending quite some time here in order to access the internet.
Today we took a marshrutka (mini-bus with a fixed route) into the local big town where the main railway station is, to buy tickets back to Tashkent. We are taking the overnight train that takes about 19 hours - it must go very slowly to take that long. It is cheap though - we bought first class sleeper tickets and they were only about £50 each. Trains in Uzbekistan are a very good and cheap to get around.
We will stay in Tashkent for a few days and then fly to Bishkek.
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A Blog to record our Big Trip overland from London to Penang. We will travel through France, Spain, Germany, Poland, Lithuania, Russia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, China, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia-Penang. Our flickr page: http://www.flickr.com/photos/smeetravel
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