Food in Mostar: Sadrvan & Hindin Han

After our lovely time in Samarkand, we ventured to our next Uzbek stop of Khiva. Khiva would resemble Bukhara more than the others, in that it’s a contained little ancient town full of minarets and mosques and the whole damn thing is a UNESCO World Heritage site. Also, it was similarly dusty and dry and boring for modern travelers but interesting to see for history purposes. It’s unclear when exactly Khiva was established, but historians say it probably came about after Jesus was born like as a birthday present for him maybe. (Not that last part.) But in the past thousand or so years, the town has gone through several different ruling classes from various cultures. I guess they all kept thinking like I did, going ‘hmm this place seems interesting let’s rule it up oh wait everyone here is mean and it’s kind of blah let’s bounce.’ 

But before we bounce, we have to get there. From Samarkand, we had a midnight-ish train to Khiva. The lovely staff at L’Argamak Hotel in Samarkand let us hang out until we had to leave, even though that meant we were keeping everyone up. They were so nice I missed them immediately upon leaving. Our train was actually to Urgench, a city large enough to have a train station, because Khiva is a little wee sandy baby that is not and does not. Once at Urgench, we had a car waiting for us, arranged through Sultan at the Advantour tour company, who arranged all our Uzbek transit (recommended; you don’t want to deal with Uzbek train tickets or taxi drivers). I honestly don’t remember this overnight train, which means it had to be okay, right? Or I just was so traumatized that I blocked out all memories? No I think this one was uneventful, and uneventful is good. 

The next morning, we met our driver for the ride to Khiva, and he was the best driver and communicator yet so I wished we had him for more than just a 30 minute ride (‘whether bright or melancholyyyyy rough and ready finely spun’ anyone??). He told us about Urgench and how many people live there and what they do and grow and it was nice! I think there’s cotton there. 

So Khiva was originally full of Iranian people speaking an Iranian language. But then the Turks, those darn Turks, took over power in the 10th century. After the Turks got tired of all the mean people in the restaurants and all the French tourists, the Astrakhans had their turn. Then the Astrakhans went back to their preferred job of imprisoning wizards and Khiva fell into the hands of Russians, under General Konstantin von Kaufman in the 1800s. Russia was soooo nice though and let Khiva act in a quasi-independent manner, kind of like they are doing to the USA right now! I guess this is why you can get by speaking Russian in Khiva, although no that’s not it because it’s pretty regular all over Uzbekistan so maybe it filtered in otherwise; I’m sure they took over at various points in time and space. Anyway Khiva was part of the USSR in the 1900s and then it became part of the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic and now it is part of Uzbekistan and yes I am getting all of this from wikipedia but my husband donates to it (unlike the rest of us who see that message ‘we just need a dollar from you and then you can keep having access to all this knowledge that you regularly use just give us a dollar’ and we just click that black ‘x’ on the box and are like byeeees am I right up top) so I think it’s okay. 

Khiva exists in two parts – the ‘modern’ part of town where people live and where there are like roads (barely) and markets (found one) and stuff, and the ancient inner town completely surrounded by walls. The inside walled part is the historical center, the important part for tourists, the World Heritage area. It’s called Ichan Kala, the walled inner town, and it contained more than 50 monuments of historical importance that honestly are like heavily unmarked so I don’t really know what I’m going to be sharing pictures of, just know that they are the historic important things. Luckily, wiki tells me that the most important parts of Ichan Kala are the walls and the gates, and I can’t mess up identifying those! Above is a gate! Wheee! 

Right on the other side of the gate was our guest house, the Qosha Darvoza which no I don’t know how to say either but I do love u-less q words. I highly recommend this guest house for Khiva visits because the location is perfect – right outside that (north?) gate of the old town so it’s very close but not inside the ancient walls, which is important because inside is like an immediate uncomfortable trip back in time and you don’t want to sleep in that kind of place. Also who knows if there’s electricity? So the Qosha cabana is a great choice. The man working there was also one of three very kind Uzbeks we met during our time in the country so you will want to meet him because that’s like a unicorn in these parts. Also it had such a cool desert-chic vibe. 

I loved the Qosha’s location because as soon as you left those front doors, you were surrounded by the sights. First, across the street was a beautiful garden that we enjoyed walking through as we went back and forth to the old town. It was the only pretty thing in Khiva!

