Central Asia XIX: Road to Nukus

 We left the walls of the Khiva Old City and were on the road to Nukus by 8:30 a.m. on October 26, 2021.  The next three days were part of the “add-on” to our Uzbekistan trip when we had to delete Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Tajikistan because they were closed due to Covid.   We later discovered that Abdu had never been to Muynak (also spelled Moynak), the ghost city on the edge of the Aral Sea which we visited.  It must be remote, indeed, if our well-traveled guide had not been there.  We once asked Abdu what he would add to our itinerary if we had an extra couple of days.  “You are seeing everything,” he said.  Of course, Abdu also said, yesterday, that we could have spent a whole week just exploring Khiva, and I know that we could have profitably done that.

Here is the Uzbekistan map, once more.  Khiva is next to Urgench, in the southwest of Uzbekistan.  Nukus is even further southwest, near the Turkmenistan border.  Muynaq, which borders the Aral Sea, is northwest from Nukus.  We started our journey all the way to the east of the country, in Tashkent.

We crossed and re-crossed the Amu Darya, which got shallower as it flowed west.  Water for ever-thirsty cotton was diverted all along the journey of the Amu Darya from the mountains of Tajikistan, and there was not enough left to fill the Aral Sea.

We stopped, an hour east of Nukus, to climb to the top of a hill which once housed an ancient city, Chilpiq, which was active through the 4^th century AD.  There was a striking view of desert in all directions.  There were also a few ruins of structures and a new “monument” of sticks onto which strips of fabric, including many Covid masks, had been tied.  It was a very modern appeal to the eternal powers that be!

Nukus is the capital of the Karakalpakstan Autonomous Region of Uzbekistan, the only autonomous region in the country.  This region is home to the Karakalpaks, a Turkic people more closely related to Kazakhs than to Uzbeks.  Nukus is a modern, if nondescript, city at the center of an area crisscrossed by old caravan routes and dotted with ancient ruins.  It is surrounded by cotton fields which evidence the monoculture that stole the water from the Amu Darya and Syr Darya, the rivers that fed the Aral Sea.  

We walked a few blocks to lunch.  The plan was to then visit the bazaar, but I felt so sick that I begged to be left at the hotel for a nap.  Dave took these great photos of the bazaar.

We were joined, before dinner, by Professor Yusup Kamalov, a member of the Karakalpakstan Academy of Sciences.  He is now retired, but he has spent his life in various positions as a scientist for the Karakalpakstan government.  He is now focusing on renewable energy, but he is also a member of an international group who are trying to preserve the Aral Sea.  “My brain is a wastebasket of ideas,” he says.  He would like to use some of those ideas to make money, but he has not always been able to do that.

Professor Kamalov gave a presentation on the Aral Sea, sharing his computer screen to show us maps and photographs, showing how the sea virtually disappeared in the 20 years between 1960 and 1980.  The head of the Ministry of Water Management in Moscow was not sympathetic to the loss of the Aral Sea.  “He said the sea was like a soldier lost in battle,” Professor Yussef said.  The battle was to make Central Asia, and its rulers in Moscow, prosperous through an international trade in cotton.  When I got back to SLC, I googled professor Kamalov, and noted how distinguished he is.  One article described him as one of "Ten Water Heroes," and the photo above was included in an article about him in a United nations newsletter.

 

During Professor Kamalov's lecture and our visit to Muynak, we saw many photographs of the devastation caused by the draining of the Aral Sea.