You're watching Vagabrothers,
and this is Uzbekistan.
I'm Alex. I'm Marko,
and you are watching Vagabrothers.
And right now we're exploring the museum city, Khiva.
Alright guys, welcome to Khiva,
or as locals pronounce it Khiva.
This is a museum city because it's basically a walled pedestrian city
that was actually the first place listed as an Unesco World Heritage Site here in Uzbekistan.
Everything was founded in the 6th century, but it's extremely well preserved.
There're basically no new buildings here.
Staying overnight here gives you the opportunity to feel
what it would have been like way back in the day.
One of the first things that I've noticed is that there are
lots of mosques, lots of minarets,
lots of madrasahs, and lots of fur hats for sale.
I've never seen so many fur hats.
To be perfectly honest with you, last night we found ourselves in the hotel
with these Japanese guidebook writers.
Don't blame it on them. No, it's totally us.
We proceeded to put away three bottles of vodka,
far too many.
Oh my god, so we're all pretty rough this morning,
and we're going to punctuate this trip
with a stop in the tea room.
The tea here in Uzbekistan is actually really nice.
It's a black tea,
but they put lemon in it, fresh lemon and sugar,
and It tastes really, really good.
It's kind of like almost like a tonic, but I really enjoy it.
It's one of my favorite things so far about Uzbekistan..is the tea.
It's pretty cool.
One of the things that I really enjoy when traveling is
finding out about different musical instruments around the world.
There's such a huge array of different traditional instruments in different parts of the world,
and music is one of those things that just kind of opens doors and allows you to connect with people,
even though you don't speak the same language.
It's really cool.
Camels were the main way of getting around back in the day,
especially this part of the world, because they'd go forever without water.
The name actually comes from a well that was discovered by the son of Noah.
And this was the last place to get water before you went through the desert that we just crossed through.
It's very, very far to Bukhara. It's really dry.
There's no water,
and so this was kind of like an oasis and like a rest spot.
Behind us is one of the the main icons here in Khiva,
it's this minaret that's halfway built.
It would have been super big if they'd finished it,
but according to the legend, they stopped building it halfway
because the khan who started building it died.
His son didn't want it to get completed because it would be named after his dad,
because he's all jealous,
and the other idea that people have is that he didn't
finish it because if he had,
then it would have been able to see down into his harem,
and only the khan gets to see his harem.
To go check out what that was like,
we're going into the khan's palace.
We have made it to the top of the city walls.
We're on top of the Summer Palace.
The ruler of this city had two different palaces, one for the summertime one for the winter.
To be completely honest, they kind of look the same.
It's cool. It's definitely......
It feels like time travel. We're on this big walled city.
It's got like wattle and daub.
The bricks are kind of made from mud and from straw, and
it's really interesting to be up here.
We're getting a great view of the city.
We've been roped into many a photo with some of the locals.
I think we're kind of a tourist attraction at the moment.
But when you come out to places like this that are pretty far off the beaten path, that tends to happen.
Why are you putting yourself in the tree?
This is the amir's harem.
It's where the king lived along with his four eligible wives
and about a couple hundred other women in what's known as a harem.
It's kind of like an Arabic version of a bordello.
But it's more than that because the king would live here with his entire family,
and the women who worked, as basically the concubines, also helped raise the children.
It was everyone living together.
Might have been kind of awkward for the wives,
but I'm sure the amir was having a pretty good time.
These are all very sumptuous and opulent.
The contrast to that is that these amirs who lived here had this very fierce
reputation for being brutal.
And so you have like the soft side here
and then the hard side that was in battle.
This town in general had a reputation for being very, very wild, lawless-
a place where there were marauders.
There was a slave market and there was all this warfare.
That kind of reputation lasted, this being like a wild west town, until the 1800s.
The Russians took over;
this became part of Czarist Russian Kingdom,
and they kind of put more law and order on the place.
These days it's very mellow.
There's hardly a soul in the street,
and there's not much nightlife going on.
I think its wildest days are in the past,
but in terms of a place to come and explore,
I think this is going to see a lot more tourists very soon.
Well, super fun day exploring Khiva, a beautiful city.
Really like the vibe,
and definitely know we're going to see it in some movies sometime soon.....
probably Game of Thrones Season 7 or Star Wars or something.
Any of those fantastical, awesome,
historically ambiguous places,
it would be a perfect movie set.
But we have one more big adventure in store here in Uzbekistan.
Right now we're in the town of Nukus,
and we are going to be driving in these two four-wheel drive vehicles
into what used to be the Aral Sea.
If you don't know about that, take a moment, google it.
But stay tuned because this next episode is going to be awesome.
Yeah, we're going to one of the most unique places on planet earth.
So, if you have not already, hit the subscribe button.
Give this video a like ,
and stay tuned for more episodes from Vagabrothers.
As we always say... stay curious, keep exploring,
and we'll see you on the road to the Aral Sea.
Aral Sea. Let's do it.
Peace.
We've been looking on Google Maps to just try to put into perspective where we are.
I'm standing now at what used to be the bottom of the Aral Sea