“I’ll just stop by that ATM and get some cash.” We’d been wandering Khiva’s old town all day, poking into forgotten madrassas, and I was running low on som. I’d seen both locals and foreigners use the West Gate machine, so I knew it accepted foreign plastic. I slid in my Visa card, entered my PIN, and asked for 2,000,000 in cash. I heard an agonized whirring from deep inside. It went on for...
Kalta Minor Minaret Europe wasn’t always the centre of world culture. In the Early Middle Ages, after the fall of the Roman Empire, most of the continent was a pestilential backwater of ignorance, declining trade, squabbling princes and corrupt priests. If high culture and learning was what you wanted, you would have been wise to hitch your ox cart for Central Asia — the centre of the commercial...
The East Gate of Khiva “They looked like lambs in the hands of their executioners,” wrote Arminius Vámbéry in his 1864 book Travels in Central Asia. “Whilst several were led to the gallows or the block, I saw how, at the sign from the executioner, eight aged men placed themselves down on their backs upon the earth. They were then bound hand and foot, and the executioner gouged out their...
Amir Temur Square It feels awfully nice to type 2,000,000 into an ATM and have a big stack of money come out. The good news: my card worked. The bad news: 2,000,000 som is only around €145. The only time I’ve held more cash in my hands was after changing $50 USD on the street in Rangoon in 2002. I took it back to my cockroach infested hotel and physically rolled in it. But there would be none of...