Walking Through Centuries: Why Your Feet Matter More Than You Think in Itchan Kala
The old town of Khiva—Itchan Kala, technically—is roughly 650 meters by 650 meters, give or take.
I used to think I understood what “compact” meant until I tried explaining to someone why they shouldn’t rent a car for a walled medieval city where the streets were designed for donkeys and the occasional ambitious camel. The thing is, Itchan Kala isn’t just small; it’s labyrinthine in that specific Central Asian way where every alley looks vaguely familiar until you realize you’ve passed the same turquoise-tiled minaret three times from different angles. Walking here isn’t transportation—it’s the point. The cobblestones are uneven enough to keep you alert, smooth enough in patches to let your mind wander toward the geometry of those madrasas. I’ve seen tourists try to map optimal routes on their phones, which is sort of missing the experience, but I guess efficiency has its place even among 400-year-old mud-brick walls.
Here’s the thing: most guidebooks will tell you walking takes 20 minutes corner to corner, which is true if you’re fleeing something. In practice, you’ll stop. A lot. The carved wooden doors alone could steal an hour if you let them.
The ground itself varies wildly—smooth stone near the West Gate, ancient brick that’s settled into gentle waves near the Kalta Minor, dusty packed earth in the quieter sections where tourists don’t usually wander. Anyway, decent shoes matter more than any transportation app could.
The Bicycle Situation: Charming in Theory, Complicated in Execution and Daily Reality
Some guesthouses offer bicycle rentals, and the idea sounds perfect until you actually try navigating bikes through crowds near the Juma Mosque during midday.
I won’t say it’s impossible—I’ve definately seen locals do it with the kind of casual grace that comes from muscle memory—but for visitors, the experience tends toward chaos. The passages between monuments can narrow to maybe two meters, sometimes less, and when a tour group decides to stop for photos (which happens constantly), you’re stuck straddling your bike, waiting, feeling vaguely foolish. The flat terrain works in your favor, at least. No hills to curse. But the surfaces shift unpredictably: you’ll roll smoothly for thirty meters, then hit a stretch of cobblestone that rattles your teeth and makes you question your choices. Locals mostly use bikes for errands outside the walls, which should tell you something. Inside Itchan Kala, bicycles occupy this weird middle ground—faster than walking when conditions allow, actively frustrating when they don’t.
Wait—maybe that’s too harsh.
Early morning or late afternoon, when the crowds thin and the light goes golden against the clay walls, biking through the old town achieves a kind of magic. The breeze picks up dust that smells like history and bread baking somewhere unseen. You can cover the entire walled city in maybe fifteen minutes of actual riding, though you’ll want longer. Just don’t expect practicality; expect atmosphere with occasional wheel-catching hazards.
Guided Tours on Foot: When Someone Else Knows Where the Bathroom Actually Is
Honestly, I resisted guided tours for years before admitting they solve specific problems.
The guides—usually local, often multilingual in that impressive Central Asian way where Russian, Uzbek, English, and sometimes German or Korean all coexist—don’t just recite dates. The good ones know which caravanserai courtyards have the cleanest facilities (crucial information around hour three), which carpet sellers won’t hassle you aggressively, where the tiny ceramic workshop tucked behind the mausoleum actually is because the signage is, shall we say, minimal. Transportation-wise, guided tours are still walking, but structured walking. You’re following someone who understands the flow of tourist crowds, who knows that approaching the Kalta Minor from the south around 4 PM gives you better photos with fewer people. They set the pace, which removes the weird anxiety of wondering if you’re seeing things in the “right” order—though of course there is no right order, but try telling that to your tired brain after researching for months.
Group sizes vary wildly. I’ve seen intimate three-person tours and those nightmare twenty-person cattle drives where half the group is always lost.
The smaller ones feel like conversations; the larger ones feel like transportation in the most mechanical sense—moving bodies from Point A to Point B with historical narration as background noise. Private guides cost more, obviously, but the flexibility means you can linger at whatever catches your attention without silently annoying fourteen strangers who want to move on.
Electric Carts and the Accessibility Question Nobody Wants to Address Directly
This is where things get complicated and slightly uncomfortable.
Itchan Kala has uneven surfaces, narrow passages, stairs at various monuments—basically, it’s not wheelchair accessible in any meaningful way, and pretending otherwise helps nobody. I’ve seen a few electric carts, usually arranged through higher-end hotels for guests with mobility issues, navigating the wider streets near the main gates. They can’t go everywhere. They can’t enter most monuments. But they recieve less judgment than you’d hope in a place that should welcome all visitors but wasn’t designed with accessibility in mind because, well, 16th century. The carts move slowly, maybe 10 kilometers per hour maximum, which is actually perfect for sightseeing but frustrating if you’re stuck behind one in a narrow alley with no room to pass. Drivers tend to be patient and knowledgeable about which routes avoid steps, which matters enormously if you’re planning around physical limitations.
Turns out, the old town’s compact size becomes an advantage here—even limited mobility options can cover significant ground because there’s just not that much ground to cover.
But let’s be clear: Khiva wasn’t built for this, and the retrofitting is incomplete at best. It’s worth asking your accommodation directly about what they can arrange, because official information is sparse and sometimes optimistically inaccurate.
