Khiva to Bukhara

To get from Khiva to Bukhara, we had to go to Urgench and take a taxi there, as no buses were running and the train connection is more than bad.
While crossing the desert in the evening next to the Turkmen border, our driver asked us if we wanted to have dinner and brought us, to our surprise, to a fish restaurant in the middle of the desert.  Freshly taken out of a basin in the backyard, the fish was fried for us and we ate it with the fingers. Definitely not a tourist spot.

fore those who are interested,
Sarimoi

Khiva 2

Khiva street life

At the bazar you can even by Puma track pants with three stripes. 

Khiva

Khiva lies southwest of Urgench, the capital of Khorezm province.
It has been the capital of the Khwarezmid Empire.
It's historic heart, inscribed in the World Heritage list in 1991, is so well preserved and renovated that you feel like in a museum. The fortification walls of the Ichon-Qala date from the 18th century but are obviously renovated.

Kalta Minor Minaret remains unfinished after the death of Mohammed Amin Khan in 1855.

It was raining constantly while we visited, so there were less tourists around.
Remarkable are the Djuma Mosque with its 218 wooden columns and the Pahlavon Mahmud Mausoleum.

on the road to Khiva

As the train connection is very bad I could not stick to my principles and we decided to take a taxi to Khiva.
So we could visit some interesting sites on the road.
First we passed by the Dahma Chilpyk, a funeral place for Zoroastrians. 
A Karalkapak sang for the passing tourists playing Kashkar Rubab.
Then we went to see the Gyaur Qala fortress next to the Amu Darya river. It was built in the 4th century to control the trade route on the river. Only the northern wall and a part of the North-West corner are preserved. It is still a very impressive site.
 On the road we had some fantastic entertainment with the on board tv.

no airport around, a training plane for special forces

Gyaur Qala

Nukus nightlife

Not much to say about it. Everything closes at 11.

Mizdahkan

On the way back from Moynaq we passed by Mizdahkan, an old settlement from the 4th century BC. Now the site is totally occupied by a necropolis. On the hill next to it is the old fortress of Gyaur-Qala from the 9th century, an impressive formation of melt down brick-walls.

Gyaur-Qala

to the west you can view into Turkmenistan

Moynaq

The city of Moynaq was a port on the Aral Sea with an important fishing industry.
Due to the recession of the Sea it lies now almost 200 km away from the shoreline.
There is too much water taken from the Amu-Darya mostly for cotton production.
The fishing industry disappeared and with her a big part of the population, but above all it is an ecological disaster for the whole region. The land deserted and the climate changed.
A museum reminds of the city's history. Outside the city there is a Aral Sea memoria, next to it some rusty shipwrecks lie in the sand.
A new lake has been created southeast of town in 2009 as more water arrived as usual to restore the formerly mild climate.

the museum

the local football team

the memorial

the new lake

Nukus - Savitzky Museum

The main attraction for tourists is the Karakalpakstan State Museum of Art known as the Savitzky Museum after his founder Igor Savitzkiy.
It hosts the world's second largest collection of Russian avant garde art (after the Russian Museum in St. Petersburg) and also Khorezm and Karakalpak folk art.
Savitzky collected the banned avantgarde art far from the central power and could open the museum probably only because of its remote location.
For more information (in german) read this post http://www.tethys.caoss.org/index.php/2009/06/04/avantgarde-und-das-privileg-der-provinz/#more-236