“Bring It On” in London: Can’t Go Wrong with This Much Funby Randi / August 9, 2018
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Khiva, Uzbekistan: More Ancient Sandy Sights and History
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.
The courtyard/breakfast area, with the rooms surrounding it
outside the Qosha cabana
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!
omg why are you laughing you look like an idiot
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.
screaming from the minarets
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.
FRENCH PEOPLEEEEE
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).
screaming from the minarets
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.
what you see what you see what you see what you see is human
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.
Eating Vegan in Moscow: Highs, Lows, and Our New Second Home
My eating in Moscow started off dire but ended up in strong contention for my favorite food of the trip, thanks (and no thanks) to a wildly uneven list. Due to some HappyCow reviewers whom I no longer trust, I decided my first stop would be at Prime Cafe because they had juices, salads, and wraps. Sure they did, but it ended up being 100% a copy of Pret a Manger. And the old-style Pret, not the newfangled wave of super vegan-friendliness that Pret’s doing in London now. First of all, it was so hard to find because it wasn’t actually called Prime Cafe on HappyCow; it was just listed as its address, which Google maps didn’t want to find. When we finally found the address and saw it was a Prime Cafe, we realized we had seen this chain all over the city and for no good reason had been heading to this not-super-close location. We learned that night that there was one 10 yards from our hostel.
I ordered a vegetable juice right off the drinks board but for some reason the staff laughed at me. Maybe no one orders it. Maybe I just said the words slightly off because I’ve never met people so obsessed with precisely how things are pronounced like Russians are. I think they are just messing with us. Like in English if someone came up to you and said maybe “tree teeckets plees” you’d know they were saying three tickets please. Yet in Russian we’ll say things pretty accurately but because it’s not in a perfect accent people are like what what what??? I don’t understand? And I’m like YOU REALLY DO, YOU’RE JUST BEING A DICK. Anyway, the juice. It was fine but took forever to make and I was just chilling by the counter waiting for it and everyone kept saying things to me that I didn’t understand. I also got the only vegan salad and the only vegan wrap I could find in the fridge case. So, just like Pret but with fewer options. Whoever gave this place great reviews for vegans needs their membership reexplored.
The salad was mostly corn and red pepper, but it did have some kidney beans and maybe pinto beans in there, and it’ll probably be the only beans I find this whole summer so that was great. I mean it didn’t taste particularly great, it was fine, but it was great to have beans. I love beans. The wrap I got was sub-Pret, with one half inedible because it had gotten that gross wrap-sliminess that happens within five minutes of making a wrap and refrigerating it. Grilled wraps 4eva. So even though these Russian Prets were literally on every block (as with regular Pret), I didn’t go back there.
Perfect salad at Fresh
Luckily, Husband’s former London colleague who now lives in Moscow introduced us to my new favorite restaurant called Fresh. It is sooo awesomeeeee. The food is so good and the menu so damn perfect that I forgive them for their tagline being “Healthy is the new Sexy”. Barffff. But yummy food! They had my dream food – big salads full of greens and veggies and chickpeas and grilled tofu and then fun things like tempura-ed oyster mushrooms and grilled sweet potatoes and just ugh I love salads like that! Dream! They also had really good burgers and an extensive smoothie and juice menu, like more than I could hope for even in NYC or London. It was perfect!
yummy magic mushroom salad at Fresh
Over the course of several lunches (okay I admit just two but we ordered enough food for like 4), we tried a lot of dishes. My favorite was my first salad (first pictured above), called the All Stars Salad, with lots of raw spinach and sunflower sprouts with grilled sweet potatoes, slabs of grilled tofu, avocado, a quinoa and adzuki tabouleh, and a yummy sauce. I later got the Magic Mushroom salad (second salad above) which was also really good and had the aforementioned crispy oyster mushrooms mixed it. I wish there were a few more of those. It also had caramelized apple slices, more sunflower sprouts, and pecans. Really, that mushroom salad would have been the winner if it had a better dressing. As it was, it only came with vegan sour cream, which is gross to me but Russians live on their sour cream so I guess it’s popular like that. I just poured in salsa and sauces from our other plates that day and it was great. Both salads came doused in a goji berry & mixed superfood seed mix, which was an awesome addition. I hope those salads provide continued nutrients for me weeks afterwards like when I had cookies and bread for dinner on the train.
Yay chocolate and kale! |
Yay green smoothies! |
The real winners at Fresh were its amazing smoothies. Over our visits, we tried three smoothies. First, the Green Goddess, with broccoli, spinach, pineapple, mango, banana, orange, and green superfood mix. Then I tried the fun Super Kale, with pear, ginger, cucumber (coo coom ba), kale, mint, cilantro, pineapple, and ‘cannabis seeds’ as was written in the menu. And lastly a chocolate peanut butter banana cup of deliciousness. My fave was the Green Goddess but I was most intrigued by the Super Kale one and those cannabis seeds, which sounds crazy but I imagine that just means hempseeds, which is totally normal. The choco pb one was as expected delicious, but not too sweet which was nice…but veered on being not sweet enough.
