Skip to content

Aral Sea

Once the world's fourth-largest lake, the Aral has shrunk to a fraction of its size since the 1960s, leaving the Aralkum desert behind.

Nature

About the place

The Aral lay between Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan and covered about 68,000 square kilometres. From the 1960s the Amu Darya and Syr Darya, which fed it, were drawn off to irrigate cotton fields, and the sea split into separate basins; by 2014 its eastern part had dried out completely.

Today the southern shore is a salt and sand desert, the Aralkum. Visitors usually travel from Nukus through Moynaq, a former fishing port, to see stranded ships and continue by off-road vehicle to what is left of the water.

Why go

  • One of the clearest examples of man-made environmental change
  • Ship graveyard at Moynaq on the way
  • Wide, empty desert landscapes of the former seabed

Sources (5)

  1. 1.Wikidata
  2. 2.en.wikipedia.org
  3. 3.ru.wikipedia.org
  4. 4.uz.wikipedia.org
  5. 5.openstreetmap.org

Nearby

  • Nature

    23 km away

    Aralkum National Nature Park

    National park created in 2022 on the dried bed of the Aral Sea in Muynak district, covering about 1 million hectares including the former Vozrozhdeniya island.

  • Saigachy State ReserveNature

    79 km away

    Saigachy State Reserve

    A vast protected area on the north-western Ustyurt plateau, set up in 1991 to protect the saiga antelope and its breeding grounds.

  • Ustyurt Plateau and the Aral shoreNature

    81 km away

    Ustyurt Plateau and the Aral shore

    A flat desert plateau that ends in tall pale cliffs above the remaining waters of the Aral Sea, reached on multi-day trips by four-wheel drive.

  • Moynaq and the ship cemeteryNature

    121 km away

    Moynaq and the ship cemetery

    A former fishing port on the Aral Sea, now far from the water, where rusting boats lie on the old seabed and a local museum tells the town's story.