Tour Duration: 2 days/1 night
Tour date: Flexible
Tour type: Private

Tour Itinerary: several fortresses, akcha kul (salty lake) Baday Tugay nature reserve, Sultotn Uais Mountains, Chilpik kala, Nukus city and museum, Mizdakhan complex.

Two lunch, 1 dinner & 1 breakfast

This trip start from Urganch airport to the Ancient fortress between the tour stop for lunch in Boston c ity. Dinner in the yurt camp in Ayaz Kala. Next day wake up at 5-00 a.m & have breakfast at 5-30 and start tour at 6 – 00 first visit to Nature reserve, Sultan Uais mountains stop in the Chilpik kala and visit the museum, go to Mizdakhan in Xo’jayli. In the evening around 20-00 stop in Urganch or in Khiva and finish tour.

 About Karakalpakistan

From about 500 BC to 500 AD, the region of Karakalpakstan was a thriving agricultural area supported by extensive irrigation. The Karakalpak people, who used to be nomadic herders and fishers, were first recorded in the 16th century.^[3] Karakalpakstan was ceded to the Russian Empire by the Khanate of Khiva in 1873. Under Soviet rule, it was an autonomous area within the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic before becoming part of Uzbekistan in 1936.^[5] The region was probably at its most prosperous in the 1960s and 1970s, when irrigation from the Amu Darya was being expanded.^] Today, however, the drainage of the Aral Seahas rendered Karakalpakstan one of Uzbekistan's poorest regions.The region is suffering from extensive drought, partly due to weather patterns, but also largely because the Amu and Syr Darya rivers are exploited mostly in the eastern part of the country. Crop failures have deprived about 48,000 people of their main source of income and shortages of potable water have created a surge of infectious diseases.

Karakalpakstan is now mostly desert and is located in western Uzbekistan near the Aral Sea, in the lowest part of the Amu Darya basin.^[1][6][7] It has an area of 164,900 km and is surrounded by desert. The Kyzyl Kum desert is located to the east and the Karakum Desert is located to the south. A rocky plateau extends west to the Caspian Sea.\

Ancient Fortresses

Kyzyl-Kala is a unique architectural site of Ancient Khorezm

The Kyzyl-Kala fortress is located in the territory of Ancient Khorezm (modern Karakalpakstan) in the vicinity of ancient town Toprak-Kala. According to some data, Kyzyl-Kala was a part of the Toprak-Kala fortified system and served as additional defenses.

Kyzyl-Kala is a monument of the last stage of antique Khorezm architectural history and can be considered as a prototype of the Afrigid period castles corrugated with massive columns.

this architectural site was discovered during a Khorasan expedition headed by S.P. Tolstov in 1938. All basic study of the fortress was conducted by the expedition staff. The fortress itself is not large in size and almost square in form. The study of the foundation and the structure ruins showed that the fortress was surrounded with a double vallum, and there were watchtowers in every corner of the fortress. A main street in the center of the settlement led to a temple of fire-worshippers where Zoroastrian priests were holding their sacramental rites. The residential part of the city was divided by a street into several sections with several rooms in each, where people lived by families.

Kyzyl-Kala is a unique architectural site of Ancient Khorezm of the Kushan-Afgan period of the antique history. It stands in the middle of the plain as a sentinel guarding the Toprak-Kala fortress, the pearl of ancient Khorezm. There is a legend that Toprak-Kala and Kyzyl-Kala are joined by an underground passage. This is quite possible, since Kyzyl-Kala managed to exist till Chengiz Khan invasion, being a part of the defensive installation system of the Khorezmshakh S

tate.

Ancient settlement Toprak-Kala

The ancient settlement Toprak-Kala is an outstanding monument of culture of Khorezm in 1-6th centuries A.D. The capital of Khorezm was here in the 3rd century A.D. Toprak-kala was discovered by by the Khorezm expedition under the guidance of S.P.Tolstov in 1938. According to the plan, the city had a form of a correct rectangle. The palace of the governor - a huge castle with three towers- was located in a northwest corner. The fire temple was in the south east from the castle. A long street dividing the city into two parts led from the fire temple to south direction. Lanes departing from it separated massive houses-blocks, forming the capital of the late slave-owning Khorezm.

Built in the 3rd century, the fortress was used as the residence of khorezmshakhs - governors of the country- up to 305 A.D. Numerous aggressive wars forced the governors to leave the residence, and the city gradually fell into decay.

