The hook
A walled desert city that looks almost too perfect to be real, a compact maze of mud-brick minarets, madrasas, and palaces enclosed by high ramparts, once the seat of a khanate and a notorious slave market.
01Why it's worth it
Far out toward the Turkmen border, Khiva is the most concentrated and best-preserved of Uzbekistan's Silk Road cities: its inner walled town, the Itchan Kala, is a fully enclosed old city of packed adobe lanes, blue-tiled minarets, madrasas, and the palace of the khans, all inside towering mud-brick walls. It has a slightly frozen, open-air-museum feel, partly because it was heavily restored and much of the population moved out, and its history has a dark side, as it was for centuries a centre of the Central Asian slave trade. But at dawn and dusk, when the day-trippers thin, the walled town under low golden light is genuinely magical, and climbing a minaret or the walls for the view over the rooftops to the surrounding desert is unforgettable. Small and manageable, it is best enjoyed by staying overnight inside the walls.
02How to experience it
Stay a night inside the walls so you get the town in the empty early and late hours. Climb a minaret or the city walls for the rooftop panorama, and wander the lanes without a strict route. It caps the Silk Road trio after Samarkand and Bukhara, reached across the desert.