Day 90: Bones of a butchered sea

The train dropped me off in  Aralsk near midnight.  I knew town was only a kilometre away, but I felt a little nervous so I took a taxi.  The destination was easy: there was only one hotel in town and the other accommodation choices I knew of were all near it.

Friends, if you go to Aralsk, try not to stay in the hotel there.  My room cost me KZT 4000 per night - about AUD 32 at the then current exchange rate - and might have been acceptable at half that.  It had an ancient and ineffectual aircon unit (at least it moved the air - until my second night there, when the fan quit and could not be persuaded to continue) and its own bathroom with a trickle of cold water but the decor was Ancient Ruin.  The window curtain was a doona cover.


Aralsk itself is a town that has had a near-death experience.  Once it was the premier port on the north coast of the Aral Sea, but then the Soviet Union embarked upon its "Virgin Lands" scheme.  Basically, water from the two main rivers feeding the Aral was diverted to irrigate vast areas of steppe to produce cotton.  Since those rivers were the Aral's lifeblood, the sea began to dry up.  The Soviet planners knew this would happen but considered it a regrettable side effect.

In consequence, an area of Central Asia larger than New South Wales has been devastated. The deserts are drier, the climate more extreme.  Dust storms now blow salt from the exposed sea bed.  The Soviet Union is gone but nobody is willing to put Humpty-Dumpty together again.  And so the remaining fragments of the Aral continue to shrink.

Except here.  The northern part of the Aral Sea was shaped by folds in the land.  A dike has been built across the narrow connection between headlands here, and efficiencies have allowed more water to be directed into the area north of the dike.  This huge lake is generally described as the "Little Aral Sea" and it is the source of Aralsk's reviving fortunes.  As the Little Aral fills, fish have been reintroduced and the fishing industry is reviving.

I had always wanted to see the Aral Sea.  I first learned about it in school "Social Studies" (Geography).  I learned about the fishing and shellfish industries, how the people lived, etc.  I found the notion of this little round ocean in the midst of huge deserts romantic and fascinating.  This was in the sixties.  What they didn't teach us was that this fascinating little sea was by then already under sentence of death.

By the time I was able to reach its shores, those shores were long gone.

A non-Government Organisation (NGO) called Aral Tenizi arranges 4WD tours on the seabed, with English-speaking guides.  It's expensive - if you speak some Russian you can probably arrange a cheaper tour with a local in the marketplace - but offered me a way to reach the sea shore.

We headed west through town, then turned south and bounced along a rough road through interminable sand dunes.  Then we came over a last rise and swooped down a hillside onto a level plain.  The surface was crisp and the plant population quite different to the dunes.  We were now on the exposed seabed.

Here and there, small hills stood up from the plain.  Some - former islands- had buildings on them.

After a while I saw the Little Aral Sea appear on our left.  But our first destination was something stranger: the so-called "ship cemetery".  About 20 ships had been towed into a bay of the sea and left stranded as the sea withdrew from the bay.  Locals are now cannibalising them for their metal - there are only a dozen ships left now, all at least partially dismantled.

As we came up to the ships, I saw two camels - the "ship of the desert" - grazing in the shade of a stranded ship of the sea, and quickly snapped a photo.  Alas, this photo was still in my camera when - but I am ahead of my tale.  I no longer have that picture, but it is a vivid memory still.

I clambered through one ship and then we headed down to the sea shore.

"Shore" is perhaps the wrong term.  It's merely an interface where the desert is turning back into seafloor.  As the slope is gentle, it's a broad wetlands providing homes to many birds and small creatures.  But I found a place where I could walk down and stand on a miniscule and temporary beach with  my toes in the tiny waves of the Aral Sea.  Another long-held dream realised!

One day I fell in with a pair of cyclists who were booked on the train that night.  They had decided to kill time in the local cafes, figuring that it would cost the same as or less than paying the hotel for a bed they would not use, and be money better spent.  We formed a compatible group, exploring the town and spending hours over beer and local food.  It's a warm memory.

And so to Turkistan, a pretty place but events there left a bitter taste in my mouth.  On my first day, I set out to see the large mausoleum that is the town's centrepice.  I sat on a bench and carelessly tossed my camera on my daypack.  I forgot the camera was there and when I got up it tumbled off the pack and was left behind.  It was less than three minutes before I realised it was gone, and the bench was shaded and isolated, but in that time someone had swooped and taken the camera.  Three weeks of photos, everything from Kazbegi, Baku, Aktau, Atyrau and Aralsk - gone beyond recovery!

And on that note - my time is up for the day.  To be continued ...