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Where people used to fish in the Aral Sea is now desert

When the weather is fine, which here means there is no sandstorm and it is not too hot, Anvar Saimbetov makes his rounds down to the old port where his buried dream lies.

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Where people used to fish in the Aral Sea is now desert

When the weather is fine, which here means there is no sandstorm and it is not too hot, Anvar Saimbetov makes his rounds down to the old port where his buried dream lies. He wanted to be captain of the "Karakalpakstan" and sail around on the Aral Sea. Everything was planned. But today his steamer is a wreck in the sand. Bad environmental sins by the Soviet government largely turned the lake into a desert, with only small remnants remaining.

It is depressing but also moving to explore this literally devastated landscape - and to meet the people who live here. Some offer tours for tourists. Some try other ways to make the best of the situation—or at least adapt.

Like Anvar Saimbetov. After checking out the window, the 75-year-old puts on his hat and dark sunglasses and walks down the main street that bisects the small town of Muynak in northwestern Uzbekistan. He wants to show visitors what's left of the ship of his dreams.

After reaching a concrete monument, a stylized boat sail, Saimbetov trudges down a hill. From here it's just sand - soft desert sand covered with spiky scrub. Arriving at the bottom, where mussel shells crack under the soles of your shoes, there are three steel shipwrecks next to each other. The largest with the faded inscription "Karakalpakstan" was Saimbetov's ship, on which he sailed up and down the Aral Sea at a young age.

On the "Karakalpakstan," says Saimbetov, while circumnavigating the rusty monster, he made it from cabin boy to cadet captain. "After the military service, which I spent far away in Russia, since the captain wanted to retire, I was supposed to take the helm on the steamer myself."

He wasn't warned, says the old man: the stranded Karakalpakstan, the deserted port of Muynak, the Aral Sea vanishing into thin air here, he couldn't bear the sight. "I cried - after that I hid in the house." Anvar Saimbetov then became a bricklayer. And artists. He captured his memories of shipping on the Aral Sea in hundreds of oil paintings - some of which can now be seen in the local Aral Sea Museum.

With an area almost as large as Bavaria, the Aral Sea between the two Central Asian states of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan was the fourth largest inland lake in the world. However, the agricultural planners of the Soviet Union decided to grow cotton on the vast expanses of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. They also tapped into the Amudarya and the Syrdarya.

Deprived of its tributaries, the Aral Sea began to dry up and become more and more salty. Today its area is only a tenth of the original. The former lake floor turned into a desert of dust and salt contaminated with pesticide residues.

But you can also experience how people deal with misfortune here. The Uzbeks in the southern part have planted large areas with saxaul. The shrubs, which also grow on salty soils, prevent erosion and provide protection from sand winds. Hotels were built in Muynak. Local providers organize group trips, in search of the Aral Sea, tourists explore the deserts and steppes all around.

“Of course, the drying up of the lake was a disaster. Many people lost their jobs. My parents and my brother died early from cancer. There is probably a connection with the harmful effects of the environmental catastrophe,” says Oktyabr Dospanov.

The archaeologist was director of the state art museum in Nukus. The capital of the autonomous republic of Karakalpakstan, which belongs to Uzbekistan, is just under a three-hour drive south of Muynak. Dospanov now accompanies tourists - he grew up in Muynak.

The 61-year-old lives in a cousin's house in a suburb of the 13,500-inhabitant town. "The fishing boats used to be out there," says Dospanov, looking through the window of the living room, which is decorated with Styrofoam rosettes and borders, at a dusty alley where cows nibble on withered grass in the shade of mud huts.

"Where we are, there was an island — you had to get in a boat to go to Muynak." Government reforestation programs have brought jackals, hares and pheasants back to the Aral region, Dospanov says.

The tourist group then drives south to the confluence of the Amudarya and the Sudoche Sea, which formed part of the Aral Sea a few years ago. At the side of the road you can see men on ancient bicycles, some with shovels on their shoulders, others carrying sacks or bundles of grass on the luggage rack. Under thatched roofs, farmers wait for customers to guard mountains of sugar and watermelons.

Dospanov points to canals flanked by poplars, behind which fields spread out. The farmers are slowly switching to economical drip irrigation, he explains. "That's good news, along with the fact that less irrigation-intensive cotton is being grown and more fruit and vegetables are being grown instead."

