The Silk Road: The Desert City of Xiva

Unlike the last photography series, which I displayed here a couple months after the initial trip, I’d like to have it more immediate this time. So, I just returned from a fantastic journey to Uzbekistan in Central Asia. It is the modern state where many sights of the ancient Silk Road, being the major trading route between China and Europe for more than a century, happen to be. As I was there for work purposes, my time for photography was very limited to a couple of hours a day, so I didn’t have the time to wait for the perfect setup very often but instead tried to capture the beauty and immediacy of the reality in front of me as I saw it at the moment. Our first destination was the city of Xiva (or Chiwa or Khiva) in the Western part of Uzbekistan. It is close to the Amujaria River within the fertile oasis of Chorasm, between the deserts of Kysylkum (Red Sand) and Karakum (Black Sand). As the photography displayed here shows, I think walking through the city felt like being transported not only within space but also within time to a mysterious, oriental place of merchants, beggars, and camels (or Soviet cars) like it already used to be for centuries. In case you wonder, the vast turquoise tower is the landmark of Xiva. It was supposed to be the largest minaret in the Islamic world, but the construction was abandoned midway through. So it was decided to garnish the unfinished structure with beautiful ornaments, at this moment showing the wealth of the oasis city.