The subsequent morning Madaminov and I drove east alongside a salt-bitten freeway, weaving between archaeological websites and Soviet cities constructed to maintain the cotton farms that drained the Aral Sea. At Chilpyk Dakhma, a Zoroastrian funerary tower set like a crown on a conical hilltop, we took in the view of the surrounding desert threaded by the dwindling silver ribbon of the Amu Darya. Later we stopped at Topraq Kala, a fortified metropolis based in the third century BCE. From our perch on the website of a former royal palace, we surveyed the foundations of temples, granaries, and artisan workshops. Salt blown east from the uncovered Aral seabed crusted the surrounding fields like previous snow.
Madaminov pointed to a damaged arch that framed the mountains on the horizon. “I’ve been coming here since 2000, and I can remember when this archway was complete,” he instructed me. Uncovering these earthen forts had revealed a rare historical past however had additionally made them weak, as salts from the more and more saline soil (one other consequence of the Aral Sea’s desertification) seep into their partitions and crystallize, cracking their foundations.
As Oktyabr Dospanov, the head of the archaeological division at the Nukus Museum, put it at the summit, “Ecological problems are problems for heritage too.” But in western Uzbekistan each historical earthen fortress and newly constructed adobe home is additionally a reminder that heritage affords clues for tips on how to restore what hasn’t but been misplaced. While many locations in the world have solely simply begun to relearn earthen building strategies as a path to a extra sustainable future, right here these traditions, stretching again millennia, stay powerfully, palpably alive.
Leaving Ayaz Kala, Madaminov and I drove south to the Silk Road metropolis of Khiva, a fantasia of tiled domes and brick minarets. (In 2026 a high-speed practice will hyperlink Khiva to the medieval metropolis of Bukhara, lowering journey time from six hours to a few.) Ruled for hundreds of years by an impartial khanate, Khiva has, at first look, little to do with Karakalpakstan. Yet strolling by the winding lanes of its outer metropolis, I noticed echoes of the desert citadels of Khorezm. As the afternoon warmth waned, Madaminov and I made our last cease at a ceramics workshop at the edge of city the place, for 4 generations, the Takhirov household has produced and restored the elaborately painted terra-cotta tiles that line Khiva’s courtyards.
Sardorbek Takhirov walked me by the course of of turning soil into clay. “You know it’s ready when it starts to smell nice,” he instructed me. “Like soil after the rain?” I requested. “Yes, but even more beautiful,” he mentioned with a smile. “It’s what we’re made from.”
This article appeared in the September/October 2025 subject of Condé Nast Traveler. Subscribe to the journal here.