Khiva City — and Bread!

Spent two nights in Khiva, our final stop in Uzbekistan. It’s conveniently near the Turkmenistan border for our onward travel, and we stayed inside the old walled city.  Great for strolling and general sightseeing; I’ll post a little gallery here to give a flavour.

In Soviet times, Uzbekistan was the major cotton producer for the USSR, and many miles of fields remain. I had never seen cotton growing, so our guide made a special stop. The fields are a little past their best in October, but still lots of cotton on view. A fellow traveller grew up in Texas, and said her mother picked cotton in her youth. Apparently it’s a hard and painful job, because the puffy heads contain little spikes.

And to really change the subject, how about bread? Bread is served at all meals, and sold in every kind of store plus from roadside vendors.  The typical Central Asian loaf is a round flattish (and very good) white bread.  Bread is culturally significant, and we were told not to throw bread in the garbage, as this is disrespectful, and upsets local people if they see tourists doing this. We asked how people get rid of stale or unwanted bread, and learned it is used in cooking if possible (like crumbs and croutons and soups), or is fed to cattle or goats, but it’s never thrown away.  In kitchens, the crumbs from  cutting or tearing bread are swept into a big container kept for the purpose, and when full it gets emptied outside to feed birds.  It’s also rude to tear bread one-handed, you must use two hands, as that is considered more respectful of the bread. Who knew??