I’m sharing this super embarrassing picture (where’s that PPK thread when you need it) because it’s so cool how you can see the ancient gate and walls of the city in the background! Once you enter those gates, it really is a whole other world, and Uzbekistan itself is a whole nother world too so when you’re in the Ichan Kala it’s like so many worlds removed from earth know what I’m saying. Once you enter the gates, it’s like a little bit of Mars or maybe Tatooine right? Here’s that same girl in the same dumb hat on the other side (I’m on the east side, I’m on the west side, I’m on the one side, I’m on the other side). 

Note to people who like to not be broken, climbing these walls is a bit treacherous! You can pretty much scramble your way up to this first level and take a few steps, but don’t go too far because it is like from the 8th century and is not exactly a ‘path’. Also climbing up to the higher levels would require more than just the willingness to scamper; I think you’d need rope. Kinda skir kinda skir! 

A few steps beyond the gate, we ran into construction on one of the major buildings, because we were in Uzbekistan and that’s what we learned to expect all over this country so why should this tiny protected town be any different. 

According to the signs around the construction site (this they sign well but of course none of the historic sites have plaques or any info eye roll), a Chinese company was overseeing this work. We seriously considered going in without hardhats and seeing if they could feed us (god we missed Chinese food/non-Uzbek food). 

After this point, the Ichan Kala land becomes a complete maze. It is full of winding little alleys and no street signs (they aren’t streets!) and buildings that all look the same, lather rinse repeat, so following a path or keeping hold of any sort of intention with your wandering is impossible. And filling all these alleys are children who have learned how to say ‘WHERE YOU FROM’ in the languages of the main groups of tourists who come here – English, French, German – and they will chase you and harass you and shout WHERE YOU FROM as long as they want. Kind of annoying! And they see how lost you look because who can follow directions in this sort of confusing sandy maze! So they will chase you and ask you if they can help you and ask for American money and we were like ‘we don’t have any American money we are in Uzbekistan!’ and they won’t care and will just keep repeatedly asking you for it and chasing you. If you persevere, you’ll make it through the shady part of the alleys and into the opening up of the tourist center. 

And if you make it into the tourist center of the old town, you make it to all the minarets and mosques and unmarked other buildings and LOTS of French people. This is the one place on earth I’ve been where the touts don’t lead with English, guessing that regardless of where you are from as a white person, you probably speak English, playing the odds that English will work. Here the odds are higher that French will work! They lead with French because the tourists here are mostly French! It was kind of cool to notice that difference. And to not be bombarded with nonstop shouts of ‘where you from’ and ‘here buy this souvenir’ in English was fun. 

Strangely, despite how barren this section of the country seemed, the very center of the center of the old town was full of tourists and LINED with touts and souvenir stands, which was quite surprising. And kind of blew the whole ancient historical vibe that is the purpose of a visit to Khiva. And if you didn’t catch what I was saying before, everyone was kind of mean, except for our guest house man and like one guy at one restaurant we ate at. Over three days! It still is cool to see this old town center and all the buildings, but you could honestly get your fill in a few hours, not a few days, and preserve some of your sanity, patience, and good will towards men (although that’s no longer necessary, haven’t you heard, men are over). 

Some of the buildings are pretty cool! As you can see! But we’ve been looking at similarly blue tiled mosques for like yeeeeears now. They all have names and stories but they weren’t well marked and we were kind of over it, I’m sorry to say. But it happens with long-term travel! Or even short-term travel! Don’t feel bad! 

We mainly wandered around the old town, got lost, got hot, got thirsty, and looked on with appreciation at all the old structures. We were planning to climb the minaret but the random lady who came out of nowhere and approached us as the guardian of the minaret (a suspicious thing that happened at least five times a day so far since arriving in Uzbekistan) gave us a price for the climb that just wasn’t worth it. But it was super hot anyway so pictures will suffice. 

My favorite thing in the old town was honestly this map of the Silk Road. It was exciting to see how far we’ve come, how much we’ve seen. And it gave us some much needed boosting in terms of morale to remember how epic this trip was. 

I also liked this statue, of Al Khorezmi. Khorezm is the name of the region surrounding Khiva, and Al Khorezmi was a scholar who I’m gonna guess is the same as Al Khwarizmi, the famous Persian mathematician who is considered the founder of algebra. He does indeed look like he’s thinking hmm why on earth am I foisting this shit upon the world. No just kidding algebra is great. 

Oh I want to say that this is the Jame Mosque, a) because I know that the Jame mosque has over 200 columns and this looks like it could be it and b) I just want to be able to name something in this post considering what a shit job I did of recognizing what anything was in the first place. The Jame mosque’s pillars date back to the 10th century, and you can walk among them while enjoying the one single space in town that provides respite from the heat and sun. Apparently there’s a carriage in here that was a gift from Tsar Nicholas (old friend!) to the khan but I don’t see it, do you. 