A reed belt frames Lake Sudoche. A footpath runs along the shore, where stretched tent cloths and empty bottles next to campfire sites suggest visitors. A polyphonic trumpet and chatter can be heard in the reeds. Rare species of birds live at the lake, such as flamingos. At the moment a great egret stalks through the shallow water, its slender neck bent forward, while a flock of ducks flaps their wings and darts away.

Behind the lake shore, a track winds past bizarre rock formations up to the Ustyurt plateau. From the top you have a great view of the desert landscape, which stretches seemingly endlessly in the depths. Where the ground shimmers whitish, Dospanov explains, the Aral Sea has only recently retreated.

On the other hand, the plain, where the water has long since disappeared, expands like a faded patchwork quilt in yellow, brown and red. The racemose flowers of the Caspian tamarisk set violet dabs. On the plateau it goes on for hours without the landscape changing. Dospanov races as if possessed by the devil. He silenced the warning sound on the seat belt with a metal pin.

After a few stops at cairns, which turn out to be ancient nomadic cemeteries, Kubla-Ustyurt emerges from the steppe. At the entrance to the village, where a resident chugs home on a motorcycle with a sidecar carrying a sheep, camels pluck at thistles growing between the weathered concrete slabs of a take-off and landing plan: remains of a Soviet-era airfield when the village was still Komsomolsk -na-ustyrte was called.

Back then, this was the logistics center for a secret research lab further north on an island in the Aral Sea where biological weapons were tested, Dospanov says. "There have been several incidents of mass animal deaths, but we didn't learn about them until after the collapse of the Soviet Union."

In the late afternoon the "Yurt Camp Aral Sea" is reached. A handful of traditional nomadic tents stand here on a terrain terrace between steep cliffs. A tin shack with solar panels on the roof is enough for the operators, two young men who claim to feel like they're at a holiday camp.

While the slowly sinking sun covers the Aral Sea, which is perhaps a thousand meters away as the crow flies, with a copper sheen, the visitors hike behind Oktyabr Dospanov through a gorge with rock formations that resemble church towers or oversized bocce balls.

Yellow-grey birds curiously following the group, fluttering from stone to stone, and beetle tracks in the sand that look like tire prints, reveal that there is more life here than expected. Only at second glance do you realize that the stone walls, piled up in a rectangular shape between the rocks, are the work of man. These are remains of Guyar-Kala.

The small town on a caravan route had been inhabited since the fourth century BC, says the archaeologist Dospanov. The hordes of Jochi Khan, the eldest son of Genghis Khan, would have destroyed Guyar-Kala in the 13th century.

Visitors are then in a hurry to get down to the crescent-shaped shore of the Aral Sea. The cracked, dried-out clay floor feels like sandpaper under bare feet. A wobbly wooden walkway makes access easier because you'll sink up to your shins in mud in the shallow water, but even a good way out the water is barely waist-deep.

In reverse, because the legs are hardly suitable for the breaststroke or front crawl due to the buoyancy due to the high salt content, Dospanov now rows his hands as if on a deck chair with amazing speed.

You then have to go back to the yurt camp to shower – there is no infrastructure on the lake shore. However, one should not imagine the yurt camp as luxurious either. A wooden wall with a garden hose and shower forms the beauty area, the water comes from a plastic barrel on the roof. It's brought in by jeep every few weeks - and smells accordingly.

You still think you smell a faint smell of mud and fish as you relax after dinner on the covered tapchan, a lounge table covered with blankets. Still, as you watch the silvery moonlight dance on the waves of the Aral Sea, one thinks: the adventure of this voyage was worth it.

Getting there: The nearest international airport for an Aral Sea tour is Nukus, just under a three-hour drive from Muynak, where the trips depart.

Aral Sea Tours: Advantour offers various Aral Sea tours with overnight yurt camp, a two-day tour costs from US$ 270 per person (advantour.com/uzbekistan/aralsea/tours.htm). Andrastravel also offers two-day tours, starting at US$400 per person (adrastravel.com/tours/aral-sea-adventure/). The guide Oktyabr Dospanov offers private tours, prices on request (contact via email: oktyabrd@gmail.com).

Information: uzbekistan.travel/en/; kazakhstan.travel

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