Coins, fragments of ossuaries (Zoroastrian’s canopic jars), magnificent samples of art culture were found during archeological excavations: thin manufactured ceramics, wool, silk fabrics, gold ornaments and a necklace of 300 glass beads, paste, amber, corals, bowls.

Archeologists also discovered workshops manufacturing bows that made Khorezm famous. The architecture of the monument is a remarkable sample of town-planning and fortification art of ancient Khorezm. The governor’s palace with three towers is of particular interest. Three grandiose towers with rooms inside mounted 30 metres up, their height of 25 metres today is an evidence of advanced level of architecture development in Khoresm.

However the Toprak-Kala is famous not only with its unusual architecture but also with unique finds in ancient Khorezmian language, discovered at four building in the south-eastern part of the palace. Archeologists found 116 documents written with black ink on wooden plates and on leather rolls. Eighteen wooden documents remained in a very good state. Though documents are not completely read yet, their nature is already defined. These are economic documents from the palace archive. Three of the found documents had precise dates - 207, 231 and 232 AD.

Along with the archive, sculptures and painting also attract interest. It is not without reason that Toprak-Kala is named a museum of the fine arts of Ancient Khorezm. It is the unique completely dug out monument of architecture of Khoresm. The sizes and genius of an architectural design make Toprak-Kala one of the most unique monuments of Khoresm.

Ayaz-Kala, Karakalpakstan

History of the Fortress of Ancient Khorezm

Ayaz-Kala fortress can be called as miracle of light and wind, located 20 kilometers north-east of Toprak- Kala in the moving sands of the Kyzyl-Kum and ridges of the sacred mountains of Sultan Uwais.

This monument of our history is vast mound on a flat hill that emerged perhaps as early as the 4th century BC. The construction of the fortress refers to the time when Zorastrian traditions became one of the main spiritual values of the local people. That is why Ayaz-Kala called as Fortress of the light since that time.

The light and darkness were the most significant aspects of this religion. The light meant Paradise and the opposite one was underworld. From this we could see how this fortress was honored and was compared with the most principal values of the people.

Folk legends associate the name of the fortress of with the name of the legendary warrior-slave Ayaz. Ayaz is a Central Asian Turkic folklore hero. The semi-mythical hero, according to a legend, threw himself at an Amazon princess who lived in the Kirk-Kiz fortress.

The archaeologists claim that the Ayaz-Kala fortress belongs to the II century AD – a heyday of the Kushan Empire. Stretching in a chain from East to West it was part of a system of frontiers, built to protect the oasis on the side of the desert. All fortresses were located on a visible distance from each other, probably in order to make transmission of signals of approaching enemy convenient.

The Ayaz -Kala complex is interesting because unlike other castles of ancient Khorezm, it has unfortified rural settlements – a set of residential buildings, each with a large yard, enclosed by a low brick wall and planted, apparently, with gardens and orchards at the time. At one of the walls of the yard there is a relatively small detached house with 15 rooms, indicating that the process of separation of individual household from a tribal community had already begun at that time. Perhaps it was the home of a wealthy official or garrison commander.

Among dozens of unfortified farmhouses in the Ayaz-Kala complex, three fortresses-buildings stand out for their significant size. They are Ayaz-3, a giant fortress with a large courtyard surrounded by strong walls with towers and a maze near the gate. Near its north-eastern and north-western corners there are 40-room houses cross-cut with hallways.

The Ayaz-2 ruins sprung on a rock, also date back to the Kushan period, but reconstructed by the Afrigids in the V-VII centuries. On the cliff plateau, adjacent to the settlement there is Ayaz-1 with semicircular towers, a maze near the gate, arched gallery in the wall base and a well, cut in the center of the rock, which was a place for the livestock – the main wealth of the inhabitants–to gather around . In the north-east of Ayaz-1, there are remains of a watchtower.

Thus, Ayaz-Kala was neither a city nor a settlement, but a fortress complex, which accommodated Kushan border detachments nearly 19 centuries ago.

The Ayaz-Kala ruins have been hidden with the sands for millennia, but today thanks to numerous archaeological excavations, we can touch its ancient history.