As for food, I was able to navigate the same-old same-old menus in the old town’s tourist-friendly (but not actually friendly, as we’ve established) restaurants. The place I was excited for turned out to be the world because of the staff. I think it was called Cafe Kheizem, right at the main central toilets (yes there are toilets in the center!). It was disappointing because the waitress didn’t write down our order and so my most-wanted dish of stewed cabbage never came, and when I asked the staff about it (she was long gone by then) there was no receipt or anything to point to. UGH. Listen, if you are in the restaurant business, it is not impressive at all if the waitstaff can remember your order without writing it down. It’s literally the stupidest thing to try to do to impress us, because if it works it’s keeping things at base level competence, and if it doesn’t work well then your customers don’t get their food. JUST WRITE IT DOWN. I really wanted that cabbage too. I did have a salad of course and a cold noodle salad thing that we shared and they were fine but like so boring. 

Khorezem Art restaurant, on the other hand, is the only one I can recommend because like I said before, the guy working wasn’t outright mean to us. And it was fine. And they have beans! I got all the little accidentally vegan dishes on the menu and it made a very satisfying meal. 

So, we basically saw everything there is to see and then another three more times in one day. The next day, we slept super late and didn’t go back to go see the same things again till late in the day, which was nice. We spent some time enjoying Uzbek television in our room. The only thing we could understand was a children’s program that was teaching English. And yet we watched it. 

We were set to leave super early in the morning, in another car booked with Sultan, to take us to Nukus (we will talk about that in the next post!). We checked out the night before since it would be so early, and told the Qosha Darvoza guys that we wouldn’t need breakfast that early since it would be too early for humans to eat. They were so nice that they wouldn’t let us skip breakfast, and instead they packed us a giant wine box full of an insane amount of dumplings (not for me but still, nice), water bottles (def for me!), bread, cucumbers and tomatoes (I know), pears, and cake. How sweet is that?! Yay for nice people! And it saved us from having to buy stuff for our train that night. 

Everything else was bullshit though, and we’d have even more rudeness in our next stop. We were so sick of this country and how badly it wanted to screw with it, apparently, so we were kind of dragging ourselves from place to place and going through the motions. What a shame to feel this way when traveling in such far away, seemingly cool places! Well not everything can be a winner, and at least we saw some nice mosques and minarets and other old things. 

There’s so much more to talk about from St. Petersburg! Russia fun is only just beginning! We had a jam-packed less-than-a-week in the ‘bourg, seeing everything on our must list and most of the stuff on our maybe list. We really enjoyed our time and would happily return one day, maybe for a more leisurely visit, maybe to do all the clubbing we missed out on (“well I wouldn’t say I’ve been *missing* it”). I covered all the main highlights in the previous post, but there’s still so much cool stuff we saw.  I want to share the last of the museuming we did in Peterbourg, a few random things worth commenting on (at least from my perspective), and our day at the Russian version of Versailles. 

I know I’m a nutter but one of my favorite things was this ambulance. The word on the back is pronounced ‘reanimatsia” – like reanimator. I was cracking up. So morbid! 

There are statues everywhere, and not just of past rules but of famous writers too. Here is Pushkin all like ‘hey I don’t really know what’s over there but there’s a bird on my head’. 

And here’s Gogol being like ‘I’m so morose but in a high fashion way not a depressed way look how fashionable my downward gaze is maybe I should model instead of write.’ First name Hansel.

  So St. Petersburg has the deepest subway tunnels I’ve ever seen. Are they the deepest in the entire world? I would bet on it. OK I just looked it up and they have the second deepest in the world and some of the longest escalators. Seriously, on the way to the metro we would be standing on that escalator for like a full four minutes! That’s INSANE! And I thought the tube had some deep lines! I usually run down the escalators in the tube but hell if I was going to even walk slowly down this one when I couldn’t even see the bottom for 3 minutes! It was kind of scary. The metro was pretty easy to use though with really user-friendly token machines. You just put money in and for every 45p (the cost of a one way token) it counts, it spits out a token. So easy, no screens or language barriers or anything.

Okay that’s enough Rand(i)om Thoughts, let’s get back to touristing! One rainy morning (cough every morning so far cough), we walked for a while across the Neva to see the original cabin of Peter the Great when he first found the land and was like hey I wanna live here and name it after me! His little cabin was so cute! It was built in 1703 and he liked for it a little but then he was like nah boys let’s make a huge city and have my palaces be approximately 1 billion times bigger than this one room schoolhouse. The cabin was closed the day we went up but I don’t think it’s necessary to go in anyway. Cool to see, cool to see.