Ordering falafel: good. Ordering vegan onion rings: GOOOOOOD
Is it just a dilla?
We also tried the quesadillas without cheese, which brings up a hilarious Facebook ‘fight’ my Husband has watched unfold on his wall for like years now. Some rando friend has a running joke/argument with someone about how a quesadilla without cheese just can’t exist. So that’s funny. Our nonexistent dilla was really good, chock full of black beans and corn and vegetables and served with avocado cream and salsa. Hard to eat but yummy and yay I got beans again! We also had the falafel plate as an appetizer once; wasn’t our idea (we were a table of 4) because falafel isn’t exactly hard to come by like other things on the menu but hey I’ll never turn down falafel. And as you might have seen in the falafel plate picture above, we also got VEGAN ONION RINGS! They were so good ahhhh!!!
Husband got the BBQ burger one time, which I was incredibly jealous of. It was really good even though I don’t like barbecue sauce. It had onion rings on it! And hot banana chilies. They know how to make burgers. Another time he got the Mexican taco special which I also really enjoyed. I think it was full of TVP, or maybe ground seitan, and lots of lettuce and it was yum.
Of course I also got their vegan cookies to go once or twice. They were very reminiscent of the banana-filled oatmeal I make sometimes – just oats and bananas. I think that’s literally all there was in these cookies. But hey I love oats and bananas so we’re good.
I wish I could go back but I don’t know if I want to go back to Moscow for a trip. I’d be so pumped if they opened a Fresh in London. Oh we do have half a day in Moscow later in our adventure and I’m definitely going there again. Yummm.
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Another very nice vegetarian place we tried was Avocado Cafe, which was similar to Fresh but not quite as good. Maybe it’s because they didn’t bring my soup until everyone else had long finished all their food, which is just terrible service. Luckily that soup was good. It was a chickpea (CHICKPEAS HELLO!) tomato soup with a few various veggies and it was perfect comfort food. I also had a basic but decent green salad with avocado (of course, it’s called that after all) and we all shared fried tofu sticks which were random but damn good.
green salad woohoo 
vegan pelmeni! I hope I find you again! oh woohoo 
another soup veg? lentil? hooray for soup woohoo |
fried tofu woohoo 
delicious but 40 minute late soup woohoo 
first and only vegan ice cream of the trip was full of freezer burn. but the cheesecake was so good |
Husband had the pelmeni, which I was super jealous of because pelmeni is usually made with egg and filled with meat, but these were vegan! I had one but I’m still jealous of them. I want to find vegan pelmeni again! And I was jealous again of Cousin’s dessert. I got ice cream – first and only vegan ice cream we’ve found so far! – and he got blueberry cheesecake but from the raw section, so I was like eww raw cheesecake is always the worst, just thick slabs of pureed cashews so nauseating. But this was actually the best raw cheesecake I’ve ever had. And my precious beloved ice cream had been apparently in the back of their freezer since the end of the Soviet Union because it was a slightly melting but mostly hard as a rock piece of freezer burn. DISAPPOINT.
Luckily, nothing can keep us down long when we are in the presence of our new favorite place, our second home as it became when in St. Petersburg – Teremok! The McDonald’s of fast Russian food but soooo good! In crazy events, the Moscow Teremoks had even bigger lenten/vegan menus!! Hooray the day!
This time, I had the roasted potatoes and pickles and fried onions, plus another vinagret (diced veggie salad in a light vinaigrette). Both were so good but what else would you expect from our beloved Teremok! There’s one in NYC now, guys! Go!!
Near our hostel, there was a pretty fancy grocery store that we went to for emergency water, and lucky that we did because in their fridge section were a few ready-made meals marked as vegan! Such a shock! The one I grabbed was an unfortunate mix of hummus and seaweed in a wrap, so ack, but still, it was vegan!
it says vegansky product!
And I would be remiss if I didn’t share status updates on the constant search for my new favorite bars (although I found a potential new favorite in Yekaterinburg, but we will get there!). The “Take A Bite” bar was pretty easy to find in Moscow – especially at this random grocery near Avocado Cafe:
THEY HAD EVERY FLAVOR GUYS!!!
So, overall Moscow is very vegan-friendly, with a few standout all-veg restaurants that I would happily go back to next time I’m there (in 3 months lol!). Ordering at the regular traditional restaurants requires a little bit of knowledge about Russian food, but still you’re in a city where most people understand a little English and most restaurants have an English menu, so it’s easy. And I know it won’t be this easy again, not until we circle back through Moscow!