Janbas-Kala settlement

The time of foundation of the Janbas-Kala settlement dates from the antique period of the history of Ancient Khorezm, so-called the period of the existence of “thousands cities” in the region territory. This period is divided into two stages: Kanguy and Kushan ones (by name of the states to which Khorezm belonged). Foundation of the Janbas-Kala fortress dates back to the first Kanguy stage. The date of the fortress foundation was determined by S.P. Tolstov - IV century before Christ - I century Anno Domini.

Janbas-Kala, a fortress of the “The Lands of Ancient Irrigation” is most protruded one to the north-east. It is situated on the northern-western slope of the desert flat elevation which extends from the north-west to the south-east, locking a chain of hills stretching to the south-east from Sultanuizdag (S.P. Tolstov “Ancient Khorezm”, page 87).

The Fortress represents a rather regular triangle, oriented to the cardinal directions. Its sizes are 200*170 m. A relative preservation of the Fortress can be explained by the fact that over many centuries the Fortress walls were covered with sand-drifts which contributed in a certain way to the building façade remained preserved.

The Janbas-Kala walls are almost 10m high indicating the immensity of the building. Behind the outer wall there was another wall as though backing up the main one, built certainly to strengthen a defensive fortification of the Fortress. The outer wall thickening to the bottom is as wide as 1.30m and the inner one – 1m. The narrow embrasures in the Janbas-Kala outer walls also indicate its military function.

Koy-Krylgan-kala: the Fortress of Lost Rams

Ruins of thousands of fortresses are disseminated at boundless open spaces of the Khorezm steppes, but the remnants of Koy-Krylgan-kala, the Fortress of Lost Rams, are unique. The fortress was discovered by archeologists of the Khorezm expedition casually in 1938. Archeologists were surprised with the form of ancient construction, unprecedented till then in Khoresm: the powerful citadel with the remains of a protective wall was not square and or rectangular as it was used to see, but it was round. Outside, protective constructions had the form of a correct circle with the citadel in the center, it was surrounded with an external fortification with towers. The space between the central building and the wall named the "ring" appeared completely built up. The clay construction was enormous: diameter of the central building was 42 m, height in the best remained part was about 8 m, the diameter of the whole construction - about 90 m.

Thousands of fragments of magnificent pottery have been scattered on sandy barkhans round the fortress and among its ruins. Along with other findings, in particular bronze tips of arrows, they were used to identify its age - archeologists found out that it was the most ancient of all the monuments to ancient Khorezmian statehood known by that time. The earliest finds dated back to 4th-3rd centuries BC.

1950 marked the new stage of excavations at fortress ruins. The results revealed that the fortress had two stages of the development. Earlier stage dated back to 4th-3rd centuries BC. The second period of the fortress referred to the first centuries AD. It was revealed, that at early stages of development, the central part of the fortress was destroyed by a fire. It still remains a puzzle whether it was an arson or an accidental fire.

Koy-Krylgan-kala was the powerful well fortified fortress with a number of protective walls which were destroyed with time, it was possible to trace them only in a small site. Similar fortifications were peculiar to all monuments of antiquity and the early Middle Ages of Khoresm. According to researches of archeologists, the Fortress of Lost Rams is one of the most ancient monuments ancient Khorezm statehood, the temple complex that partially functioned as a burial of the unknown ancient king or queen. 
The fortress population consisted of Zoroastrians, worshipping Anakhita, the goddess of water and rivers, and Siyavus, the god of sun. This monument is interesting in terms of the central complex location. Its western part was built in honour of the goddess Anakhita, and eastern and the southern parts were turned towards the sun rising in honour of the god of sun Siyavush, evidenced by number of figurines and relicts of vessels with images of gods.

The fortress history Koy-Krylgan-kala totals a millenium. The remnants of the most ancient ossuaries in the Central Asia were found along with paintings and inscriptions in ancient Khorezmian language. This fortress remains a historical puzzle until now, standing out with its unique design among other fortresses of Ancient Khorezm.

Koi Krylgan Kala

This fortress refers to monuments of Kangui-Kushan period and was built in the IV-III centuries BC in the tradition of ancient Khorezm. Koi Krylgan Kala fortress is the remnants of an ancient sanctuary and settlement in the Kyzyl Kum desert in To'rtko'l District of Karakalpakstan.