 When we were up by the cabin, we decided to check out the cruiser Aurora, which served in the Russo-Japanese war in the early 1900s and now serves as a museum. On a ship! Of course, as we’ve come to learn is super common in Russia, the cruiser was closed the day we went, even though the info we had in advance said it was closed a different day. Oh boy, things are always closed on random days. (Wait till you see what we’ve had to deal with in Moscow! Soon.) At least we got to take a picture of it. 

St. Petersburg has some beautiful green space, such as the big central park called the Field of Mars. This park has beautiful gardens and trees, as well as the Eternal Flame, which was lit on November 6, 1957. Ten years later, it was delivered to Moscow’s Kremlin for a similar site near the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier there – which you will see in the next post! 

Our last museum of St. Petersburg came at the suggestion of friend-of-the-show Liz, who said the Ethnographic Museum was not to be missed. It was a really surprisingly extensive museum. At first the building looks like it has maybe one room but then it goes on literally FOREVER. We were there for 2 hours before I conked out and had to stop museuming. Two hours is really my limit for museuming, especially when we are going to like at least one a day, which is a shame because it really was a very interesting museum. There were tons of dioramas of dress and housing and other aspects of life and culture from literally every ethnic group in the entire region of Central Asia. And best of all, it was the first (and only) exhibit of Jewish stuff we’ve found so far, which made me haps. 

The greatest thing we did later in our visit, though, was a day trip to Peterhof, like the Versailles of Russia. Peter the Great ordered it to be built in the early 1700s, probably so he could summer there when the Winter Palace/Hermitage just wouldn’t do. Like Versailles, it’s very much a good weather destination, with the outside grounds of endless gorgeous gardens and impressive fountains the real draw. So we were nervous about going when the forecast for our last day, the only day we could go, was rain rain rain. Luckily, our hostel receptionist Anastacia (the nicest person we’ve come across like ever) said it was better to see it in the rain than not at all, because we went, and the sun came out the entire time we were on the grounds. It rained on our journey there and back, but we super lucked out once there. Amazing! 

To get to Peterhof from the city, we walked about 30 minutes (literally everywhere we went was always a 30 minute walk, it was like some kind of weird wizard universe) to a certain metro line, took the metro to a bus stop about 10 stops away, and then took a minibus – really a 15 person van, so weird – that went to Peterhof. The minibuses/vans were indeed legitimate, with numbers of their routes on the windows and full of locals getting off along the route – but it just seemed so fake. But it was fine, and got us there in less than an hour. Once there, we spent about 4 hours at the site. It was so beautiful! The fountains were ridiculous, as were the gardens. The interior of the palace, the fancy af rooms, required a separate ticket, which we didn’t know until we tried to go in. The line to get interior tickets (at the actual palace, not the outside ticket office) was suuuper long, and then once you had those tickets you had to queue in another super long line to get inside. So annoying! The rooms are gorgeous though. No pictures allowed, so you’ll have to go yourself. But I’ll share tons of pictures from the lovely grounds! They went on forever, and even though the site was packed, there was so much of it that you could walk a mile all alone like you were in a forest. Such a great respite. 

I definitely recommend spending a day at Peterhof as a break from the city. We loved it, though I must admit we still haven’t been to Versailles, so I can’t say whether you’d be similarly blown away by the beauty if you’ve been primed by Versailles. But I’m going to say that you would still enjoy it because come on so beautiful! 

So St. Petey’s was a great real first-stop on our adventure. It felt very comfortable, without any of the culture shock that we are expecting to come at us in the (very!) near future. It is still very European, which explains that feeling. We would probably be happy to return one day, especially because there is still much to see. We really wanted to do a night boat tour, on many strong recommendations. See, at night, the bridges on all the canals lift up from about 1:45am to maybe just before 4am, so there are boat tours that go around the freed up canals and show off all the lights of the city. It’s supposed to be awesome, but there just wasn’t a night that we could dedicate to being up then because we had such full days planned, we couldn’t sacrifice a whole morning (as we would need to in order to recover from such a night!). So we’re sorry to have missed that, but we did so much sight-seeing that we are happy overall with our visit. And now we have a good reason to return! After Peterhof, we had a great final dinner at Ukrop (read about it here!) before getting on the midnight sleeper train to Moscow. Next post!