The fortress is different from other castles because it has the shape of a circle. The walls of the fortress constitute 865 m of a circle. Koi Krylgan Kala is surrounded by two walls, and in the middle is located the two-story building of a cylindrical shape. The lower floor consists of a 9-room building, where rooms are covered with two domes.

Between the walls of the central buildings and fortifications were built little room for economic needs, also for living. Archeologists had found here in some rooms ossuaries (bone utensils for the burial of the deceased).

Baday Togay Nature Reserve

In the east of Khiva on the Amudarya river banks Baday-Tugai reserve is located. It was established in 1971 to protect tugay complexes of the lower Amudarya river and reintroduction of Bukharian deer. The area of the Baday- Tugay natural reserve is 6462 hectars. Tugay forests occupy 70% of its area. In addition to the tugay forests in the reserve you can see reed beds and steppe-meadow areas. In riparian forests dominated by poplar, loh, willow, shrubs and reeds. The fauna is represented by more than 91 species of birds, 15 species of mammals and 15 species of fish. Wild boar, tolai hare, fox, jackal, reed cat (the largest cat in Central Asia), badger, weasel, steppe ferret, eared hedgehog and numerous rodents are common in the reserve. A special place among the protected animals is the Bukharian deer, or Hangul.

Due to the economic development of the riparian Bukhara deer, the first of many, was almost completely displaced from their ancestral habitants. In contrast to the adjacent desert ecosystems in the reeds of the many species of insects, of amphibians found here are the green toad and marsh frog reptiles: steppe tortoise, Caspian Gecko, steppe Agama, Takyr Agama, lizards, arrow-snake, water snake, desert lidless skink (Ablepharus deserti), and Eastern racer. The Amudarya is home to such fish as barbel, big and small Amudarya sturgeons, pike, asp, Aral barbel, bream, sabrefish, carp, wels catfish, perch, carp, grass carp and snakehead.

A great variety of birds, the reserve is inhabited by common buzzard, kestrel, rock pigeon, eared owl, white-winged woodpecker, laughing dove, little owl, crested lark, magpie, carrion crow, jackdaw, great tit, mynah, tree sparrow, black kite and shikra. One of the main protected species of Baday-Tugay — Khiva pheasant.

Along the Amudarya river there is another tugay reserve — Kyzylkum reserve, with an area of 10141 hectares. Here are protected not only tugay forests and floodplain meadows stretching along the banks of the Amudarya river, but also a section of the Kyzylkum desert, and the share of sand accounts for about two-thirds of the reserve area. From desert plants in the reserve there are saxaul, cherkez, desert acacia, Salsola, Astragalus, wormwood and ephemera. The reeds grow poplar, willow, loch, the tamarisk and cane.

The main types of animals include wild boar, fox, jackal, badger, marbled polecat  and reed cat. Of particular interest are the rare Bukharian deer and jeyran. Also on the territory of the reserve are numerous lizards and reptiles. From birds meet sandgrouses, doves, sandpipers, herons, ducks and marbled polecat, houbara bustard (Jack), pheasant, pelican and flamingo. Within the reserve there are about 14 species of fish: grass carp, silver carp, big and small Amudarya false shovelnose sturgeons, pike, common rudd, asp, gudgeon, Aral and Turkestan barbel, bream, sabrefish, sazan, and catfish.

         Sultan Uvays Bobo being completed

In Beruniy District of Karakalpakstan to be completed restoration and conservation of the unique architectural monument - the shrine of Sultan Uvays Bobo, who is not only one of the most respected people of the lower reaches of Amudarya places and tourist center of the show, according to Uzbekistan Today.

The complex is located right in the middle of the desert, along the road connecting Nukus and Amudarya area with Beruniy.

Sultan Uvays, who was associated with a place famous for its collection activity and study of hadith. Followers have built symbolic mausoleum in his honor, and turned it into a place of worship. Today this ancient cemetery is a whole range of well-developed infrastructure - a mosque, serving complex, "saint" lake, shopping centers, catering, hotel.

This complex is unique, first of all, its location - it stands majestically in the middle of the desert. History knows the times when this monument was destroyed and recreated again.

The inscription on plate states that the monument belongs to the XII - XIV, XVI - XIX centuries, indicating that this place is a unique historical heritage and can lift the veil of many historical mysteries, which has not been disclosed yet.

Completing restoration of the mosque and its adjacent structures, landscaping, based on the needs of today, this will keep the shrine and a unique architectural monument still for many centuries.